The week goes like this: On Monday, Mike works from home which makes everything easier, just because there is another adult in the house. If I want to go for a walk or to the bank or whatever, I just can. Today, Maria and Veronica are going to VBS at their school (and our church) so I'm dropping them off and it will just be Felicity until like 12, then we are supposed to meet friends and play this afternoon. Tonight we have no scheduled plans so we will just have dinner and hang out.
Tuesday - Friday we have regular summer days, the pool, M and V have VBS through Wednesday, we go to parks, the library for our summer reading program, etc.
Then on Friday night I go to work. Work is kind of awful these days. When I started, the general manager loved me and wanted the best for me, he was really good to me and seemed to recognize that I had worth and was good at my job and it was great. The assistant GM was the same, he used to say he was the "number one Joanne fan", I mean, things were great! Then the GM quit and the AGM also left and now we have a new GM and AGM and it's not the same. I was out for 7 weeks with my wrist and now I am scheduled Friday night, Saturday brunch, Saturday night and either Sunday brunch or Sunday night or both.
So I work all weekend and the manager is NOT the same as my old GM, he is so young and so different, he doesn't particularly think or say that I am good at my job, he seems to have a - is it a Theory X style of management? Where you think everyone is a jerk and no one wants to work and the only way to motivate people is to browbeat them or shame them into it? He's like that, and also young enough to be my child in a way that would not even be a scandal, soooo. It sucks. So Friday night I worked and it was busy and I was there until 10:30 or 11:00 and then I went and had drinks with a friend of mine who was visiting. Saturday I got up at 6:00 even though I didn't have to get up until 7:00 but my fingers burn with pain in the night so I have to sit up sometimes to make it better. I worked from 8:00 until 1:00 or so, it was painfully slow and I only waited on ONE table. I went home and cleaned some and hung out some and took a short nap and went back to work at 5:30. It was ALSO slow but in my many years of restaurant experience, I have found that in the summer it will never really get busy until the sun goes down. But they are so eager to cut me, both managers mentioned it and I was confused - well I wasn't, really but it was confusing. In the day I was doing nothing, no one had come in and no one was coming in but I had to stay and stay and then in the night I had nothing, few people had come in and they were eager to get rid of me. Do you know what the difference is? It's that during the day, the person who was suffering by me staying there was another waitress and at night the person who would be suffering by me staying was a bartender - a male bartender. If I left, he would get all the tables that came in and then he'd make more money and they want the male bartenders (there are no female bartenders) to make all the money so they can keep them. They want to keep MOST of them, I should say, because they fired one the next day. So maybe that was it, they were trying to keep the bartender happy since they knew they were getting rid of the other one? I don't know, all I know is that I said maybe we should wait until 8:00 so that we'd have a clearer picture of how the night was going to go and a table came in, two people, at 7:40 and the GM said to let the bartender have it and I could be cut. Then another four people came in and then six people came in and then I walked by a little bit later and I saw at least two more people. And I'm sure the bartender had a great night and the hell with me. And did I say that I had requested off that night but it was not granted to me because too many other people had requested off before me? Oh it is infuriating, I basically worked all day and sold $200 and made like $33. All day!
But I was out early so I met my friends again for dinner and then went home and went to bed. Sunday we went to 10:30 Mass, all of us, which went okay but Anthony got kind of stirred up by these JERKSTORES that came in during the homily, 25 minutes after Mass started and 20 minutes before they left, because of effing COURSE they left after communion. They were laughing and giggling - grown ups!, these were, and oh, how I hated them. I took Anthony outside at one point and he ran from me, I scraped up against the limestone and hurt my arm, he sat down THREE times on the way to and back from communion, but overall it went pretty well. We stopped by Dunkin Donuts on the way home and then my friends who were in town came by before they left so we visited for a little bit. After they left, I took the girls to the Knights of Columbus for a picnic for our church, it was fun and the girls had a HIGH old time swimming with their friends. We had to leave at 4 so I could come home and get ready to go back to work for 5:00. I got there and went to find out my section and the hostess said she didn't have me on the floor plan. I asked the assistant GM what was up and he said he had forgotten that I was working. I mean, come on.
But it was an okay night, I waited on a table of seven people, one of whom was a woman I worked with 10 years ago, who I hadn't seen in forever and I really liked her a lot, and it was a big table, lots of drinks, desserts, etc. Everyone else I waited on was kind of boring, water drinkers, iced tea, one lady had just a salad, etc. I got finished at 10:00 and came the hell home.
This morning I took M and V to VBS and Felicity screamed and screamed and screamed and HOWLED and screamed because she couldn't stay. It's extremely mortifying and also I might have hearing damage. She's fine now but my LORD. I talked to her about it, I told her she wasn't old enough but we would have fun, blah blah blah and ... nothing! It's like I didn't say anything. She drives me bananas. And now it's almost 10:00 and I have to get the girls at 11:45 which is like NO TIME AT ALL.
Anyway, my point is these weeks are kind of hard, long, but the weekends are worse! Ha!
