Entitled

Pointing to a spot on the wall she says: Is that chipped paint?  Referring to a former cleaner she says: I had to let her go. I couldn't afford to keep her. It was costing me too much. I mean I couldn't hire a painter after everytime she cleaned. You know?

Yes, lady with an 8,000 square foot house, we know.  We, a small gaggle of various cleaners, are in the master bedroom suite as she goes on--

Referring to yet another cleaner no longer with her: If she had just read the directions then she would have known that that was too much cleaner to use. I mean, four tablespoons is a quarter cup after all.

This was said aloud to any and all who were cleaning within earshot. This was also after she'd opened a set of blinds on my person via remote control. The paper-like fabric moving up and over my body felt like it took ages to complete, but, really, the whole thing probably only lasted about ten seconds. With the blinds now off, I turned on my ladder to see the client staring up at me, remote in hand. She then said something about the blinds tearing easily. I'm thinking, so opening them on body was a good idea?! 

Blinds these days open in all kinds of ways. Some open by draw-string, some open by gently tapping them upwards, some take a remote to open, and some (like a few of hers) are broken & can't be opened at all. That was the case with the first set of blinds I encountered in the client's bedroom. Standing under them, one can clean what needs to be cleaned.

The second set of blinds, I incorrectly assumed, were also not functioning. Additionally, I could not find a remote nearby to clue me into the fact that these were operated thusly. Time is also money and I'm not one to spend inordinate amounts of it looking for something not already in plain sight. I'm there to work, not futz around.

When we showed up to clean that morning, the client was out. She'd had an earlier appointement & couldn't we, too, show up early to meet her before she left? This question was asked the morning of. My boss told her he'd be unable to, but said he'd ask his business partner if he could be at her house some 60 minutes early as she'd requested. -turned out that he couldn't either as he had work calls to make before starting the day. 'Well, couldn't he make them during lunch?!' was her reply.

No, lady with gold-plated fixtures in all six bathrooms, he can't.

Later in the afternoon, the client found me in one of the many guest bedrooms holding back heavy window treatments with my forearm while I cleaned with my free hand. She made a show of moving the curtains away from a window I wasn't working on (they fell forward again, so no help). She then moved over to my window set to tell me that there was a cord (she looked in vain, took her a while to find it) that moved the curtains back. She pulled on it and the curtains moved in to press against my arm. I told her that I had already moved the curtains from the window as far as they would go. Using my arm was just for good measure as I didn't want any cleaning solution to come in contact with the fabric. She seemed somewhat satisfied with my answer and left the room without another word.

The below image is from the internet, but kind of gives one a picture of what I'm taking about re: the client's curtains.

Many of the monied clients we work for treat us just fine. And by 'fine' I mean leave us to work in peace. Would that she were one of them.

God told him to?

When I first started my bar gig at an Italian restaurant in Hell's Kitchen, there were some glaring omissions to the bar set-up. There was no simple syrup (sugar water) and there was no fresh citrus of any kind. Even the most generic of cocktails, the Lemon Drop, calls for both fresh citrus and simple syrup. This particular bar instead would use sugar packets (like the kind you use for coffee) and Sweet and Sour, a generic, lemon-flavored product for such a drink.

I made simple syrup in the restaurant kitchen and put it in an old break bottle (emptied out booze bottle) with a partially torn off label, so folk wouldn't mistake it for alcohol, and put it in the well in place of the Sweet and Sour bottle. I brought up an apron-load of citrus (easy pickin' in the walk-in) from the basement at the start of my shifts. Apparently, no other bartender had gone down into the bowels of the restaurant. The stairs leading down to the basement were treacherous and there was a rumor of rats. After hearing from the owner that my s.s. should be in a different container, so as not to rankle the inspection folk, I brought in a label-free bottle that used to house incredibly fine scotch that the husband and I recently polished off, and poured the sugar water into it. For six months, this arrangement worked well.

Then one day I came into work, and found, to my dismay, that the simple syrup I used to make drinks with like this one--

Mojito

was gone.  I looked around a bit for the missing bottle before I started to squawk about it to my co-workers.

"The Monday night bartender took it home," said the busser, David. "He did what?!?!" I said louder than was absolutely necessary.  David was like, "I didn't know. I thought maybe he had talked to you, and you told him it was okay to take it." After hearing from David, I phoned Edmond, my sticky-fingered co-worker, and left a WTF? message on his machine. He returned my call and left a message that was some tripe about "well, I heard you quit, and no one here uses simple syrup, and I liked the bottle, so I took it." I had quit, but was still working for the next two weeks, so I was NOT DONE with using simple syrup yet.

Edmond, around my age, and sorta decent-looking, had worked at the restaurant full-time as a bartender up until a few months before I was hired on. Edmond was also the guy who, having come back on a "fill in" basis, trained me. He'd quit, he said, because he wanted to focus on some "at home" job that I was only vaguely interested in hearing about at that time.

As I became settled in to my new digs, I began hearing about the real reason Ed didn't work at the restaurant anymore. Edmond, having found God seven years' prior in a really serious way, was told by God to "stop serving people alcoholic beverages." This bit of info. could be substantiated by a handful of people at the restaurant. God told him to stop, so he quit tending bar. (Although he's now back two days weekly serving drinks to those in need, so did he have to ask God for permission first in order to do so?) Oh, and, did God tell him to pinch my bottle, too?  I should ask him that tomorrow when I go into the restaurant to retrieve it. If he'd just asked to have it, then I would have given him the bottle, but it was the principle of the matter.

Medium-sized fish in a very small pond

It was ten o'clock on a Wednesday night and the annual Zug stier festival was in full swing.  Ten o'clock marked the end of my shift.  After fourteen hours of work, I was glad to be done.

'Who told you you could leave?  Everyone else is staying late.'  I had had a feeling that there would be some confusion around my leaving at the scheduled time, given how impromptu I felt the training for this event seemed to have been and how bungled the communication re: work hours for the event via email was.

I produced a copy of an email in which the assistant to the Big Boss had written to me very clearly: Work hours--Mittwoch: 8.00-22.00; Donnerstag: 8.00-22.00.  The floor manager's face twisted into what appeared to be a mixture of anger and frustration as she began to walk away.  'I don't have time to sign you out right now.  I'll do it tomorrow morning.'  With those words she disappeared into the crowd.  I walked in the opposite direction out the service door knowing full well that there was no way I'd be returning the next day.  Without her signature, I would not see one Rappe of 350 CHF, but I couldn't care less.  The waitress nightmare come-to-life that I'd lived that day was over.  Tomorrow's shift, what was sure to be another stressful experience, could FUCK OFF.

I had arrived Wednesday morning ready for the scheduled 2-hour training.  After dealing with all the back-n-forth via email hammering out times and days of catering gigs, I was encouraged by the idea of having a training.  I thought it meant that those in charge actually cared to have us be prepped for what would be two very long and, as I would soon find out, grueling shifts.  Indeed, I had hoped to be part of a well-functioning team.  My hopes were soon dashed.  The training consisted of  approximately 15 minutes' worth of how one uses the hand-held ordering device.  The festival food menu was pretty extensive with many drinks, appetizers, entrees and desserts.  We were shown how to punch in a drink order.  For example, if one wanted to order clear apple cider, then one pressed the 'apple cider' button.  Cloudy apple cider was 'shift' + 'apple cider' button.  Glassware was just 'shift'.  From that brief description, I wasn't really sure when and how many times we were supposed to hit the 'shift' button if we wanted to order a few bottles of cloudy cider with glassware.  (As the evening picked up, it was clear that glassware was just a quaint notion.  Bottles were brought to tables in a hurried rush sans glasses.)  When I asked for clarification re: ordering procedure I was told that 'none of this pertained to me' as I would be in the VIP area.  Well, that was news to me!  Moreover, I had no clue what being in the VIP area meant.  I quickly found out it was a brunch for 'promis'.  I wasn't given a time frame for the brunch, but it was all over within a couple of hours.  The main event, where I would be running food, was 'general admission' and it would seem that residents from far and wide came out in full force with one thing on their minds: eat, drink and be merry!

The low-lights of the evening were as follows: food being constantly sent out to tables where there was no cutlery.  Drink orders disappearing into thin air.  The angry: 'We've been waiting 30 minutes for our drinks!'  The confused: 'We ordered drinks...?'  The obnoxious: a chorus of whistles, the constant chant of 'over here!' and 'hey!' 'hey!'  A few dudes felt it prudent to stick out their arms like Gong Show hooks and try to corral those of us walking by them, arms laden down with plates, en route to other tables.  I kept expecting Bratwurst and french fries to fall on someone's head.

The high-lights of the event came in the form of that sometimes really lovely 'matey' camaraderie that one builds with one's co-workers.  It's like, hey, we're all here in the trenches, let's try to have a laugh and keep things moving.  Carla, a stout and friendly woman was always up for a quick chat and a smile.  Then there was Daniela who was a bit sassy and every time I saw her she'd say something to make me sputter with laughter.  Most of us, however, just looked harried and stressed.  There was, honestly, no time for anything other than GO-GO-GOING at top speed from the kitchen to the tables to the wash-up area.  And, hurry up, while we were at it!

This poorly executed event was put on by a 'successful' catering company from the area.  If what I participated in was a 'success', then I would certainly hate to see failure.  I'd imagine that there is hardly any competition for gigs in this area, so this particular catering company gets all the really lucrative yearly festivals.  What a sad state of affairs.  Festival goers and those who work them deserve better.

The fest took place in that massive, white tent. Think: Oktoberfest on steroids. 

The few, the proud....

the North Americans working at Selfridge's in Oxford Street were a unique bunch. There were only a select few of us in the induction room, but we were, by far, the most talkative, sort of, 'go-getters' of the lot. When I say, 'go-getter', I really mean 'chatty Kathy-types'. The Selfridge founder was an American businessman by the name of Harry Gordon Selfridge, so I guess it only seemed right that I apply to work there. That and I had no other job prospects at the time.  

I recall the induction (what we here would probably call a 'training') as being more of an indoctrination and for almost 7 hours we were treated to information on how Selfridge's Co. became the money-making monolith it is today and how to keep it that way.  It sure fostered my commitment to the 'team' to learn that I, at six quid an hour, would be helping to ensure Selfridge's earns somewhere in the range of one billion pounds that financial year.  Ugh.

Interestingly, the induction leader failed to mention that HG Selfridge, after having lost his fortunes from both the crash of '29 and due to his free-spending ways, died in dire straits in 1947. 

Harry Gordon 'There's no fun like work'. Selfridge

During induction, I had been fortunate enough to sit next to a lovely man from Manchester who had just spent three years in Salt Lake City, Utah before moving to London for work. He and his American partner intended to move back to SLC as soon as they were able. Knowing a little bit about Utah, I would think that being out and proud in Salt Lake would not work too well. The Mancunian found Mormons to be 'very accepting' people. I sure hope he's right. And, he told me, that there are lots of gay Mormons dotting the landscape of Utah. Safety in numbers. 

Walking down to the employee locker rooms (where the wait-list for an employee locker was four months) after induction in a herd of other employees, I couldn't help but overhear the conversation of a few nattily dressed young men (presumably from the men's finery dept., or whatever it's called). One was telling the others of a particularly thick-headed customer that he had been dealing with during his shift. The employee telling the story slipped into an accent that could have passed for American. Then, by way of making an excuse for the customer's denseness, he went on to say that the guy was from the states. Yes, that explains it all doesn't it?

I like to think that I did ole Harry Gordon proud when I reached out, tapped this employee on the shoulder and said in my Californian best, 'Nice American accent!'  His friends fell out laughing while he mumbled something to the effect of: Oh, the shame!

Small world

View from our first gig of the day down the peninsula. 

Yesterday's second client, a charming elderly woman, was located a short drive from San Carlos. We met her in the master bedroom where it would appear she spends a majority of her time contentedly watching TV, taking phone calls, and doing the crossword. I noticed that she moved around her bedroom with only minimal fuss. However, it did not look like she had anything much to do with the rest of her house. The tidy living room was charmingly decorated & looked like it was last sat in about 30 years ago. The dining room, however, was covered in a pile of old boxes---online ordering gone mad?---no where to sit or stand. The kitchen had a bit of life in it, but I suspect that that has more to do with the woman who looked to be the client's granddaughter living in the two rooms that were off-limits to us.

My colleague arrived first on scene & was met at the door by the younger woman who told him which rooms we would not be entering. Those two rooms had their doors closed. That was enough to signal 'do not enter' to me, to be honest. Just in case, a post-it note reading 'no windows' was affixed to each of the doors. Got it. 

Given the sounds emanating from the back of the house, I had assumed that the client and her probable granddaughter were spending time together watching TV. My cleaning buddy and I passed the time as we normally would when no one was within ear shot by talking about his rocky personal life. At some point during our chat, the younger woman popped out of one of the 'no windows' rooms and said, 'Uh, yeah, I don't wanna hear that. I'm on the phone.' I apologized for speaking too loudly & she disappeared back into her lair. I wondered if the other room was being used as some sort of storage unit for all the items that came from the discarded boxes piled up in the dining room. 

In a hushed tone, my colleague continued talking while I alternated between whispering replies and talking in a very low voice. That wasn't going to do either as whatshername came back out & told my buddy (I actually neither saw nor heard her this time) she, again, didn't want to hear it & that she had 'her own problems'. Oopsie. 

When cleaning windows, the order of operations is this: upstairs to downstairs, inside to outside. As this was a ranch-style home, we worked from one end of the house to the other. Just prior to my cleaning the windows of the master bedroom, granddaughter left her room to speak with the client for a few minutes. The one-sided convo went as follows: something about betting at the horse track, something about Las Vegas, something about the Kardashians, something about social media. I heard a few affirmative responses from the client, but not much else. 

As I approached the master bedroom, I heard the younger woman sign off with something like: Well, that's it from me! 

Not wanting to bump into the charmless younger woman in the hallway, I waited until she'd gone back into her room before I made my way back to the client's room. I introduced myself & asked her if I could get started. We chatted while I worked & I found out that she had grown up in San Francisco. 'I'm from San Francisco when it was still a small city'. 

I asked her what high school she'd attended. I hadn't heard of it. 'It's a convalescent hospital now'. 

I then asked where in the city she had grown up. Her parents had purchased a then new house on the block where I now live. I told her my house number and asked her half-jokingly if I lived in her house. It turns out I don't, but I can see her childhood home from my front window. 

Here it is--

She told me that she loved that her house had a separate bathroom & WC. I told her that our place still has that same configuration & that I really like it, too. She also mentioned that she loved the size of the bathtub. Apparently, she used to take baths while talking on the phone. Our house still has the original built-in phone stand along the wall just across from the bathroom, so I could totally see having a soak with the phone dragged in from the hallway.

She reminisced about some of the businesses along the adjacent main road. Most seem to have gone the way of the dodo, but I did recognize the name of one of the bars. It permanently closed just a few years back.

Roofers' hangout back in the 40s & 50s.

She asked if I remembered the old Fox Theatre on Market Street. She drew out the 'a' in a 'long a' sound like my mom does. I don't know the phonetic alphabet, but I'd write what I heard like this: thee-A-ter. I told her I did, but in name only. 'It was a shame when they tore it down'. Having heard what a gem of a cinema the place was, I could only agree. 

Opened in '29. Closed in '63. 

Fireman Robert Ceiley

The San Francisco Fire Department, established in 1866, has had a rich history in its 151 years. From the earthquake of 1906 and resultant fires that left half of the city's 400,000 residents temporarily homeless to the Loma Prieta quake of 1989 that collapsed a portion of the SF-Bay Bridge, the Fire Department has grown exponentially. Today, the SF Fire Dept. serves approximately 1.5 million people, providing fire and emergency services to residents, workers and visitors of the city.

My great-grand Uncle was a man called Robert Ceiley. Robert was born in 1889 in Newton, New South Wales, Australia. He and his father, Henry Ceiley, came to San Francisco from Australia in 1910. My great-grandmother Bea, her mother and one other sibling had already made there way here. Having become a naturalised citizen, Robert served in the the US army during 'The Great War'. A few years after his service, in 1921, Robert joined the San Francisco Fire Department. He held various positions during his 36 year career. He worked as tillerman, the man who guides the long hook and ladder trucks from the rear, as truckman, and as hoseman. I had always heard from my Uncle, also an SF fireman, that Robert had saved 'a few people' from a burning building way back when and was awarded a medal as a result of his efforts. Many years ago, one of Robert's daughters shared a newspaper article with my SFFD Uncle regarding her father's bravery. She must have been very proud of her Dad and rightly so.

Bounty from the main branch library

Having recently discovered the SF History branch of the SF Public Library, I have been able to learn some of the specifics of said event through reading various newspaper clippings of the time. In 1933, Robert Ceiley carried a 'crippled girl', 'her 200 lb brother' and 'younger man' from a burning building at 1377 Ninth Avenue in the Inner Sunset. For this action, he was cited by the fire department for bravery. Both he and another fireman, a man called Dennis Magee, were given citations for heroism that year, but there was to be only one medal awarded by the then Mayor of San Francisco, Angelo Rossi. A coin toss was to determine who won the medal. My great-grand Uncle won the toss & received the Scannell medal for heroic action. 

David Scannell, born in NYC, became a volunteer fireman at the tender age of 12. As an adult, Scannell volunteered to fight in the Mexican-American war from 1846 to 1848. Of the 850 men who fought in his regiment, only 150 survived. After the war, Scannell moved back to New York before again crossing country in 1851 to seek his fortune in San Francisco during the Gold Rush period. At some point thereafter, Scannell joined the San Francisco volunteer fire department. In 1855, he was elected sherriff of our then burgeoning & still somewhat lawless city. He was the third man to hold the post. He served for one year. When the fire department transitioned from volunteer to paid staff, Scannell became the first fire chief of that outfit. He served as fire chief three different times over his career, totalling 27 years in the role. He died in 1893 at the age of 73. In 1909, a fireboat was named in his honor.

What an honor (and stroke of luck!) it must have been for my great-grand Uncle to receive such a medal.

Scannell Medal

RH Ceiley's modest home to the left of the tree in Ingleside, SF

Discovery

S. comes to the counter and takes out his phone. He starts scrolling and sighing. I ask him if he were all right. -tells me his daughter had just sent his wife an ugly email. S. quotes: 'I don't appreciate your shoving your politics down my throat!'

I like S. He's a sexist old git, but I like him. His wife is sharp as a tack & really nice. I figure that the daughter must be a jerk. I tell S. I'm sorry. Then he starts to rant about his daughter being 'stupid'. I think he's being harsh, even though, I assume, she must be a Trump supporter. Then S. says, way too loudly, 'I mean who in their right mind would be vote for Clinton?! Everything that comes out of her mouth is LIE!' I tell him that I, for one, will vote for her. S. walks out the front door muttering crap about 'nasty women'.

S., it turns out, is the one who's stupid.

Clean-Up Committee

I've been house-cleaning for my sister's business for the past 3 weeks. Her clients are well-to-do types living tucked away in the hills above us flat-landers. For the most part, the clients leave us to our work, so there's little instrusion. We get on with it, time passes, and, at the end, there's a sparkly-clean house as a result of our efforts.

There are, however, clients (or employees of clients) who feel the need to micro-manage, repeatedly check in, and inspect our tasks as we're working. That's fair enough, but sometimes the behavior borders on the inane. The opposite end of this are clients who are a little too comfortable with our presence. One hopes, really, that the clients aren't home when we arrive to do our work. What I've found out is that those who no longer need work to for a living seem to spend an inordinate amount of time at home. Funny that.

Yesterday

Having been told by Minnie, the 'house manager', to start in the master bedroom, I set up my cleaning kit there, and got down to business. Not two minutes later, Minnie comes back into the room to remind me to clean the adjacent office. Standing next to and pointing into the office she says: 'you know there's a room right here, too?' What I wanted to say: 'um, yeah, I'm not blind'. What I said: 'yes, I'll clean that room right after this one'.

'How you doing?'
'You want some water?'
'How's it going?'

'Fine, no, fine, thank you.'

Who offers an employee water right after they've started working? -felt weird and like an excuse for her to come and check that I wasn't stealing the family silver. She finally stopped with pretenses and just came to check on me in silence. -still weird, but less intrusive.

Two days ago

After I'd cleaned a small set of windows in the guest room, a room replete with photos of the man of the house hob-nobbing with powerful politians like Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and former NYC mayor, Rudy Guliani, he sought out my boss to tell him that the windows were still dirty. My boss went with the client to inspect the work, and wound up having to explain that the 'dirt' he saw was actually condensation that had built up between the double-paned glass as a result of a cracked seal. The only way that that 'dirt' could be removed would be to replace the windows entirely.

When we were driving away from the job my co-worker told me that she'd seen the client take a towel to the 'dirty' windows in the hopes of removing the schmutz, I presume. -guess he knew better than my boss, a woman who's been in the cleaning biz for 27 years.

Last Friday

The lady of the house greets us in an over-sized blouse and nothing else. This was a woman over 65 with incredible legs. At 45, my legs don't look half as good, so more power to her, but, really? You're going to greet the cleaning crew in what is ostensibly a nightie? To be fair, her adult son was sitting at the dining room table sans shirt, so it would seem it is simply their perogative to be 'lightly' dressed while at home. However, I'd think that when strangers are in the house, they'd want to cover up.


We'll see what next week brings. Maybe I'll find more framed photos of clients with Putin, or former NYC mayor Guliani? Maybe I'll have someone following me from room to room asking if I'm thirsty? One can only hope!

Valuable real estate.

This is not an info table.

What's wrong with this picture?  Lemme give you a hint: shoppers' baskets.  Still not sure what's a-miss?  A 'problem solved' for one person is a 'problem gained' for others.  The new marketing guru at my job has resolved to spread the joys of our shop via flyers and sign stands.  What I've noticed over the many weeks since the implementation of 'paperpalooza' is that a) customers barely register the info-sheets until their shopping baskets knock them to the floor; b) effectively using the check-stands requires a concerted effort in paper shuffling all the day long.  

Mom's visit.

My Mom and her husband came for lunch at the weekend.  She'd mentioned beforehand that she'd be bringing along a box of my things that she's been storing for the past 25 years.  I had no idea I'd left anything behind and was more than mildly curious to see what the box yielded.

-turns out the trove was not much more than old notes written back and forth between me and my high school friends.  Major themes of the day were boys, partying and shopping, in that order.  I read about of half them before chucking the lot.  Among the folded up pieces of paper were a few old pictures.  My favorites were a Polaroid picture of my first, serious high school boyfriend sans shirt, circa 1985, and me with co-workers at my first, not-so-serious job in the city, 1990.

How he manages then to look just as old as most guys my age now is beyond me.

Happiness was working in an ice-cream parlour.

Tactless

I remember it was when I was still working at the college bar back in Berkeley on one of those weekend nights when we'd be six deep at the bar, slinging Long Island Ice Teas, Cape Cods, Cuba Libres and all the other trendy cocktails that the kids liked to drink back in the '00s.  At some point in the evening a petite blonde coed comes back up to the bar with the LIIT that I had made for her to tell me that 'Um, yeah, this tastes like ass!'  My response was something like, '-nice to know you know what ass tastes like.  Could you tell what's wrong with it?'  Anyway, she didn't like the drink and wanted either another Long Island, or something else altogether.  She got what she wanted and left the bar.  I don't know why that out of all the lame shit people said to me in the seven years I worked at this particular place I remember the 'ass' comment so well.  It's probably because of both the crude description of how her drink supposedly tasted coupled with her lack of niceties.  Imagine if you were to overhear a diner, his mouth full of food, telling a waiter that his meal tasted like 'ass'.

Of course there are those whom you might think would know how to comport themselves in a customer service scenario, but don't.  I have just handed a customer his purchase and told him the price.  '8.00! That's sooo expensive!' said the man to his friend who sells fancy French products like the 8 CHF chocolate bars I buy from her on a somewhat regular basis.  I have never once crinkled my nose to the employee and said, 'Ohhh, that's so expensive!'  Why?  Because to do so would be rude.  She isn't, magically, the Queen of the Chocolate Bar that I buy, so it's really not up to her how much to charge, but rather it is at the discretion of the shop owner to decide what to charge.  The shop worker says weakly, 'Well, the pie is worth the expense every now and then.'  With that the man buys his pie, none too happily, and we're done, fortunately.

Even more excruciating for me is when owners and employees behave badly in front of customers as I like to think that we should know better.  A customer I am serving is taking up quite a bit of time.  He is undecided, wants to know the prices of things, and, after he's chosen his meal, wants me to pack up the lunch 'to-go' even though he's going to go sit on a bench not 15 feet away and eat 'for here'.  He's a regular customer who works in the vicinity and I know how his behavior.  He takes his time when ordering, but has never once told me that our product tastes 'like ass', so I don't have a problem.  The manager of our shop, however, was of a different mind.  As I was packing up the man's meal, my manager leans over and says to me IN FRONT OF said customer, 'You know he's a difficult person.  Don't let him take up so much of your time when you have other people waiting.  Don't put his lunch in a bag, just hand him the food and be done with it.'  'What did he say?  What was that about being difficult?' said the man.  'Oh, it's nothing to do with you.  Please, don't worry about it,' was all I could manage to say while putting his food in the bag that he had asked for.  The incident seems largely forgotten as the customer has since returned to purchase lunch.  I wonder if I'll forget.

The ABC's of work for P, J and B.

P. and J., two men from Eastern Europe, have just left for England after only being here in Zurich for a few months.  They hope to find employment 'across the Channel' after an unsuccessful hunt here in German Switzerland.  I had thought that they were keen on trying to settle here, but, given both their inability to speak any of the four official languages of Switzerland and the fact that this country is not part of the European Union, it would seem that their chances of becoming financially solvent in Switzerland were slim.  P., fairly adept at simple communication in English, has contacts in the UK, so it made sense for him to relocate.  J., P's friendly compadre, speaks no English.  May they land on their feet in Great Britain and may J. learn English as quickly as he is able.

B. came in yesterday to speak with a counselor, then made his way over to the 'boutique' to say hello to me and my work mate.  B. has just found employment and needs to set up a bank account in order to collect his paycheck.  Actual checks have gone the way of the dodo, and all financial transactions would appear to be done via electronic transfer, or, what we would call back home, direct deposit.  My colleague and I pondered over what might be the best banking institution for him to open an account with.  Raiffeisen, the third-largest bank in CH, was selected as my colleague thought that they would be more personable and amendable to potential customers with quite modest funds than say, UBS or Credit Suisse.  We phoned Raiffeisen to ask if there were an outpost either close to where B. lives, or close to the main train station.  B. is a citizen of an EU-member nation, so we erroneously thought that all he had to do in order to open his account was show proof of employment, and, of course, his passport.  -turns out that Raiffeisen makes the stipulation that only those possessing German skills are able to open an account.  Hmmm.  CH has four official languages and B. speaks one of them, but not German.  Would Italians be denied opening accounts at Raiffeisen, too?  And what if French Swiss came to do banking here in ZH?  Would there be no one at the Limmatstrasse Raiffeisen branch who could speak to them?  Oh, and, B. speaks English.  Apparently, English skills aren't helpful either, or so it would seem.

After my colleague pressed the bank employee a bit more, it was determined that B. should make his way to this particular Raiffeisen branch in order to speak with him as soon as possible.  What's the Swiss German translation for 'we'll see what we can do'?.  I'm hopeful that B. will be able to open an account soon.

Language accomodation

There was a new guy called Michael at my volunteer job today.  -a job, im grossen und ganzen, conducted primarily in German.  When I met Michael, I pronounced my first name in a distinctly American way, and that must've given him the green light to try out his crap English on me.

Rule #1: if my German sounds like it's better than your English, then I'll not be speaking to you in my native language.

I tried to abide by Rule #1 for the length of 'new guy' hanging about the clothes shop, but lapsed a bit when a punk from Detroit, yes, that Detroit, waltzed through the doors saying something like: Deutsch...sprek...nicht gut.  We immediately got to chatting about 'Homeland' security, travel, and the difficulties of becoming a dual nationale.

A little bit later, Michael needed to let me know that someone had taken a small stack of clothing 'coupons' from the main office and that we should be on the look-out for any coupon not possessing his signature at the bottom.  This information was communicated to me in piss-poor English to which I responded with: du kannst mit mir auf Deutsch reden.  When that request went unheeded, I 'amped' it up with the slightly annoying: wie bitte?  Ich versteh' kein Englisch.

As if to explain his behaviour, Michael told me that when he speaks to Germans, he uses Hochdeutsch, and when he speaks to Americans, Britons and the like, he uses English.   A Swiss friend of mine termed the tendency of German Swiss to switch from Swiss German into the language of the interlocutor 'accommodating'.  That logic doesn't take into account those native English speakers already possessing a fairly solid foundation of German.  What it does reinforce is the knowledge that standard German for German Swiss is almost as much of a foreign language for them as it is for me.  The main difference being that in present day America there are relatively few German language newspapers, if any, no TV stations broadcast from the Fatherland, and, if there were to be bilingual education, then, in my home state of California, the second language learned would be either Spanish or Mandarin.

While I understand that 'German German' may be considered a foreign language 'round these parts it does, unlike in America, feature fairly prominently within the culture.  German, with some exception, is the language of instruction, the language of print media, and, save for some Swiss German programing, much of what one hears on television.  These people grew up with German, in various forms, and I, as an American, did not.

I live in a place where standard German is spoken, not all the time, but one hears it.  I use German in order to navigate through my daily life here in Zurich.  My knowledge of German helps me make sense of the world around me.  I am lucky enough to understand a bit of Swiss German, and, on occasion, catch subtle humor, register mild upset and all sorts of other things that non-German speakers certainly would miss.  Mostly, I only speak English with other natives and foreigners not possessing German skills.  In order for me to feel like less of an outsider and to be able to communicate with folk who either do not or will not speak English (I do not assume that the Swiss should speak my language, we are not, after all, in America), then I feel I need to be linguistically savvy, so to speak.  If I had grown up watching Sesamstrasse instead of Sesame Street or had read the San Fransiskaner Tagesblatt instead of The San Francisco Chronicle, then, with German presumably more firmly entrenched in my head, maybe I'd be prepared to speak English with Michael and any other Swiss German who wish to 'accommodate' me. 

The Sesamstrasse Gang

Pizzaiolo

I hear smatterings of English just about everyday in Zurich.  I'm used to it, but the language still jumps out, somehow, louder than the Swiss German around me and my ears prick up.  Today, there was a man sitting a few seats from me on the tram who asked his seat mate if she spoke English.  She said that she did and he proceeded to ask her if she knew how many stops until Limmatplatz.  She answered fairly quickly, telling him it was about 8 stops from where we were.   Silently, I applauded her quick response, given that she was a non-native English speaker.  Then I wondered if I had heard his query correctly.  We weren't actually on a tram going anywhere near Limmatplatz, so, while her answer was well-executed, it wasn't actually correct.  Our tram ended at the main train station.  The man going to Limmatplatz would need to walk a short distance from the end station in order to catch a tram to his destination.  I had hoped that the woman would make this fact clear to the traveler, but she off-boarded shortly thereafter, not saying another word.  As our tram approached the end station, I could see a perplexed look growing on the man's face.  He was looking out the window with crinkled brow, as I stood up near him and asked where he was going.  'Limmatplatz', he said.

Pizzaiolo in Zermatt

I told him I'd take him to the tram he needed and said that we were fairly close to his final destination.  As we made our way to the correct tram, I made a bit of small talk.  'Where are you from?' I asked.  He told me that he didn't speak much English and spoke NO German.  He said he was on holiday here from Italy and that he might be looking for work.  'Swiss is good.  Italy, sorry, is shit.'  I would imagine that he was talking about the economy back home.  I asked him a rather pertinent question: how will you find work if you don't speak German?  'I'm Pizzaiolo', he said.  I'm in kitchen and don't need to speak.'  He smiled when he said this.  I smiled, too.  Good for him, I thought.  We arrived at his platform with only a minute to spare.  He purchased a tram ticket, we shook hands, and I wished him good luck. 

Tips

In 2011, I worked in an upscale cocktail bar in London.  I slung tasty concoctions, opened bottles of craft beer, fancy champagne and wine and served food to those both sitting at my bar and at tables.  As with many London establishments, the bar automatically added a gratuity of 12.5% to all bills.  Apparently, the gratuity was 'optional' to pay, but as it was already included in the bill, it didn't appear to be optional and folk had to take the extra step of subtracting the tip from the main portion of the bill if they did not want to leave anything additional.  I found it cringe-worthy to have a tip added to all transactions regardless of effort employed.  Yes, I did only earn 6 pounds an hour, but it still felt weird to have someone leave me 12.5% more for opening a bottle of St. Mungo.  Some customers tipped a fiver for a bottle of champagne opened and served.  Yet others (I'm thinking specifically of the 10-top hen do of Welsh girls that ordered multiple cocktail rounds and food) left nothing additional.  Customers never 'owed' me a tip and I was grateful to anyone who gave.  'Thank you very much' was the usual response to customers' generosity.  I have always focused on the end-of-the-night tip earnings and not stewed over each table's tip contributions.  As most of us in the biz might say, 'it all evens out in the end'.

The fact that someone back in the States decided not to tip their waiter is not news; it happens all the time.  That the customer in question then had to justify her no tip stance with a wee note on the credit card slip was another matter entirely.  'I give God 10%.  Why do you get 18?' she wrote.  My question to her would be: why do you feel the need to justify your stinginess with a question?

We who are familiar with restaurant dining in the USA know the cultural rules.  If one goes out to eat, then one, generally, leaves a tip.  If one never tips, regardless of quality of service, then, I'd suggest, that person wasn't 'playing by the rules', culturally speaking, and should not eat out.

Yugos...

Before moving to Switzerland, I hadn't heard the term 'Yugo' in many years.  Yugos were those tiny, 'econo' cars that barely made a splash in the American market back in the 80s.  They made the Ford Pinto look bad-ass. 

-voted one of the 'worst cars of all time'.

Here in Switzerland, 'Yugo' would seem to refer to those folk from the former country of Yugoslavia.  I guess these people can't be called 'Croats' or 'Serbs' or whatever all else because most Swiss folk don't seem to exactly know from where the Eastern Europeans come.  Everyone South of Hungary would seem to be a 'Yugo'.

'Die waren Yugos', the woman at the Kiosk told me.  I'd gone in to a buy a paper and we started talking.  She was friendly and chatty.  She told me of her family in America.  -told me about the now high rate of criminality here in Switzerland.  Her shop has been robbed upwards of ten times.  The robbers almost always want money and usually don't resort to force.  Once, she said, a man hit her on the head with his pistol and she needed to have stitches.  She pointed to her hair line.  Fortunately, there was no scar.  As she spoke, I noticed a closed-circuit camera mounted on the wall behind her.  Standing barely 5 feet tall,  I could why she might be an appealing target for thieves.  I also marveled at how she was able to carry on a nice conversation with me alone in her shop given her history.  I was glad I didn't seem like a threat to her.  We continued on talking a bit longer until another customer came in wanting to buy a paper.  I thanked her for her time and left the shop hoping that no one will ever try to rob her again.

Weihnachtsmarkt

After three, consecutive, nearly 12-hour work days I'm ready to 'throw in the towel', as they say, and call it 'quits' on the Xmas market scene.  Thank God our shop wasn't slated to work the whole nine-day market.  That would have not only driven me batty, but probably would have turned me off to selling cheese completely.  Three very long days in just about freezing weather standing in a plywood hut surrounded by cheese and a vat of special, gluehwein-like brew has just about turned me into an anti-Weihachtsmarkt person.  I may never be able to face another hot cup of booze and chunk of 'bio' blue cheese again.

The calm before the mini-storm.

At least I actually sold something during my time at the 3-day market.  The chap across from me had barely a visitor the whole weekend.  On the first day toward the end of things I brought him over a gluehwein.  It was then that he'd told me this was his first time here and that he had heard this market would be 'busy'.  Well, I can't say that it was during the first two days, but, Sunday, however, saw a nice, steady stream of folk for which I was grateful.  It's hard standing in one place for the better part of one's day without the distraction of a chat and a sale to keep one going.

Our man across the way was selling lovely, hand-wrought, ceramic figures of various sizes and shades, but, mostly, the same angel-inspired shape.  Even today he hadn't had much custom.  I wonder what had put folk off?  His work was clearly of good caliber.  Are folk not into buying an winged statue or Xmas tree ornament as a gift for someone?  I very much wanted to purchase an ornament, but was afraid I'd bang it up in my bag somehow during the market itself.  There's no place to hang your bag in the Xmas market huts and I could just see myself inadvertently crushing underfoot something both that I'd just spent a pretty penny on and was so very pretty itself.  As it turned out, the ceramic figure seller came over to my stall just before closing this evening and gifted me a very small (think: fit into the palm on one's hand) angel statue.  I was very touched by his gesture.

Engelchen

Bad boss

The anorexic, ex-ballerina from Poland quit today.  I had swung by work to ask some pesky questions regarding my pay and noticed that the stand next to ours was un-staffed.  There were pastry, truffle and some salad packaged up and ready to go, but who was selling it?  Ten minutes, how long I'd already been at work, seemed a long time for a pee/coffee/phone call break.  I went around to the cash register and saw a sign reading: Selbstbedienung!  There stood a wee pot next to the sign that I assumed would be for those honest enough to pay once they'd served themselves.

Knowing what I do about how over-worked and underpaid the dancer was I am certainly not surprised to not see her anymore.  B., the woman (also Polish) working the stand before her, was a devout Catholic with an engineering degree and a mathematics teaching credential.  She had been unsuccessful finding suitable employment back in Poland, so she'd come to Zurich to stay with her sister and try her luck here.  She managed to last ten days before seemingly abruptly quitting, leaving no forwarding address.  B. had worked ten ten-hour days, six days in a row before one day off, for which she had not yet been paid.  I often saw her praying while sitting behind the counter, holding her rosary beads in one hand.  The owners had promised her help in obtaining a 'B' permit in order for her to legally stay and work here in CH.  They were dragging their heels on said help while trying to convince her to sign a work contract entitling her to something like 800 CHF for a month of work, or something like that.  She balked, and, in the end, just bailed out sans paycheck.  Before she left she told me of possible work in her field of study up in Norway.  She intended to look into it, at any rate.  The last I heard B. was briefly back in Poland visiting family.

As I was leaving work I ran into a man who has been concerned about the ballerina's plight at the shop.  He'd urged her to file a complaint about her maltreatment by her employers.  She was more than reluctant to do so.  Taking them on without a fall-back plan did seem a bit like self-sabotage.  Without a new job to go to and very little social support around her she wasn't inclined to rock the boat, she'd told me.  I understood.  I told the man all these things to which he replied, 'well, someone has to do something!'  Well, yes, but who will?  The dancer was now out of the equation, and, hopefully, had found suitable replacement work somewhere less inhumane.  The question I now have is who will be coming in to replace her?  Will she also be a foreign national?  What sort of permit, if any, will she hold? 

German class

I was teaching basic German to students at San Francisco State University when I found out that my father had suddenly died.  The dreaded phone call came on a Saturday.  My class instruction was Tuesday/Thursday.  On Tuesday, I went to school.

I remember standing in front of the students and feeling out-of-sorts.  They were waiting for class to begin and I was waiting to compose myself before starting class.  I didn't know exactly what to say, but I felt I had to be honest.

Without too much preface, I told them that my father had died last week and that if I were a bit 'spaced out' during class today, then that would be the reason why and I, sort of, gave my apologies in advance for any possible upset during instruction.  Perhaps I had given them too much information (TMI!), but I felt I owed them a explanation for any strange behavior I may have then exhibited in class.

Actually, it would seem that through my sharing of what had occurred, I was temporarily released from the upset and could just get on with teaching.  Tuesdays and Thursdays became my 'grief free' days weekly.  I finished out the semester of teaching German 101 before dropping out of grad school.

Class was finished, my studies were over, and Dad was gone.

Douglas Allan Batz 7 Jan. 1940-19 Oct. 2002

75 going on 25...

When I first met M. she came off as gregarious, friendly, chatty and very self-assured.  I had come to her place of work to drop off my CV.

When I began working with her some few weeks later, I found her to be bossy, controlling and tiring to be around.

M. is 75 years young.  She wears thick, gold chains around her neck and heavy, low-hanging baubles in her ears.  She has a face full of make-up and a whiff of perfume on her person.  Normally, I wouldn't mind these things too much, but we are working with food not serving cheap cocktails to crusty custies at some ratty casino in Reno.  Moreover, I am not fond of perfumed folk behind a food counter.  Mmmm, a chunk of cheese and Chanel No. 5 pair well, don't they?

M. likes things the way she likes 'em and there's hardly room for discussion.  'Do it this way', she'll say.  'No.  That's wrong.  Do it like this.'  Then she'll slowly and with great effort expended on her part show me the 'right' way to {insert some mind-numbingly simple task here}.

The greatest problem about this scenario is that she isn't my boss.  She isn't anyone's boss, but rather the MOTHER of the boss.  When I tell her that I won't be doing it her way (usually because her way is bass-akwards and time-wasting or just plain tacky), and instead be doing the way the boss wants it done, then I'm challenged.  'But I'm telling you to do it this way!' she'll cry.  My response is what one would guess.  I tell her that I'm doing it the way the boss wants it to be done and the boss is the one that pays me.  That sort of talk is usually met with a foot stomp and an eye roll.

M. is really 75 going on 25 going on 15.