I’ve had a few people tell me they’ve had a bad day recently and I empathise entirely! I’ve also had a few in my time but perspective is everything, which is why I think I have a pretty positive outlook regardless.
As the new person at work, I have been sharing a few stories and it turns out that I might not have the most conventional of working histories, so here’s one of them and I survived it!
“Very nearly the worst day of my working life”
DISCLAIMER - It is entirely true and informs almost everything about my work, my love for what I do, my joy for life and lack thereof at times!
In 2011 – I was lucky enough, at the ripe old age of 25 [sic] to open my first restaurant / pub as a General Manager. A turn of events that I was at the time entirely unprepared for but I worked hard and made a success of it but ultimately burned out… it’s a cautionary tale” if you will
Regardless of the difficulties, intensity or the eventual burnout I made something of that restaurant and it took real fortitude to run at times.
When we opened in August 2011; the decision was made that we would close over the Christmas Period, as this particular part of SW London is a ghost town at that time of the year. The twenty and thirty somethings who inhabited the area, opting to return to their families in the home-counties instead of slumming it around Clapham and enjoy the free wine of Mum and Dad!
However; in his infinite wisdom, my Ops Manager decides we should open and because my word was the only thing of worth I had at that time, I decided that my Deputy Manger would have the Christmas Eve and Day off and I would cover those shifts. I made him a promise he wouldn’t have to work back in August. He deserved it and to this day I think he may have been one of my best assistant managers.
Fast forward to Xmas Day; we make close to zero profit that day as I have to pay the staff double and pay for their cabs to and from work but we do it anyway.
We have 40 covers on a Christmas Menu and serve another 2 walk-ins, two old boys who elect to sit and eat at the bar. The shift goes without incident, the tables eat and leave and the old boys at the bar knock back a few Guinness and 2 bottles of red wine with their dinner.
I call last orders at 4ish as all my tables have finished and paid, just the two old boys at the bar debating another bottle or a pint. I kindly but firmly, make it clear that we are done serving but I let them have one more for the road; having sent the team home already.
Seemingly happy – I take their payments; they enjoy their last pints. One chap heads outside and the other heads to relieve himself before walking home. I leave the till and cash-up for Boxing Day morning in the safe and deicide to lockup and head home.
Final sweep of the business; check the doors, turn off the extract, lock all the doors, kill the lights, check the Ladies toilets and check the Gents toilets. The Gents has two sets of doors, I push through the exterior door to find that the 2nd gentleman has redecorated the interior door with a beautiful mix of Guinness, red wine, turkey, pigs in blanket and several other unrecognisable fragments from his recently ingested meal.
Therefore at 5pm on Christmas Day I am clearing up the most gopping mix of bile, vino and poultry the world has seen, not wanting to leave it as the worst surprise in history on Boxing Day for my Deputy Manager.
I dutifully scoop, sanitise and mop the offending melange and congratulate myself on a job well done, I step through the threshold on the interior door to turn off the lights and see a toilet door sitting at a funny angle and further investigation is worryingly required.
I step around the dislodged cubicle door to find what the 2nd gentleman had left for his encore performance. He had clearly taken a shit in his own hand and proceeded to smear his own excrement into the wall and with what I hope was the same hand, then outlined in his own faeces,
“FUCK U”
I guess he really wasn’t happy with the idea of last orders…
If ever your day feels bad, if ever you think the world might be against you, if ever it doesn’t feel like it’s not quite going right, know this truth.
On Christmas Day 2011 – at 6:30pm whilst my girlfriend enjoyed a ski holiday with her parents, my family were enjoying their own festivities and everyone else was tucking into the family tin of celebrations. I was squeegeeing human shit off a pub wall with a pair of marigolds and a tea towel for a face mask.
Anything, after that will seem alright….
Happy New Year
I hope this made you laugh, because it gets me every time.
This is also why I’m not allowed to tell stories at dinner parties without running them past my wife…
Love
Goose
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