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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: People

Published: 08 September 2023

Hits: 634

And so, by last night the verdict from the Coroner, that it appeared to be "drug related". 

And the Mother in Law confirms that when her brother went to pick up his meds he found S*** behaving strangely, and found himself 15 or 20 Morphine pills short.

Thus the end of summer, and people are quite literally dying to get out of there.

Whether it was intentional or not we'll probably never know. It was, however, very preventable. That workplace is toxic as fuck.

***

C**** is texting me. She's done. Going in today to collect herself and get the fuck out of dodge. She's still aghast that they were trying to open while S*** lay dead in the basement. Don't blame her. It's time. It's overdue. All this circus so that JR can lead his best life, take summers off and collect EI all winter. Who does that leave standing? JR and Me, until the Thanksgiving Long, to run the front of the house. No nonsense about "staying open all winter" this year. Unless, of course, JR wants to commit to it, but he's on his own. In the kitchen, JR's mother and Mister Tickles. There's no word as to how the high school girls are handling this, or even if they've been told.

***

So, at the library now, a quiet moment, and waiting on the text that tells me to come into work early, C**** has quit, and it's time now they start to figure shit out.

Details

Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: People

Published: 07 September 2023

Hits: 730

Back to work this morning, the boon of the unexpected 3 days off is over, and - well, I'm figuring 5 weeks left, let's get it over with.

But I'm not happy. 

Arriving early, there was rain earlier in the week, intending to search for arrowheads.

SR is outside the basement, on the phone, he's earnestly talking to someone...

As I get out of my car he tells me - "S*** killed himself!!! I just found him in the basement...".

S*** was the head chef, he lived in the basement. And SR describes how he found him, on the couch, slouched over, black, the stench...

So, no suggestion he killed himself, rather an expression of SR's annoyance that he won't be coming to work. From the sounds of things this probably happened after work Sunday. I wasn't there.

Now they're looking for Mister Tickles, the other Chef, doing a "wellness" check and wanting to ask if he wants to work today in S***'s place. Of course they would.

After a spell the ambulance shows up, they confirm he's deceased, minimum 24 hours, now it's time for the RCMP, then the coroner....

SR's wife, in shock, C**** is horrified, JR is in shock and crying. It's a gong show. SR and his wife, they want to stay open, "Life goes on...".

I'm doubting that's going to happen. Eventually Mister Tickles shows up, he's a little calmer about it all than they are, he knows damn well they want him to work, nothing stops them, they're demons...

***

It starts to come together a bit. S***, native, without family, had worked 14 hours Sunday. A big guy, he was exhausted. Dead exhausted. And the Mother in Law, she's worried - she gave him a package to hold for her brother, his meds, morphine. So maybe that was it? She blames herself.

Maybe. S**** liked to party, and his "girlfriend" was also his dealer, talking to him once he mentioned she stopped dealing when her best friend OD'd. A bad batch.

And occasionally she was seen 'round his place. So maybe he didn't stop using, maybe tried to curb his exhaustion... 

Maybe, maybe, maybe. Or maybe it was just they worked him to death. That place would do it to you. It was a busy day, by all accounts.

***

Talk to another Kitchen worker, A****, who confirmed she'd last received a text from him Sunday night, by Monday morning he wasn't answering.

***

I'd often joked the place was built over an Indian Burial Ground, and now - now it is. Let alone the winding up of the chefs at the beginning of the season, when I told them about the OD's in the staff housing...and I want to ask, if only to cast levity on the situation, if they found any sign of Curtis down in the basement, that chef who went missing under mysterious circumstances in May...but it's too soon. S*** would have laughed.

***

Enough is enough and I want the season to be over. C*** won't make it, will probably quit within the week, the kitchen girls, high school students, they're not going to take it well, we're wasting time until the season is over, the season, this season, the longest one ever, and every one wants it done. 

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: People

Published: 29 August 2023

Hits: 692

This morning, a review calling me "Salty". 

Which is true, last night, working with T***, who has the same abilities as the Mother in Law, only a lot prettier and infinitely more charming.

The owners had put their heads together and told me to just work until close and call T*** off for the night, and I reminded them that we've been busy the last few weeks, being the only show open and all, and that if it proved slow I'd send her.

It didn't prove slow, it would have been reasonably busy for 2 people. Only one comes in and does more damage than good, standing talking to one table while I seat three tables, expedite food for two, then bus two of her tables, then watch her run over to the ones I just sat and grab orders, making them effectively "hers". Her next visit will be at the till to chat them up while they pay the bill and tip.

She pours 6 glasses of foam then leaves them on the bar, complaining the beer won't work. I pour her beer. She complains of the fruit flies, as if she can't see them and pluck them out with a straw, the doors here, always open, it would be impossible to keep them all out.

I've become too much the donkey. The idiocy of dumping it all on me, or pairing me with T***, who will be a great waitress when we stop having tables...

So anyways, yeah, I'm a bit salty...

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: People

Published: 28 August 2023

Hits: 721

 She's been here for 8 weeks to help us through the summer rush, a big mess of a woman with facial piercings, matted dreadlocks, tits pushed up through a bad hippy dress. She's a server, but to say she's a server does an injustice to the profession, if you sat in her section and had 3 courses, 4 rounds of drinks when you got up to leave every glass you touched, every plate, utensil and dirty napkin would still be on the table in front of you. She's fundamentally unable to run the glass washer, fill the ice well or refill waters, bus her own tables, every little thing, and so her help has become a little like carrying a 200 lb gorilla through the shift that takes an order then scoops the tips off the table and does nothing else. 

Sloppy, sloppy. Or, as you might more gently say "Kootenay Style". 

Anyways, she's tired of being here, the summers been long, she wants to get back to her life in Cranbrook. We all do, and her complaints that she's just there to make her son-in-law's life easier - well, that's what we're all here for. And we're all presumed upon and I'm getting a little tired of listening to complaints from someone who's getting days off left-right-and center; bloody hell just shut up and lets get on with it, there's a mere week, 10 days to go...

***

She'd suggested a few added benefits might keep her around, I was pretty clear that that wasn't an option. Doesn't stop her from trying. And - kindly, I can't say that I'm never that drunk so I just make up some stuff about workplace rules and professionalism and leave it at that.

***

Saturday morning, the night shift, I'm up and at-em, grab my coffee, gonna hit a few garage sales, check the thrift shops, I need a lamp, loveseat, bed, chair...the list is still far too long...but in the few hours before work I'm gonna get something...

Or not. 9:30 and my phone is ringing, I answer, and it's her, she's crying, family emergency, crisis, I have to get to work ASAP, she can't work, and I'm seeing red, I pull over, this *&#@!! of a woman, everyone, JR and his 10 family days off to go see the juggling squirrel in Revelstoke and 3 day work week, C* and her 5 day week-ends to visit her 95 year old dying mother who - predictably, is still alive, though I offered to go and finish her off myself, and now this, it's presumptive that my meagre life is subordinate to hers, free accommodations, all she can drink, nearly always drunk, ready access to a dive bar and all the bikers she can bring home, and I'm to give up my time, my life, so that she can "manage" the dumpster fire that's hers?

Livid, I'm screaming into the phone "Fuck You", it's gotten personal this presumptiveness, that since I don't have a life all summer long I don't mind giving up a bit more of it to her and this, fuck this. Fuck this.

Mentally I'm doing the math - she has 9 children. 1 of them has a job, the rest of them - to varying degrees, are wards of the state, 2 with full time caregivers, her life - best life, a dumpster fire of drunkeness, stray bikers, unreared children, is costing us the taxpayers to the tune of a million dollars or more per year. 

She's a living, walking, talking argument for eugenics.

***

I go to work, she's not there, and the place - it's soon enough pandemonium, filled with tables, inside and out, only me and JR - the heydays of summer, and I'm regretting he didn't have the pleasure of working with his Mother in Law in this insanity...

***

Sunday it's the opposite. the taps - on, now suddenly off, and a restaurant that would have been short staffed with 5 servers the day before is now overstaffed with one. 

...and now to today...