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The Job
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 985
It goes without saying that I've never worked anyplace so fancy as this.
The manager introduces himself, French, a proper Sommelier, young, perhaps early 30's, the other staff range in age from early 20's to what I might guess at as late 60's or 70's. I'm paired with a girl working a private party - 25 people.
And I'm schooled. Here, what with the 120 page wine list you don't open the wine. Take the order, let the Sommelier know. They will take care of it.
Absolutely no modifications to food orders without Chef's permission.
You don't touch the food. There's expeditors for that.
You don't make drinks - the bartenders do that.
And I could go on.
Suffice it to say, I'm in over my head - there's more "standing around" and being available than there is actual serving.
The table - they spend approximately $6000, with an automatic gratuity of 15%. For 2 servers - not bad - but - I don't count as a server, I'm on "Observation", unpaid apprenticeship as it were. And even for 1 server - well, factor in the abundant support - Bartenders, Hostess, Bussers, Expeditors, Sommeliers - you get it.
Wait and see.
At the end of the night I'm offered the job. I don't even know what the job is - merely get told precisely what i have to do and do it. This will quite possibly the longest apprenticeship I've ever had in a restaurant. Worth it? I don't yet know. Fingers crossed. But - one down, now to deal with housing and wheels.
And - worse come to worse I can always throw on my resume that I got a job offer from ... - which alone should be worth it's weight in gold.
Housing
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 946
This is ridiculous. The artificial scarcity of housing.
Imagine you threw a party, invited say 70 guests. And you order 70 slices of pizza - 1 slice per guest.
Except the first 10 guests, they each grab 5 or 10 slices each and hold on to them.
And now - now - they are trying to persuade the rest of the guests that there's a shortage of Pizza, no mention that their greedy little paws have manufactured the scarcity, never mind that some of them found they couldn't eat all the pizza they grabbed and threw it away, no - if you want a piece of Pizza now you have to pay top dollar. More than top dollar.
It's Cronus devouring his children.
We need to consider property in a new light.
First of all - there is no "ownership" of property - merely stewardship.
Ownership is an archaic idea. Property is not a right - like so many things it's a privilege - and expectations and references should be required.
Property is an archaic idea. We need to consider new models. That we are appointed stewards - can purchase stewardships - based upon our community involvement - not money - and our stewardship should be regularly reviewed. No run-down or vacant properties, no Crack-Houses, no - all of it.
It should be illegal to profit on the ownership of property. It's not a commodity - although we have made it one.
And - owning property should not be an in on political office - it should count against it. You need to be removed from the system to objectively rule upon it.
There will be no change to the current system until we demand that those shaping it have no stake in preserving it.
At the moment - the criminals are both the judges and jury.
Boundary Issues
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
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This was a question at a job interview. "What's your worst quality (presumably at work)...". I had no ready answer. Away from work - well - how long do you have?
At work. This just occurred to me - I have no patience for fools - it's exhausted on the customers, don't make me use it up with staff.
And the second - and this is probably true of anyone in service, whether it be restaurants or retail, and a great number of Chef's have it as well.
I have serious boundary issues.
I need to tell more people to fuck off.
I've been - too long, too often - too patient - and far too hands off.
That is all.
The Vancouver Art Museum
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Other
- Hits: 919
Tuesday nights, used to be free, now a mandatory $5.00 donation.
So I peruse the art exhibits, some more inspiring than others. The "Yoko Ono" bit I skim briefly, it has no interest to me whatsoever.
But various other of the exhibitions do. I found Jan Wade's "Soul Power" intriguing - mixed media, an abundance of scrabble tiles, buttons, other found objects, a good lot of my own ideas, better realized, and I understand that I'm my own worse critic. I'm a fan of mixed media - and this is good - but I'm pretty sure I could come up with something as good...
Certainly I've accumulated all of the supplies, and now I'm kicking myself that they're all sitting unused in lockers scattered across Western Canada...
Emily Carr - meh, I like but I've seen her stuff at the Glenbow, in Toronto. And to see it here is fitting - but I've seen enough.
And the pottery of Edith Heath was good -- but - goddamn, someone turn over a couple of pieces so I can see her mark, look for this in thrift shops - I'm pretty sure I could turn a bit of it up...
Other randoms:
The above blue tie-died fabric swathes interested me - namely because I attended a workshop at Oxygen Gallery in Nelson a couple of years ago where I'm pretty sure we did something similar...
Anyways - what I got out of it all - is that the contemporary vision of "Art" no longer seems to compass talent or ability - nice to have, not required - a good many of the paintings I saw were more about the "idea", or conceptualization, and less about the realization of said idea...
Which - I have to say, suits me just fine. There's never been a better time for me to enter the Art World...
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