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Sept 30th - 2023
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
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The last week, a largely somber mood at work. Friday, slow, Saturday, busy.
There was a vintage car show in Nelson, all the streets and side streets filled with hot rods and roadsters, vintage cars, while some of them are nice the streets are too busy for my taste, and so get out of town. Pass the homeless - all on the move, 10 shopping carts filled with possessions, displaced because the town didn't want the black eye of homeless encampments to tarnish the auto show.
We're beginning to look a bit like Spokane. And not in a good way.
To work early, SR is showing the property, this fatality, it's spurred them to want to get out of there even more, if possible. The basement, he's explaining, is off limits, he can't explain why, sealed off by the Coroner until the next of kin are notified, can claim his possessions.
JR, doing as little as possible, busy with the winter ferry schedule, unprepared travelers, and people coming and going from the car show in town.
Crows gather in front of the basement door. They're drawn in by the smell, hopping up to the stairs in the shadows, the bodies gone but they don't know that,...
You can tell the motor enthusiasts, they're trying to order the fancy cocktails, margaritas, martinis...
Sunday, JR is trying to get out, circumstances don't permit. It's half busy, busier than one waiter, not busy enough for two, and he's annoyed every time he has to pick up a table.
Then, in the kitchen, Mister Tickles, on his own, crashes and burns. Soon everyone is in there helping him, SR, JR, his mother.
A customer, older fellow, pays, tips well, and tips me again: "Pay for a haircut...I'm a barber!!!".
I didn't think I was fooling anyone, but I have to laugh at his frankness...
***
Monday, Thursday, I'm on my own. Doubles, open, close, this is to be my schedule for the foreseeable future. Having burned C**** and killed S*** it's me and Mister Tickles, 50, 60 hours a week. No fucking way. No fucking way. An hour commute to the restaurant, with construction, half an hour back.
They've moved the goal posts, removed the carrot from the stick, and this Donkey will be giving his notice. I need a goal, I need my own life back, these people, they are demons....
Monday - slow and steady all day. $3,000 at the end of it, never too busy, just a slow steady stream of customers. The easiest shift of the summer, made so largely by the absence of "help". Meaning T*** and L**** and JR.
Mister Tickles is crashing and burning in the kitchen the entire time. He's hysterical, he can't keep up, can't do it, he's in tears, yelling, all the customers can hear, I just smile and pretend nothing's going on. Mister Tickles, he's not used to doing this on his own, he's not S***, hasn't the skills. I stagger my orders, wait until he's cooked an order for two before I put the next order for two in, but he's not managing, not even fucking coping. He won't survive the next week or two, my notice will be a formality; there's no way they can stay open with Tickles in the kitchen on his own, it will kill him...
September 30th and I'm out. I can already hear the mock distress, appeals to my loyalty, the "we didn't know you wanted a life" and "I told you every time you asked me...", the "Why", the slow, careful explanation that I'm not a donkey, that I can talk and walk on two legs and dress in clothes should have been a clue, that it's September and I should be relaxing, business drops off, and instead they keep piling on the hay, there was no straw that broke this donkey's back, rather a dozen bales thrown carelessly on...
September, I've brought my own goalposts and let that fucking shithole crash and burn. Their problems are their problems, I have plenty enough on my own...
Psycho-Pictography - Vernon Howard
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
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Started in on Stanley "Out of Darkest Africa", a heavy, thick Volume that is largely concerned with the various English Military campaigns in the Soudan and the Belgian Campaigns in the Congo.
Imperialism at it's finest. But not a book I can carry around, and so I set it aside in favor of this other book I picked up in Creston, which is proving surprisingly good reading and parallels a lot of other "New Thought" or "New Age" books I've come across...
Plus the cover is a hoot:
Maybe...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
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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.
Shhhhh...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Conversations
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Yesterday, writing, catching up on a lot of sidetracked projects. When the librarian begins to speak, loudly, to customers, on the phone...
At the library...
And I want to tell her "Shhhh", I'm in flow, things are getting done and she's ruining it...
She's the librarian. I can't. And so I abandon projects.
And today, now, again, at the library, writing up the events of earlier in the day, and there's another wing nut yelling and threatening a bylaw officer for impounding her dog, a Salmo crackhead, loudly, showing how focused and in control she is, telling the bylaw officer the law (she knows, she's from Salmo), how he's breaking the law, and - yet again I'm dying to yell "Shhhhh" but it's become very apparent that there are no more Sacred Places...
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