Watching Kiwis Drink

There was an ad in the weekend employment section of The Press back in November of last year looking for a resident funny person to work in a bar. I sent off a funny (haha) email, detailing my complete lack of skills, disdain for soccer, and love of New Zealand beer. I guess it turned out to be a fairly effective cover letter, because three months later, I started working at the bar.

My first shift was 27 February (Kiwis do the date backwards like that for the Americans reading this), which, for those scoring at home, was two days after Fat Tuesday, or one day after Ash Wednesday, or one day into John the Robert's forty day exercise as a teetotaler. I wasn't going to drink a single drop until Easter, and, with a few very minor exceptions (I had a beer at the Who concert, I sampled my first homemade beer once it was ready, and I took one for the team and had a glass of wine [Marlborough Savignon Blanc - hints of cut grass and citrus] with my mother-in-law on her birthday - all worthy exceptions in my version of Lent) I have been on the wagon.

What better time to start working happy hours at a local in Papanui? I don't generally hang out with drunks unless I'm drunk myself, at which point I'm not really hanging out with drunks, I'm just hanging out. And getting drunk. With other people.

So I thought this would work out really well. I would pour beers for three or four hours every Thursday and Friday and it wouldn't bother me a bit because I wasn't drinking anyway. I would calmly sip on some ice water or maybe even some lemonade (what Americans call "Sprite" is called "lemonade" here). And for the first few weeks, it really didn't bother me. I was actually starting to have a pretty good time, with a few exceptions . . .

DIGRESSION: Every country, or maybe even every city or neighborhood, has its own drinking customs, and apparently most people here in Christchurch, or at least the ones that go to my bar (not that it's mine, but you know what I mean - the bar I'm working for) think that

1. local drinking customs are obvious
2. anyone who deviates from local drinking customs is a retard
3. a barman with an American accent who serves a drink with a straw is gay

This bar has a pretty happening happy hour. Something about $3 wine and tap beer helps. 95% of what we sell is beer and wine, so there isn't much I can do to fuck up. Make sure the glass is reasonably cold, or at least not hot, leave 1 cm of head in case of beer or fill the wine glass to the letters (the name of the bar is printed on the wine glasses). But for that 5% that wants a Rum and Coke or a Gin and Tonic, GOD HELP YOU.

Where I come from, you order a gin and tonic, and the bartender makes you a gin and tonic. Period. The customer might request a slice of lime instead of lemon, but basically you defer to the bartender's skill and hope for the best. Here, whatever I do is met with scorn. I pick up a short glass, and I get yelled at to put in a tall glass. I pick up a tall glass, and get a little chuckle as the customer looks at me like I'm Rain Man and says, "it usually comes in a shooooort glaaaaass." I put ice in the glass, and the bank lady (invariably it's bank ladies that order gin and tonics) says it's too much ice. No ice in the glass and she wants more ice. Would you like lemon? "Of course I want lemon!" Would you like lemon? "Hello no! Give me lime!" I start stirring the drink with a little straw. Would you like the straw? "Yeah - and you can give it to me with a facking umbrella - why don't you put a bloody cherry in it as well ya fackin' Yank and put the straw in this beer mug" (this last bit was actually bank lady's boyfriend). I think he was being sarcastic. Anyway, lesson learned. Use a straw to stir the drink behind the bar and toss the straw before serving it. Ask if customer wants a tall or short glass, or even better, hold up one of each. Do not criticize customer for ordering RTDs, even though it has got to be the dumbest thing in the world to order a ready made Bourbon and Coke in a bottle while you are in a fucking bar talking to a bartender whose job is to mix drinks! (END OF DIGRESSION)

95% of the customers, especially the regulars, have been really cool, although our conversation rarely gets past a variation of "How ya doing/how ya goin." But it really doesn't take much to make me like people. Just a simple smile and a "how's it" while I pour the beer puts me on their side. Some people, sometimes fortunately and sometimes not, do feel the need to have a chat.

In the latter category was a female regular who somehow found it necessary to share that her ultimate sexual fantasy involved dressing her boyfriend up in Klu Klux Klan robes. She asked if there was a Klan supply store in my hometown. I told her I didn't know. Her boyfriend was standing right next to her, wearing Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse sponsored Nascar gear, and smiling from ear to ear as she detailed what she would do with a white pointy hat.

As for the theory that working in a bar during a period of enforced dryness would be easy, it hasn't exactly worked out. I haven't actually tried the beer at the bar yet (they serve their own boutique brews), but it sure as hell looks good, and truth be told I can't wait to try it. I have never wanted a beer more in my life than the second I clock off and walk out of that bar. Every molecule in my body wants to change shirts and walk right back inside and order an ice cold lager, nicely, with a big smile and a "how's it going." I wouldn't even blink if I got a straw.

But I haven't yet broken down yet. Maybe that's because we've moved Fish and Chips night from Sunday to Friday. Once happy hour is over, I drive to the best fish and chippy in town, pick up my order, go home, and completely forget that beer even exists.

The Last Day on the Job

As the economic clusterfuck of unemployment, falling property values, crashing interest rates, doom and gloom, and labour market "liquidity" (the economy is soup and our jobs are chickpeas that have been boiled too long) all intersect to create this most global of recessions, it seems a good time to ruminate on perhaps one of the clearest markers of change in life - The Last Day on the Job. Appropriately enough, I write this while at "work" on the "last day" of the "job" I have been doing for that past eight months.

Yes, I too am a victim of the financial shitstorm. Now I don't really believe that for a second, but I am sure as hell going to spin in that way on my resume! I've been a temping at the phone company, New Zealand's largest employer, for about 7-8 months, and had pretty much no chance of getting a permanent job (reasons forthcoming in a separate post which will summarize a cultural and linguistic, uh, misunderstanding). A couple of weeks ago, my team had a deep and meaningful meeting with our boss, the boss's boss, and the boss's boss's boss. One could cut a doughnut out of the anticipation in the air (just like Shaggy and Scooby Doo did with fog) as we (or at least I) had never before spoken to the boss cubed (boss to the third power? grandmother boss? or should it be great-grandmother boss?) In what was honestly a professional although slightly condescending presentation, the boss (to the first power) told us that the outsourcing project to the Philippines is ongoing and our team is likely to be moved. Boss #3 reminded us of our "ownership" over our own careers, and calmly suggested that right about now is the time to investigate one's options. So I did, or continued to do so; I hadn't stopped looking for a job ever since landing in New Zealand 8 months ago. But instead of applying for jobs I had no hope in hell of getting (drama teacher at prestigious girls' college, travelling Lotto salesman, plant operator at orange juice factory, life skills tutor in a freaking PRISON), I started to take things more seriously and applied for jobs I was actually qualified to do, which in my case are teaching English and fronting a rock and roll band without hair.

I start teaching tomorrow.

By my calculations, today marks the 15th time I've had a last day on the job. Of the 15, I only remember five, and that includes today. And yes, they are the last four jobs I've had, plus one I had during my teenage years at the British Market, a wee store in the Rice University Village (cozy outdoor mall type area in Houston) where I worked with partner in crime and BFF Ashley (who, despite being someone's BFF and being named Ashley, is a dude). This last day on the job was memorable only for its "going out in a blaze of glory" denoument - as a rather fat woman nervously fired Ashley and I for confusing shifts and leaving the store unattended the previous Sunday, I told her to "suck my ass" as we left the back room. Suffice it to say that burning bridges wasn't something I was all too worried about in those days.

My last day at Jishukan School (two years of my professional life wasted on spoiled rich Japanese kids) was typically anti-climactic, but I do vividly remember the chairman of the English department, a Mr. Suzuki (nicknamed Lizard King because of his resemblance to Jim Morrison) coming over to me and apologizing for how bad the third year students had been. It was the first time he had spoken to me in months. Lizard King, like most of the teachers at Jishukan, avoided Mike (the other white man at the school) and I like the plague. I'll never forget saying, "Happy New Year," only to have the Lizard stare back at me to respond, "It's too late." This was on my first day back at school after the New Year holiday, on January 12.

The longest job I ever had, a six year stint at a language school in Japan, ended sometime in March 2006, but I have no recollection of the last day at all. My in-laws were visiting at the time, and I all I can remember is the excitement of starting the new job at Jishukan (I hadn't met the Lizard yet). I was a history teacher for two years back in Houston, but don't even remember the last semester, much less the last day. I worked in my university's writing lab for three years or so, and I don't work there currently, so clearly there was a last day, but I'll be damned if I can remember any of it, and likewise with the job at the pizza parlour, the art gallery, the library, and the office supply deliveries.

Moral of the story? The last day of the job is textbook positive psychology. We don't remember the last day on the job because the last day on the job is the really the first day of whatever comes next. Our memories of the last day are intrinsically intertwined with what came next, even if the "next" was a period of unemployed, self loathing, self-medicated promiscuity (or at least attempted promiscuity). So ask me a year from now, and I won't remember a thing about my last day at the phone company.

Unless I tell the lady in the next cubicle to suck my ass.