The hostess with the mostess (income)

Jobs!  I have many.  Hostessing is one of them.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I once showed up to a hostessing job only to find out on arrival that I would be serving light snacks and champagne to a group of European businessmen.  Oh whoops, I forgot to mention the fact of four-inch heels on the second story of a moving, vintage double-decker bus (thankfully not open-topped).

A little bit like this, I think.

That was exciting!  The thing about walking -- and let's just forget about the shoes and the service for a minute -- on a moving double-decker bus is that you cannot do it and NOT fall over UNLESS you are holding onto a pole or railing at all times.  Now, for fun, let's add those other factors back in!  Shoes just tall enough to make standing up straight contingent on a sideways bend of the neck; one hand holding a rail for stability: that leaves one hand free to hold a tray of snacks, a bottle of champagne, empty glasses, or anything else that an amused European businessman might try to hand you as you stumble past.  And stumble we did.  Luckily there were only two of us, but passing in the aisle was no easy feat.  London traffic meant that the bus jerked to a halt approximately every seven seconds, causing heroic and undoubtedly amusing lunges, grabs, and near-businessmen-lap-tumbles for stability. Miraculously, neither a drop of drink nor a single nut hit the ground on our account.

This was certainly my most ridiculous hostessing shift to date, but it was exemplary of the general experience in one way: I didn't have to do much, and I got paid stupidly well.  In that particular instance, we were booked for four hours, but only actually worked for about 40 minutes.  We got paid for four hours (standard minimum for agency work).

This is what does my head in about the hospitality industry.  The people who work the hardest get paid the least.  When I am bartending, wine-waiting, or serving food, I am generally running my ass off and taking way more crap from customers than I do as a hostess.  I have to think on my feet, problem-solve, lift heavy things, not spill red wine on fancy customers, and smile through it all.  For all of this work, I get paid a fraction of what I do to tease up my hair, wear some flattering makeup and maybe a dress, and smile at customers.  Same smile!  Same face!  Less pay.  The kitchen porters who are elbow-deep in greasy water get paid even less than my waitress self does.

Of course, the perversion of it all is that I enjoy the grunt work more.  I would so much rather run my ass off than stand around in heels, I just want to be paid the same.

Mad Crushin'

Jay Smooth, Internet Boyfriend.




Social consciousness is so sexy.

Let's knit some shit

Is the name of my new Saturday morning CBeebies show!

Or it should be.

Can I confess that I sometimes watch I Can Cook on CBeebies -- a channel, according to Wikipedia, aimed at children under 6 -- because I find it inspiring to watch small children crack eggs and learn what effect bicarbonate has on their baked goods?  Also, watching children's television is an excellent means of procrastination, which brings me back to my original point.

I have this bad habit of abandoning projects, not finishing what I start, getting distracted by new and more exciting ventures (or adorable 3-year olds in aprons), et cetera.  I do this with my writing and acting pursuits, though I've improved dramatically in the past couple of years at kicking myself into gear and making things happen.  On certain days (today, for example), I take my avoidance to the next level by refusing to clean my room, shower, go for a run, get dressed, and all of the other general practices of human beings that I was planning for myself.  I worked 15 hours yesterday.  I deserve a day of lazing.

Lucky for me, I found an ironic tactic for ignoring all of my other obligations/goals for the day: my backlog of knitting projects!

Yarn!

My knitting habits (or lack thereof) are certainly a shining example of my love of starting what I may never finish.  This problem was only exacerbated by my brief stint as a full-time employee of a fabric store in Glasgow.  I worked in the haberdashery and eventually took over the ordering of stock in the wool/haberdashery department, which basically meant that I had license to bring in whatever yarn I thought I -- ahem, I mean the customers -- would enjoy most.  My motives were thinly-veiled.  My employee discount was put to frequent use.

So now I have a bad full of wool!  More than one bag, if I'm being honest.  I have several lovely pattern books, amazing intentions involving cardigans and cabling, and one mostly-finished, but never-assembled bolero.  I have a back, two front panels, cap sleeves, and a trim, but I just can't seem to get around to putting it all together.

I also have lots of fat quarters of quilting cotton and an extremely well-traveled but idle sewing machine.  Working in a fabric store made me fancy myself something of a seamstress, but now that I've bothered to transport the aforementioned machine across a continent and an ocean, I seem to have lost interest.

My mother, clearly an enabler in my craft hoarding, recently mailed me a box of yarn that she wasn't using.

Thanks, Mom.  Thanks a lot.

So, new goal for today: get knitting.  Much better than my plan to clean out my closet, which is how I was accosted by my offending stash in the first place.  

But first I am going to get off my ass and go for a run.  I swear.  Or maybe just knit one more row of this hideous scarf... 

This post has been brought to you by Procrastination.

I might be a bad feminist.

Just try to stop me from drinking rosé in bed and blogging after a 15-hour hospitality shift.  I dare you.

I've decided that in order to make myself feel less shit about working terrible jobs only to toe the poverty line whilst indulging in my vague artistic pursuits, I should probably try to turn my experiences into witty anecdotes.  I almost just wrote 'antidotes' by accident, but I think that would also capture the sentiment.

Did I mention 15-hour shift?  And rosé?  Delirium is forgivable -- and expected -- at this point.

One of the funny jobs I do here in London is to prepare and serve tea and coffee to businesspeople (Is that really one word? Spell check is not questioning my decision.) in their fancy office buildings.  I don't know if this job exists in America.  In England, though, they employ people (like me) to hang out in a kitchen, brew a million pots of coffee, fill tea boxes and sugar bowls, and set up cups, saucers and teaspoons in meeting rooms for ever-thirsty corporate types who casually throw around offers of £10 million, because who doesn't have that kind of pocket change?

So that's one of the things I do.  Sometimes I also wear high heels and serve champagne on the second level of a double-decker bus, but that's a story for another day.

In the midst of maybe hour 6 or 9 today -- it's hard to pinpoint -- I suddenly had this funny realisation about my status as a corporate hospitality assistant and a lady in an office of mostly unmarried (or divorced), financially successful, middle-aged men.  I walk a status tightrope strung between sex and class.  Example:

When I arrive at a door with a trolley full of tea and coffee paraphernalia, and a businessman approaches the door from the other side, there's always this awkward moment of deciding who should hold the door for whom.  As the lowly employee, I should probably do the brunt of any labour (including door-holding), but these gents see me -- a lady -- and say 'After you,' or 'Ladies first.'

And do you know what?  I go for it.  Because I have a shit job, and I probably make as much in a day as they do in seven minutes, so if they want to hold doors or elevators or dirty cups for me, I'll take it.  So there you have it, in the small battles of the greater class war, being a lady wins.  I win.  I can get away with saying 'Hiya' instead of 'Good evening, Sir,' because I smile.  My thin veneer cheerfulness is invincible because it's endearing.  If I were a dude, they'd probably all see right through me and complain about my attitude, but I'm not, so I get away with it.

That is enough delirious musing for one night.  I hope never to work from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. again.  Even if I did wink and flirt my way through it.

Your name is "N"?

I can't believe I haven't written about this before.

So I have a pretty simple name: Anne.  Yes, it's with an "e", and I like it spelled that way (just like my namesake, Anne of Green Gables), but pronunciation-wise, it's straight-forward.

Or so I THOUGHT.

When I moved to Ireland two and a half years ago, I learned otherwise.

There's something about the way an American pronounces the "A" in Anne that just throws people for a loop over here.  I think it must be extra nasal-sounding, but whatever it is, two times out of three, an introduction on my part ends with the other person saying, "N?"  At best.  The alternative is, "Sorry, what?"

I've tried to correct for the problem by opening my mouth really wide and putting lots of breath behind my name the first time I tell it to someone.  The outcome seems to be looking foolish on top of people not knowing what I'm saying.

This might not sound like a drastic problem -- because it's not -- but it is exhausting.  I've taken to saying "My name is Anne," pausing for a moment as the look of perplexity arises, then, "A double n e" (because they say things like "double n" over here).  This helps about fifty percent of the time.

I was recently at a symposium where I bought a book by one of the speakers and asked him to sign it.  I said, then spelled my name for him.  I repeated it when he didn't understand, then spelled it out slowly.  He wrote A... m... m... i... e... and said, "Is that right?"

"No," I said, "A, n..."

"M?"

"No, n.  N for Nancy."

"Oh, Nancy."

"No, Anne.  A, n, n, e."

I ended up with "Best Wishes, A[scribbled mess]."  He apologised.

An Irish police officer once did the same thing when I gave him a credit card I had found on the ground. He asked for my name and number for his records.  When I said/spelled my first name, he ended up with "Nan," which is both another words for "grandma" over here, and my actually grandmother's name.  I had to write it down for him.

It happened again tonight, but I have a new tactic.  As soon as the bewilderment shoots across their eyes, I turn to the person standing next to me (if there is a person I know already around) and say, "You say it."

"Anne."

"Oh, Anne! I thought you said 'N.'"

Why are bad films so good on long flights?

Before making my recent 11-day pilgrimage* home, I was reminded of an airplane-travel phenomenon by my good friend Molly Knefel.  She and her awesome (now-not-then-recently-arrested-for-documenting-the-occupy-movement) brother, John, were on an episode of the podcast Ear Candy earlier this year, and shortly after hilariously discussing of the 'branding' of John and Molly†, the subject of romcoms was raised.

The Knefs on the 'cast.

One of the hosts mentioned having seen some terrible Sandra Bullock film on the plane, thereby exonerating himself of all responsibility in the viewing, a tactic that I have employed many-a-time.  Molly followed up with: "Romantic comedies are the best on airplanes...  I just watched 'He's [Just] Not That Into You'... I would never actually want to see that movie, but on an airplane, it's perfect, because it's just so stupid...."

The thing is, I watched 'He's Just Not That Into You' on a plane, which Molly goes on to accurately describe as a "parade [Or barrage? Or some awesome combination of those words] of gender stereotypes." I watched the whole thing.  I kind of hated myself, and I definitely hated every writer involved, all the stupid characters for making such absurd and contradictory decisions, and Ginnifer Goodwin for participating in such a shit show, but I watched the whole thing.  I could have been reading a book.

So why?  Why do we watch crap on airplanes?  I asked myself this question on the 19th of December, when I boarded my 10-hour flight home, and again when I selected 'Bad Teacher' as my first viewing choice on board.  'Bad Teacher'? I thought, Really, Anne?  Cameron Diaz?  You hate Cameron Diaz!  And I do, but Justin Timberlake can be funny, and I love Jason Segel, and he did totally rescue all the scenes in which he participated, but this doesn't change the fact that I do not enjoy watching Cameron Diaz on screen at all!  But I guess I do.  I chose to watch her over Kristin Wiig, Mya Rudolph and a crew of other hilarious women in 'Bridesmaids', which I've only seen once and totally merits a second viewing, especially in the context of my own sister having recently gotten engaged.

I'm pretty sure Cameron Diaz and Kate Hudson are my go-to, plane-only actresses; actresses whom, under any other circumstances, make me hate the industry for employing people like that rather than people like... well, me, but who seem to provide the perfect level of sedation/distraction on a long flight.

There are so many conveniently spliced together images of these ladies on the interwebs.

There are some films I haven't made it through, even given the strange alternate universe of movie-viewing in flight.  I could not stomach even the first half of 'Bride Wars'.  Apparently Kate Hudson plus themes of women's innate obsession with weddings -- the kind that overrides lifelong friendships -- was too much, despite my Diaz-Hudson rule.  I also started watching 'Horrible Bosses' on the same flight as 'Bad Teacher'.  I suffered through a good 20 minutes before conceding that my love for Jason Batemen, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day could not possibly rescue the film from some of the worst writing ever spoken on screen, nor me from my mounting outrage that three such hilarious men chose to be involved in such crap.

I decided to follow up that particular disappointment with a film I felt more sure I would enjoy, so I watched 'Crazy, Stupid, Love' (whose title, by the way, evades my understanding with its two commas). Despite a sort of draggy middle section, I genuinely enjoyed it (duh: sexy/just-hasn't-found-the-right-woman-yet Ryan Gosling + inept but loveable Steve Carell + the student becomes the teacher plot line = heartwarming).  It was a departure from my usual choice to watch anything I wouldn't watch anywhere else, but I was pleased, and then I slept for the last leg of the flight.

I think watching a good film can be sort of emotionally exhausting, and maybe that's why I (we? can I speak for everyone here?) choose mostly not to watch them on planes.  I usually don't sleep well on flights, so the last thing I want is to arrive at my destination both shattered and distraught by images of the Holocaust, for instance.  I'm pretty sure they don't show 'Schindler's List' on planes.  Maybe that's why.  Also, I don't think good movies are done justice on a 6" screen.

I did go the light-hearted but well-made route with 'Midnight In Paris' on my return flight, but then I accidentally started watching 'Beginners', because I thought it was the terrible-looking Katherine Heigl/Josh Duhamel film I saw playing on someone else screen.  It was, of course, a rather serious film starring Ewan McGregor as a man whose recently-out father has just died, and I watched it because it was compelling, but I wrapped things up with 'Something Borrowed' (so Kate Hudsonly terrible) and 'Life As We Know It' (also awful and full of unbelievable character actions/transformations), which I had initially confused with 'Beginners', because I just could not put myself through something with subtitles or themes on the futility of marriage or life in general.  I wanted to arrive back in London with the emotional (if not physical) energy to go out New Year's Eve.




*Just a regular visit.  No actual pilgrims involved.
†If you don't know/follow the antics/comedy/insightful writings and broadcasts of John and Molly, you are missing out.

Tune

Via my WIG Lauren, medium to the Sexy Gay Jesus.