Lost in Transportation

The Canadian version of Murphy's Law is that whenever you get a packet of food out, you will always look at the French instructions first. Fortunately, "plonger les pates dans 6 tasses d'eau bouillante" is pretty easy to interpet, and instant noodles transcend the bounds of language.

Well, after tonight I am done with janitorial shifts. It will be very nice to get back to normal hours, and get rid of the stress. I may not have mentioned it, but my boss keeps complaining about the quality of my work. Unfortunately, she wasn't usually complaining to me.

Riverside (I think that's the first time I mentioned the name of this gulag) is not a good place to work. Most of the employees are great and the location could not be more confenient. Unfortunately, the owner and his management staff are straight out of a workplace tragi-comedy. It's kind of like working in "The Office" - the corporate culture is a combination of "cover your ass", "the customer is an inconvenience", "play petty power games", and "rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic".

I was talking to one of my co-workers recently and she said "it's sad because there are good people here, but I don't just want to make friends based on hating this place."

Thankfully, I will be eligible for parole soon. The season ends in about six weeks, and Bill Ing lays people off as soon as he can before that. Obviously the parole metaphor isn't 100% right, because prison jobs pay a little bit less than I get here (not much though). Also, people in Fernie like locals who stuck it out at Riverside for a decent length of time because "if you can put up with that place, you'll be a good employee anywhere else". I say locals, because a lot of Fernie businesses still have an us against them mentality when it comes to hiring outsiders.

But anyway. I'm back to working four days a week and when I say days, I mean days, not nights. I think this will ironically mean I snowboard more, since I won't be waking up at 11:30am and knowing I have be at work by 4:00.

In many ways I am looking forward to the end of the season (although some more snow would be nice between now and then). It's not that I don't like snowboarding, it's just that my feet are getting itchy (it's probably a rash picked up from the unsafe usage of cleaning chemicals - another reason to ?love? my job).

One last shift, although since my boss is cutting me from janitorial because I'm not up to standard, it will be difficult not to live up to her expectations by doing a bad job.