The Village

Meaghan, one of my coworkers with whom I was working last night, mentioned that she was meeting up with some friends in the village to go to the bars there, and I ended up inviting myself along. So for the first time I went to the village to drink, and I can understand why some people prefer it. There were two bars we went to- one was called Explorers, and was in the Lake Louise Inn, and the other was the creatively named Bar and Grill. Explorers is the nicest bar I've ever been to- spacious, fairly clean, lots of comfy chairs and good music and lighting. The only problem with it was that last call was at 12:30. A pity, but understandable as it is in a hotel.

So as I'm told is the tradition, we only stayed there for a short time and then ran across the street to B&G. Really, the two places could not be more different. It was the exact opposite of Explorers- Dark, dirty, playing gritty rock music and with no room for dancing anywhere. But, it knew exactly what it was and catered to those who wanted that sort of atmosphere, which is why both bars are better than the pub here.

I also met my hero at the B&G- some old man that must have been 60 years old, hitting on all the 20-something girls. I wanted to just sit down and talk to him, because you KNOW someone like that has great stories to tell, but I had other concerns.

As sometimes happens when one is engaged in the consumption of spirituous beverages, time slipped away until we realized that it was past 3, which is when cab service ends in Lake Louise. So Meg and I had to go back with her friend Ashley, who works at The Inn, and crash there until cabs resumed at 7am.

Really, the residences at the LLI are much nicer than ours. The common room was massive, there was a full balcony/patio and a full kitchen. Granted they have 8 people to a room, but then again each of them has their own bedroom with a double sized bed. We stayed there for a while and Ashley offered us the couches for the night, which I had every intention of taking.

However at some point I got it into my head that it wasn't THAT late, and there was plenty of time to walk back to the hotel (It's only half an hour walk!).

Granted, this sounds foolish. This I will not dispute- it probably was pretty dumb- but I still think it was worth it, because as I walked out past the Inns front sign, about 15 metres in front of me, a large silvery form suddenly became illuminated by the lights of the hotel, taking long, loping strides as it casually walked across the road back into the forest.

At that point I took the sighting of a wolf to be a poor omen and returned back to the previously offered couch. At least now I can cross another wild animal off my list. And in the morning we caught the cab back, ending a rather memorable first trip to the village. Not that I would do it all exactly the same again, but it was fun. Always good to have another story to pull out, right? Anyways, I have to start messing up my sleep schedule so I can work the 3 midnight shifts I have in two days. The rest of you;

Stay Frosty
Trevor

The night shift

While I'm still not decided on working the night shifts regularly, my first two goes at it by myself did not exactly warm me to the idea. The second night was somewhat better than the first but still not great. Of course that would be difficult anyways, as the first night was pretty terrible.

First of all there was the fact that I wasn't exactly sure what I was supposed to do. There was a list in some binder but I knew from my training that it was missing a lot. Usually there is supposed to be a person at 5am coming in to do premade sandwiches, but there was no such shift scheduled for that night. So after doing some cleaning I started to do those. However I didn't really grasp the amount of time it took. Not only is there a LOT of sandwiches to make (about 120) but I kept getting interrupted by people (mostly staff with one major exception) so the next thing I knew it was 6 and there was still a lot I had not done. Of course things got exarcerbated further, because of that one major exception.

Around 4:30 this japanese woman came in, fitting the profile of a tour guide for one of the several asian tour groups,asking if we had boxed breakfasts she had ordered. We did have them in the back, so I gave them to her and all was fine. That is, until 6:30 when ANOTHER one showed up and asked for boxed breakfasts, and said that she was the only organizer for her group. I still haven't figured out who the first woman was (though yesterday I did see a day-old form about a similar number of boxes to be picked up at 4:30 from a different tour group... but I don't know what really happened) but anyways we had to make those boxes for her from scratch, putting us father behind.

The second shift wasn't AS bad, but still not good. Again there was no 5 am shift but I didn't do the sandwiches since Andrew left me a checklist and they were not on it. Of course when 6 am rolled around they were asking where the sandwiches were. But I denounce responsibility for that one. The other problem was something odd with my cash. You see, the night shift has to cash out twice because the business day ends at 3 am, so you need to cash out then and at the end of the shift. The odd thing was, when I did that 3am cashout, the till readout was horribly wrong. It said I had served 77 guests (wrong) and did $350 worth of cash (very, very wrong). I don't know why this happened but I talked to accounting about it and hopefully there won't be any problems.

And so with that I finished off my 9 day stretch on a note that made me very glad to have two days off. I promptly went home and fell asleep for about 12 hours (meaning I got up at ten to seven, barely in time to catch dinner).

Unfortunately there has been a setback on the pictures because Nick's computer has had something go wrong with it so he can't get on the internet anymore. And of course the computers here don't even have CD-ROMs, much less USB ports. I'll try to figure something out.

There aren't really many other developments... things happen slowly around here. The ice on the lake is almost melted but there's still a thin layer there. The snow has almost all gone though. I'm hoping to get some people to go to Banff to see a movie next week (if we can coordinate a day off), and maybe another day take a hike up mount fairview (which, I'm told, everyone has to do at least once). But such plans are merely in the nebulous "yeah we should" phase, so who knows when it will actually happen. But until then

Stay Frosty
Trevor

The Farewell

Josh left today. He decided that he wanted to do something else, and so he informed his supervisor, who told him just to finish out the week and then he could go. So last night the four of us went out to celebrate. It was a good night- Josh seems to have made a lot of friends here, at least, so there were lots of goodbyes, lots of people buying him drinks. We went to a friend of his apartment after the pub closed to hang out for a bit, and talked for a while when we got back to the apartment, so it was a pretty satisfactory farewell. I'm going to miss him, really. He was a good roommate. I liked talking to him, and he was just a good person to have around. He's going back to Red Deer, but what he's going to do I'm not sure- I don't know if he knows either. But I'll have his e-mail, so we'll try to keep in touch.

Other than that, my 9 day stretch of working is 2/3rds done, and I am le tired. So with a short post, I bid you all

Stay Frosty
Trevor

Banff

As I went in to work on Wednesday, I glanced innocuously at the new schedule. I did a slight double-take, however, when I realized that my name was curiously absent from it. Naturally somewhat surprised by this, I quickly called down to the supervisor who confirmed that it was a mistake due to the creation of a training schedule, and a new one would be posted. As a benefit to the little shock, fortunately, I got friday and saturday off work. Well I don't know for sure, but I figured that since the schedule was up for a day and a half already, they wanted to make sure people saw the updated one. So to take up some of the free time I decided I would take my first trip down to Banff, since I had some errands to do anyways. Drew was off on the Saturday, so we decided to go together.

Things have mostly settled down around here. The giant wave of new people has ended and work is becoming more and more routine. So relatively minor things become more noteworthy as a result. Owen, after waiting a couple weeks, finally received his Xbox 360. Since he had Friday off he and I goofed around on that for a good amount of the day. It's been a long time since I played a video game, I realized. Still fun though.

The trip to Banff is, like most trips, quite scenic. About 45 minutes on the bus, we left at 10:45 and arrived on the main tourist strip in the town.

Banff is a very pretty town. Granted it more or less has to be since it's raison d'etre is tourism. It walks that delicate line that so many tourist towns do of quaint, rustic charm and familiar big-city amenities. The sort of place that probably has a population (as far as people actually living there) of 5000 but has two Subways. And every single store had a help wanted sign in the window. It must be sickeningly easy to get a job in Alberta- it seems that everyone is hiring. In fact I know so- I saw a news clip that was saying that Alberta's dropout rate is over 25%. I don't know how that compares to other provinces but it seems really high. They cited easy money on the oil sands as the main reason . Makes sense, I guess. Until the bubble bursts at least.

We didn't really do a whole lot in town. Walked past the Banff Springs (SO much nicer to look at than the Chateau) did some shopping and hopped on the 3:00 bus back. The rest of the day was pretty lazy.

On sunday, naturally the first thing I did was call home to wish my mom a happy mothers day, since I'm such a good son. I was working at 2, and until then I got to watch Return of the King on one of the movie channels (so great having these things. So much time can be wasted.) However things started going downhill from there. First of all, I had to get my float for my shift, but had a inordinate amount of difficulty getting the bloody safebox open. Once I finally did, the shift was quite busy- I was going to take a break around 6:30, but then Lauren left and there were only two of us working and a lot of prep to do, so I decided to delay it until we were more caught up. Bad idea.

First of all, on top of the prep, Katie, who I was working with, got called down by In-room dining (which shares a department with us) for about two hours because they were swamped. And I had customers the whole time so I couldn't really do any prep. Then I realized something- I was scheduled to end my shift at 10 or 10:30 (if I took a break) and I was the only one with a float. In other words, I couldn't leave until the 11 o'clock shift got there with his float, and cashing out takes about half an hour. So I ended up working for 9 1/2 hours straight... and then waking up at 6 to come into work again this morning for 7.

But something I have come to notice is that if I get 6 or 7 hours of sleep, I tend to be more "awake" than if I get more than 8. And not just because I usually go drinking before the times I can sleep over 8 hours. I'm not sure why that is, but it's fairly consistent. So I wasn't nodding off on the job or anything. But it is rather annoying that they messed up the schedule like they did, whether I get overtime or not (I do, but that's beside the point.)

One thing that Andrew (one of the leaders) asked me about was whether I wanted to be sort of.... the "night shift person"- in other words, working most of the night shifts so that everyone else doesn't have to screw up their sleep patterns all the time to work them. I'm considering it. It would be nice to have a set shift every time, and can probably get myself to adjust to it- both the time and the job. There are a couple things against it though. First is that I haven't done one by myself yet, so I don't know really what a typical shift would be like, except that it would be a lot more routine than any other. Second is that it's not exactly great for one's social life. I know I didn't come out here for a social life but it's nice to have one. Graeme recommended against it, but Arnt works the exact same shift constantly and he rather likes it. If I can dictate my days off as two of the three popular bar nights, I might consider is more seriously. Sound off on the comment board if you have an opinion.

I'm still working on getting my pictures online. They will be worth the wait though (or will they!? (yeah I think they will)).

Stay Frosty
Trevor

The Ice Field

Sounds like some sort of dark thriller novel, doesn't it? Well, the reality is much more prosaic. Yesterday I went on a trip with Owen and his roommate Kevin to the Columbia Icefield, seeing as I was working at 11pm that night and had some time to kill.

The bus left the hotel at 10:30 in the morning, so we didn't need to get up too early. As I stepped out, the sun was pleasanly present after a couple days of absence due to snow (yes, it is still snowing around here). A few wispy clouds looked like they were cotton gently ripping apart on the summits of the mountains as we made our way to the desk where we bought our tickets.

The bus driver/tour guide explained as we set off that the drive from Banff to Jasper is said by many to be one of the most scenic in the world. I can defintely see where that is coming from. The further north you go the more amazing the mountains become, because the glaciers start becoming more apparant and more dramatic. And you can tell they are there too- something I didn't really know before, but because of the highly pressurized nature of glacial ice, it actually turns blue because pretty much all the oxygen is out of it. It's a striking sight.

About halfway there, the driver noted about 4 cars stopped in the road ahead of us, next to a lake shore. He referred to this as a "bear jam" and told us to keep our eyes peeled since it was quite possible there was a bear or some sort of animal around that people had stopped to look at. Sure enough, after a minute or so a black bear darted between the various trees and shrubs by the lake. Unfortunately I could not get a picture of it, but Kevin managed to get something of a shot of it. Not a grizzly, but pretty cool anyways.

The rest of the trip wound its way through the mountains, past the moraines left by glaciers, waterfalls and icefalls and all the other remnants of the glacial periods. At one point the driver noted a particular mountain slope to our right that had fresh avalanche debris on it, and said that this particular slope had very violent avalanches during the winter, and that they even went over the road and knocked down trees on the other side. Sure enough, most of the trees to our left were still flattened.

Finally we arrived at the ice field centre, grabbing a quick lunch before boarding another bus out to the glacier, where we went on one of the special ice coach to head to the actual icefield. It wasn't what I imagined. I pictured a vast field where you pretty much just looked around and saw a plain of ice in all directions. It wasn't like that- it was more like a valley, with mountains on two sides, the centre behind us (and mountains behind that) and in front was a sort of rolling hill of ice. Still, it was pretty interesting. 8 glaciers flow out of the Columbia ice field, and it covers 325 square kilometers. Kevin is from South Africa, so he was even more amazed by it.

On the way back, the tour guide talked a fair bit left and so I dozed off on the bus. But my day was hardly over- after all, I had to work at 11 still!

The night shift is kind of like a combination of closing and opening- you have to clean everything and stock everything for the morning. There were no customers, but apparently when it gets busy during the summer people come from the hotel bar drunk and want stuff. Since Graeme was training both myself and one of the Kates, things were done very very quickly. We were able to sit around for quite a while, because we couldn't do anything until the new stuff was ready from the other departments (bakery and such). Seems like it would be really boring by yourself, but that's not entirely a bad thing- I don't mind being bored as much as other people seem to. What is annoying about it is that it messes up your sleep schedule.

Case in point: after the shift finished, I went home and fell asleep, having been awake (not counting the nap on the bus) for almost 24 hours. I have today off, but I have to work at 7 am tomorrow, so I have to be able to get to sleep at some reasonable time tonight. I think I got it worked out, as I got up at about 11:30 and I think I can stay up until 11 or so tonight.

I will have pictures of my trip up here soon, as soon as I can get them onto someone's laptop and onto my photobucket. Until then,

Stay Frosty
Trevor

The Deli (part 2)

The deli really isn't that hard to get your head around. Really, there are 3 parts that require any effort at all.

1) Sandwiches. Surprisingly I don't have much of a problem with this part.
2) Coffee. Well, not the coffee itself- that's rather easy- but rather all the hoity-toity drinks we have to make that are also on the coffee list. Lattes and the like. But I've gotten pretty good at it.
3) The till. This thing is so much more complicated and obstinate than any till I've used before. Ringing in a small coffee involves no less than 12 button strokes. Those add up when you have to do them for every single customer...er, "guest", as we're supposed to call them. And all the different procedures for debits and room charges and credit cards and on and on and on. I'm getting the hang of it more, and most of them are pretty simple, but I still don't particularly like it.

Our new recruits this week are easy enough to remember. There are 2 Megans, 2 Kates, and a Karen. Today we had all of them on training. Suffice to say it was pretty crowded behind the deli counter. But they seem to be getting the job easily enough. Nonetheless I was very glad to be out, especially considering the previous night, which shall be detailed presently.

I worked until 6 on Thursday, and knew that in 12 hours I would have to work again. However, this being payday Thursday, it was going to be a really busy night at the pub. I hit upon a genius plan: I would go home, sleep until midnight or so, then hit the pub (not drinking a lot) and just stay up through the night and go to work in the morning. Of course, this genius plan failed to account for the rather uncooperative nature of my body. First of all, I found it very difficult to sleep, and not just because of the early hours, but also because the people upstairs were gathering and making their customary ruckus. And secondly, I realized soon afterwards that I was coming down with some sort of illness- sore throat, headache, all those mildly annoying symptoms that are just enough to make you feel miserable.

So I decided tonight was not the night to go out, popped a few advil and finally got some sleep. But it wasn't a lot. So I was eager to get off work.

Having done so I quickly took a shower and changed. Today it was gorgeous outside, so I went for a solitary little hike around the lake again, forgetting my camera again, but otherwise thouroughly enjoying the 15 degree weather. The lake looks like it could crack soon. After my walk I sat on a bench basking in the sun for a while.

I noticed the shadow of a mountain on another mountian that, like that drawing that can be both a young lady and an old lady, I percieved 3 different silhouettes within that one shadow- one of a man who seemed to be yawning, one of a woman craning her neck, and one of what was sort of like a roman soldier with his little brush atop his helmet. I also noticed that the sky around here is so blue, it actually starts turning blue before it technically should. The far mountains seemed to be shrouded it a sapphire haze, reflecting the sky off their icy mantles.

I need to do that more. Any stress of a job here must surely be solved by a quick immersion in the atmosphere.

Stay frosty
Trevor

The Deli

Having now worked in the deli for a couple days, I can say that the place definitely keeps one busy. Unlike Quick, there is much less emphasis on actual sandwiches. The two parts of the job that require real effort are the sandwiches and the drinks. There is a coffee-bar type setup here, like a Second Cup. Most of my training has revolved around learning the differences and methods of creation for cappachino, mocha, latte, chai etc. since I didn't need a whole lot of training with the sandwich part. Lauren actually worked at a Second Cup before so she didn't need help with that part as much. I still don't like it though. The things just take so much time. Especially since you have to keep refilling the various milks.

Thankfully when there are more people working, there will be more dedicated "stations", where you stick and just deal with that part of the line. For example, at the front to greet and try and get them to buy a premade sandwich, or the sandwich station, or the coffee station. As long as I don't get that one too much I'll be fine.

The work itself is kind of like Quick but to the enth degree. Since there were always at least 4 people on at all times I've worked so far, what we would consider "steady" at Quick barely registers. However, the rushes that come to the deli are just not possible in Waterloo. The driving force of these rushes is tour groups. Technically they are supposed to warn us about big tour groups coming (if they give us an hour or more warning, the driver gets a free lunch...not always enough of an incentive though). On the first day (Friday) we had a 50-ish person British tour group, a smaller American group, and a larger Korean group. As such training would be half explained during slow times, and half asked in the middle of actually trying to make whatever it is the person wants.

Saturday had only one tour group, but that was more than enough. A five hundred and fifty person group, composed entirely of Christian women. So when they arrived things were pretty busy for a while. Of course not all 550 went to the deli, but enough came to keep us busy, that's for sure.

Yesterday was "Appreciate your job day", or more accurrately, function help. Since summer workers are mostly just arriving now, places that need lots of people, for example, banquets, will draft workers from other departments to help if they have a big function. Lauren and I were so drafted. So at 6 AM I showed up at the Victoria dining hall to help prepare the breakfast and lunch banquets for the same Christian women's group that swamped us at the deli the day before. Working in banquets definitely made me glad that I wasn't doing this full time. I got there at 6 AM and didn't leave until 5:30. The official banquet people stayed longer. Apparently this is pretty standard too.

My actual job consisted of being at the front, greeting the women as they came in, and watching one of the lines to see if it was getting low. If it was I had to go to the back and get another tray and replace them. Since there were so many of them I was moving pretty constantly. My feet were glad for those insoles that were so highly spoken of, but I realized that your feet feeling better does not do anything for the rest of you. I was quite sore after that.

One thing I have noticed is that the staff bathrooms in the hotel, like in many other public places, are decorated with the deep, philosophical musings of the countless budding intellectuals who use such facilities. Other than the expressions of general existential alienation communicated through advertisments desirous of a mate or "good time", there are quite a few messages that express a rather strong feeling. To be specific, one rather plainly stated "I hate this place". It says something when the work you do can cause you to hate a place like this. Whether it says more about the job or the person working it, I haven't figured out yet.

Luckily, I have today off and can relax a bit. I don't work tomorrow until 3pm so I can go to the pub tonight without risk and meet the new recruits. Look for another update at some point this week.

Stay Frosty,
Trevor