Workplace 20 - What The Home Wears

Earthborn. Aren't we all?
After some swift Googling, I can share with you that Earthborn is a Mum'n'Dad operation based in Brisbane. I did not know this while I worked for them and it has no bearing on the story but good on them for a succesful franchise.
What I did know was that the store was full of pretty homewares, smelt nice and was prepared to hire me.

For those of you unfamiliar with Earthborn, its a store at a bunch of shopping centres around town that sells candles, decorative....stuff, scented things, crockery, cute piggy banks. Basically a lot of ideas for gifts. And I recall it was all pretty decent quality.
I think I was there for a few months and I have positive feelings about the place so it must have gone well. I really liked a lot of their stock, and still do. Girls =like pretty things. It's pretty cliche of me, I know.

I remember one night we had to completely rearrange the store. It was a crazy amount of work and we were all there for so long but lots of fun. Good people to work with as well. The only down side I can remember about working at Earthborn was that you have to be really careful moving around the store as there is a lot of precariously balanced fragile stuff. And the store is CRAMMED full. Not a single inch of space wasted. No walking past people in aisles, that's for places with not enough stock. Suckers.  I honestly don't remember anything else about working there.
Oh, actually they had this cinnamon apple candle that blew my mind. So good. You should go and smell it.


So, in very short summary; This is a retail job. An enjoyable one as far as retail goes. The following people should consider/can generally be found working here:

• Students
• Interior decorators looking for staff discount
• People who have a real job but are looking for something to do on weekends other than have a social life
• Mums who's kids have finally moved out meaning they can do their own thing again
• People with no goals in life
• Contract workers between gigs

People who shouldn't consider this a great job:

• Anyone with a qualification to do something that pays more
• If you who can't smile at stupid people all day long
• Really large or clumsy or paraplegic people - the available space for moving around the store will not be your friend. Other retail stores might be better suited.
• Impulse homeware buyers - it's no good you paying them for showing up each shift
• Small children
• People who believe themselves to be Michael Jackson
• 
  
•  
• Please feel free to add suggestions of people that should not work in retail.

Workplace 19 - Raceday Boozin'

Ahh the races at Eagle Farm.

Most weekends in Springtime, you may witness the mid-afternoon walk of shame by the well dressed and inebriated hordes down Racecourse Rd in Ascot. Resplendent as peacocks in every colour of suit and dress, they stumble from the races to the ferry, losing shoes and lunches along the way, a badly balanced shadow of their morning selves. And, on a few occasions, I helped them get there. Drunk, I mean, not to the ferry.

That sounds bad but, honestly, these days were SO MUCH FUN! If you've read my Stadium Love blog then this was a very similar experience.

If you've ever been to Eagle Farm Racecourse you may be aware that it is a beautiful old location, full of historic venues and exclusive areas, as well as half a dozen bars. If you've ever been on one of the 'big days' (ie. Melbourne Cup, Brisbane International etc) then you might have noticed that every spare corner, arch and available inch of space has sprung a new bar.

 

Generally just some shade tents, a few tables and eskies, with a cold room out the back but to the masses it means beer! Or wine, or premixes or bubbly but whatever it is, it all comes in little plastic cups.

So to staff all these organic little mushrooms of bars, the Brisbane Racing Club requires a whole heap more sober people on the premises than usual. Hooray!

My first gig was as a cashier. At the start of the day each cashier is designated an area of the racecourse to be responsible for. A terrifyingly efficient matron directed us with gibberish such as "From the Hall of Fame to the Moreton, don't forget there's a few under Past the Post"

This obviously didn't help but she seemed to have a lot on her mind. Fortunately someone else took us around and pointed out the actual boundaries and areas that we had to look after for the day.

And… begin!

'Raceday' is the perfect term for what took place over the next  8 hours. Starting at my first bar I would get there, take all the money out of the til then sit in the cold room, generally on boxes of Gold, and count up the wet, filthy notes, before tallying it all in my book, leaving the top copy with the bar manager then quickly move to the next bar to do it all again. Fortunately the security company is charged with moving the money around as I'm not terribly intimidating at the best of times! Counting the

notes provided the most challenge as wet notes stick together and double counting generally just meant you had two totals. So you'd count until you were totally certain that you had the right amount, all the while area that you were late for two more bars not to mention FREEZING in this bloody cold room!

I had maybe 6-7 bars to look after and I didn't stop all day, just an endless circuit of overflowing tills and shivering in cold rooms. Lunch was provided but there was no time. Fortunately the all-pervading festival atmosphere was energy enough to get me, exhausted by ecstatic, through the day.

Take 2. This time cashiers were organised differently - one for each bar. I was assigned to a little push up tent on a lovely garden area where for most of the day I reclined, swapping anecdotes and passing judgement on the masses with the bar manager. This manager was a fantastic old rogue who'd done this for a long time and had a million stories of happenings around the racecourses. A very entertaining day. Occasionally I would count some notes and call security to take it away but the rest was watching well dressed drunks and laughing. A very enjoyable pastime with the security of a barrier between them and you. I seem to recall taking home a bottle of champagne and a whole heap of sushi with me but I can't remember how this came about.

And the final adventure (so far) at Eagle Farm was when I held the glorified position of Bar Manager. Yes, I had a push up tent and a cold room and a team to call my own. The cashiers job had reverted back to floating positions - maybe it depends what race day it is? so unfortunately I didn't have the immediate back up of a constant 2IC but we managed.

The day was INSANE! Just constant lines of people at the bar wanting their plastic cup of fermented whatever. My trusty servers for the day were 3 Indian boys in Brisbane for uni, one of whom had no English at all so relied on the other 2 to translate for him and not a lot of idle chatting happened. Actually, that's not true. A lot of chatting went on, just not in English. The hardest thing about the day was trying to close up as people begged and bribed us for 'just another beer!' They came up with some very creative excuses. And the rest of the day was so entertaining. Everyone loves you when you hold the beer!

Three very different experiences of Eagle Farm race days, but all quite entertaining and enjoyable. Extroverts, party animals and people good with numbers should apply for these positions, you may even get time to see a race and will leave much better off and healthier than any of the people you served.

I'm not sure of anyone that shouldn't have this sort of day, or who might not enjoy it so go at it!

Workplace 18 - Daily Cup of Joe

When I was a kid I used to watch barista's and think they had the coolest job ever. (Not barrister's, I didn't spend time in court. The coffee people, barista's. Google tells me it comes from the Italian word for 'bartender')

They somehow wrangle these huge shiny machines, extract delicious brown coffee from dry beans, heat milk to delicious creaminess... I think for me it was something like what watching an old school blacksmith making a samurai sword would be for little boys. They would move so quickly, and everything would just somehow come together. It was mesmerising.

Finally, I had an opportunity to learn this mysterious art. The location may not seem that glamorous but I was on my way.

The Coffee Club at Taigum shopping centre was my school in all things barista related and the staff there were a close-knit group. Lauren, the manager remains one of my favourite managers ever and I left the job with reluctantly after 6 months. She would call me early in the morning telling me that she was too hungover and that I had to get down there to run things while she slept in the corner. Or pull my hair if I was being too cheeky. This doesn't sound like a good manager but the place was so relaxed and we generally hung out there even if we weren't on shift. There was never any doubt about how you were doing, whether I was doing well or not. I loved the bluntness and encouraging atmosphere. The rest of the girls were great as well, all with massive personalities and the traditional hospitality partying attitudes.

I was taught the various methods of making coffee gradually, first how to froth perfect milk for lattes, flat whites, cappuccinos etc. All similar but different enough.

So you all know, a flat white should have no foam at all, a latte should have about a centimetre and a cappuccino should be heaped and hold it's shape. Every barista has their own opinion and each place does it differently but after working at a bunch of cafes, that's my standard.

After a few weeks of conscientiously frothing, I was allowed to start creating coffee shot disasters. It was awesome! In the meantime ofcourse were the usual tasks of cleaning, serving, heating, chatting and errand running that make up cafe staff life. After 6 months tho I had nailed the skills required and was turning out what I know now to be terrible tasting coffee (Coffee Club blend isn't the greatest) by the dozens. I could froth milk, make shots, I was even getting the hang of little pictures, there was a tip jar and pretty flexible hours. And staff that hung out socially on weekday nights. 

We had regular customers as every cafe does, generally staff from the centre, and we knew them all, not by name, but by what they drank. When discussing them we had to refer to skinny large latte lady or macchiato afternoon guy. And we had two old guys that used to sit in the corner, commenting on the world and trying to charm us every day. 

If you're looking for a job that will keep you fit, give you a new social group united by the hatred of customers who order a half-strength-decaf-soy-latte-with-a-shot-of-vanilla-and-two-pink-marshmellows, not make you a heap of money but will be fun, this is good for it.

If you're more into sitting down occasionally, not dealing with public and maybe not so great at working in a team, people in this industry will hate you. Don't go there. Keep looking.

Workplace 17- In The Money

"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is
shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain."
-- Mark Twain

Basically bankers are bast... umm..jerks. Im sure to their friends and families they are loving and normal but get them behind that counter and they have nice facades with evil centres. Like banana flavour filled chocolates.
Now anyone that has interacted with bank staff could have told you this but to reeeeally know it you have to work with them. Join them in their hushed vaults and paper morgues where they see out their days and lives.

Surprisingly then, my days at the NAB accumulate to one of my longer employment examples- a whole 6 months of slow beaurocratic death. But let's take this journey in the right steps.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who didn't know what she wanted to do.
So she read lots of books with names like "QLD Job Guide 2005" and stalked seek.com.au late at night in dark rooms..... (dadada daaaaah!)
Until one fateful day she saw a promising piece advertising a cert something or other roman numeral in Financial Services while being employed full time. This looked like a new exciting direction so she went for it.
Training was actually fantastic. The girl made lots of new friends, had lunch at the pub every day and apparently learnt very little. The only recollections of the actual training was of the instructor stressing that we were not to YELL AT THE BLIND PEOPLE! Apparently it happens a lot. And that at the end of the week we had a mock bank day. And even the trainers couldn't balance my partners and my books afterwards. It caused them some concern.
Anyhoo. On to working life! The young girl started at a lovely quiet (now non-existent) branch at Redcliffe. The women there all called her 'dear' and gabbed over the latest Amway magazines and knew all the customers by name. (before they'd read their card I mean). The girl, let's call her Heather shall we? learnt a lot there and was given her first NAB scarf!


Oh those heady early days of free scarfs and teaching old ladies how to use the fancy ATM machines. But her fatal banking flaw was already becoming apparent and after a couple of months Heatherwas relocated to Strathpine Branch were the pace was faster and they'd be able to teach her better. Or so they must have thought.

Strathpine branch was busier. And nastier. These two characteristics are not as random as you might think. Let me explain. The average bank employee hates their job and wants the next person ups position. So the bottom row, the tellers are constantly looking to backstab their colleagues and undermine their superiors. I'm not even kidding, it was crazy.


The next level up, the loaners and 'head teller' are trying to hold the branch together and just hoping to make it home without their managers calling about something the tellers said they did. I have no idea what the managers do. Hide in their office and hope that no one robs the bank today. (I was robbed but we're not at that but yet). So the busier the bank the more this competition gets intensified. Heatherwould spend my lunch times alone just to not have to listen to what whoever wasn't in the room had done. She had bigger problems.

Like that first training day, she still couldn't balance most days. Well, eventually she would as otherwise they wouldn't let her go home but it was an ordeal of misplaced slips and incorrectly entered numbers. Also, the major aspect of being a teller was to sell crap to customers. Stuff like credit cards, home loans, life insurance etc. There'd be weekly personal, team and branch targets, 'new hot products!', and absolutely no incentives except getting fired otherwise. Now Heather was a nice girl who liked people and so she had moral objections to annoying people to buy products when they were clearly just paying their loan on their lunch break. This had been the breaking point for her time at Redcliffe and would similarly have her transferred away from Strathpine and it's social club water cooler that she had been unwittingly stealing from each day.

Her start at Chermside was pleasant enough. New friendly matronly faces, lots of work to do and new teachers not frustrated to breaking point by her tenacity and stubbornness. The lack of any movement on the targets whiteboard began to cause friction after a few weeks and the waiting around for that new girl to balance- what the heck is she doing?? must have been a trial. But what finally released her from banking life with the phrase "You're just not bank material" was much more dramatic.



A lovely, pleasant fellow in a nice suit came in with a forged cheque. A very good one. Heather did nearly all the checks is that she was supposed to do, even got the head teller involved to make sure she was doing it right. And handed over thousands to the smiling, lying face. The nicest, friendliest of robberies.

The next week I was told to give back my name badge and that glorious scarf and was escorted out of the bank. I was "not bank material" which really should have been obvious from the start.

I would not recommend anyone work in a bank. It is dirty, nasty work, you will cop abuse and not trust your coworkers. Having money constantly on your mind does not a happy life make I think.
Unless you are scoping out to rob the bank, and even the don't work there to long less you lose the courage and creativity to do anything.

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