I've been job-hunting in Paris for about three weeks and have officially given up. A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from the owner of a restaurant telling me to come for an interview the next day at 4.30pm. So I went. The guy told me that it was a good thing I wasn't busy; he showed me an email from another girl who had asked if she could come another time but he told me that was her chance gone. Cut-throat. Anyway, we chatted a bit and he told me about the job, it wasn't much of an interview. He asked me to complete two tests; the first was to open a bottle of wine with a waiter's corkscrew, at which I failed miserably as I've never used one before. "I thought you said you'd worked in bars and resteraunts before?" He asked me. "Erm..no, a small bar, just one, for a couple of months..." So he set me another 'challenge;' he made me climb the stairs to the first floor of the restaurant, armed with three plates, and tell him how many chairs there were before getting to the top of the stairs. This one I completed with ease as it's not exactly difficult to count to 15. So he told me to come back the next day for a trial shift.
So I went back the next day to work with a horrible little man named 'Guido' - his name should have been warning sign #2 - and I was given no other training than: "When the customer arrives put some bread in a basket and serve it to the table." So, much shouting and biting my head off and snapping ensued when I set the table and mixed up the knife and fork, didn't miraculously know the table numbers or the dishes, and wouldn't clear away peoples plates when they were clearly still eating. He let me go an hour early and told me they'd call me. Needless to say they didn't, and somehow I wasn't disappointed.
My second experience was in the form of babysitting, or not babysitting, as it turned out that the family really wanted a cheap nanny. I don't really know why I went in the first place as I don't like babies, and less so why I didn't leave after I saw that the children were 2 and a half years and 14 months and the mother told me they'd need me to go to Nice that weekend and elsewhere in the south for 3 weeks in July. All of which sounds lovely but not when you're burdened with two bratty kids who aren't even your own. Despite this, out of politeness more than anything, I stayed that day to 'see how I got on with the kids.' Not very well. They were so snotty and dribbly and the girl pissed her pants. I think they felt that I was becoming less and less enamored with them (kids have a sort of sixth-sense for these things) and they started to want their daddy. Not their mommy, not surprisingly, as she was a complete bitch. We mutually agreed (the mother and I) that I was not at ease with kids that young and she sent me on my way without paying me.
Voila: two careers that I am not at all cut out for: nanny and waitress. Shame.
Starbucks rang me the next day asking if I was still looking for work and to call them if so. Despite the fact that I spend enough of my time in there that I might as well work for them, I've never worked as a barista so I just couldn't take the humiliation of potentially another job fail (although it would have made for a good blog entry). So I'm now officially a bum, which leaves more time to go and see all of the things I haven't yet. And maybe write a novel. Or some poetry. Or whatever it is unemployed people do in Paris. Otherwise, I could be unemployed in Birmingham and I'm pretty sure that entails watching all-day Jeremy Kyle marathons with a can of Stella in one hand and a baby in the other. Shudder.
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