Over the summer, I had the quite typical student experience of a summer job. A good way to earn money and something to occupy the long summer days that would otherwise be spent sitting in my room watching Instagram Reels and vaping.
I had chosen a job at a sort of posh cinema in central London working at their bar, this was for two reasons: one, I thought I may be able to secretly watch films when I was bored (this was decidedly not the case), and because I fancied myself a bit of a night owl and was far too flash for the mundane world of the 9 to 5. That being said, I entered the cinema on the first day quivering meekly and unable to look anyone in the eye. I got a rather brisk tour of the joint by a fairly aloof manager and was promptly steered towards the bar.
“Right, here you go, you should probably know how to make a coffee (I didn’t) and the cocktail recipes are in that book.”
I nodded silently.
“Off you go then.”
And just like that I was marooned, stuck on this rectangular island faced with one of the most horrifying adversaries that exists in this world: the general public.
The general public, as a whole, are completely, utterly, ridiculously, unabashedly mad. Every three or four people there will come an individual raging about nothing in particular or drunks who after consuming two or three bottles of wine in 45 minutes (in a cinema, mind you) have to be shown or chucked out into the street after they eventually cause some kind of incident that would shut the business down if not immediately addressed.
There was one incident when a man wearing a top hat and sporting a handlebar moustache (I’m not joking) insisted on moving a very heavy sofa across the room because its placement was apparently bothering his girlfriend. These people are, incidentally, always completely shocked when you try to foil their obviously insane schemes.
“Is there a rule I can’t move the sofa?”
“Well, no but…”
“Then I’m going to move it.”
“Sir, it’s going to damage the floor, please don’t move it.”
“Then come and help me pick it up.”
It really is depressing to find out how unhinged and asinine most people are.
On one particularly trying day, after I had managed to empty not one, but two of the stickiest cocktails known to man all over myself, making me decidedly a little less bright and chipper than usual, a woman was demanding ice in her wine. Now on the surface, I have no problem with this – I wouldn’t do it personally, but I guess red wine with ice is some kind of strange prerequisite when watching Despicable Me 4. She hurried up to me and began frantically waving her hands.
“Excuse me sir. SIR?”
“I’ll be with you in one second madam.” (I always called people madam when they were annoying me.)
“Sir I would like some ice, SIR!”
“I’m just pouring a pint, I’ll be right with you.”
Nothing could have prepared me for what this woman did next. She, despite being maybe in her late sixties, dived over the bar like some kind of sea creature, plunging her presumably unwashed hands into the ice box and started shovelling fistfuls of ice into her drink. I was so stunned by this that I just froze, staring at this woman who was busily plopping ice cubes into her cheap Merlot.
“Oh, did I do something wrong?” she said, unbothered.
I was glaring at this woman like an angry Paddington bear.
“Actually, you know what, I think I’ll have a cocktail instead.”
Madness, I thought after work squatting in the street like a Dickensian orphan eating my overpriced wasabi meal. Is the money really worth it? No. Then why do it? I think service industry jobs give us a chance to see humanity in its primal state. At its most drunken, belligerent and glutinous. This gives you a powerful sense of empathy whenever you are the customer as opposed to a worker. No longer will I tisk when my Maccies order takes too long, nor when I get a regular Coke instead of a diet one from Deliveroo. Society makes it too easy to see people in a uniform as invisible and if you work in hospitality, you never will again.
Suddenly a man drove past me and stuck his head out of the car.
“Oi! Nice dinner, sushi boy!”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was a Katsu curry.
