Journal 3

 

After doing my first job for 2 weeks, I decided to find another one to cover my super high living expenses. Plus, the café would be closed for 1-2 weeks during Christmas at that time, So, I’d better find another one to prevent myself from getting broke. This was the first Christmas I spent during summer time. But because I was too busy finding jobs, I didn't enjoy much. Kind of a pity, actually. 

 

I started to drop more Resumés on the job-looking app and eventually a Vietnamese restaurant contacted me and asked me if I could go on a trial. I said yes and went there the day they contacted me. The restaurant run by a Vietnamese family. When I entered that restaurant, the first impression I had was that it was really dark. It barely had no light in it. I can imagine it’d be really hard for the customers to see the menu. When I finished the 3 hours trial, the manager asked me my availability and I worked there afterwards. But the time I worked there didn’t last very long. Mostly because the owner and manager there was too hot-tempered. I was always so stressed out and worried when I worked there, being afraid that I would make another mistake and they would shout at me. But they were okay after work. They would treat me some Vietnamese food and chat with me. I think they were probably just too burned out and had nowhere else to release their stress. Living abroad was not easy, especially for a whole family. The owner, Vincent, worked day and night and only slept 2 hours a day. And both of his two jobs were so physically high demanding. He must be extremely tired every day. 

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Although I could relate to them and feel really bad about their current situations, I still couldn’t stand to work in this kind of toxic working environment. I even rushed in the restroom and cried in the middle of working. And eventually I still had to pull myself together and start the work again. It was really hard. And in one period of time, I worked overtime as well. At most 11-12 hours a day and if I also had to add up the commute time, it’ll be 15 hours standing and walking altogether. I used to wake up with soreness and ache all over the body, my feet and waist specifically. And I had to control my emotions as well. At one point, I just couldn’t bear it anymore so I decided to quit. And that was the end of it.

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After quitting that job, I started to look for another one again. This time, I asked one of my coworkers, May, in the café. She told me her second job is around the café, and it’s a fine dining restaurant. She could ask her manager if she’s still hiring. A week later, I was asked to go on a trial.

 

It was a fine-dining restaurant located near the sea as well and upstairs is a theater called Bayly's Bistro. Even though I walked there according to where the google map led me to, I wasn’t too sure it was the place, because I didn’t expect in to be this fancy. Kind of nervous but enthusiastic, I walked down the stairs. There are a few waitresses and a tall, western woman, who I later found out to be the manager. 

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We started to introduce each other and the manager, Emma, brought out a list of today’s special menu. At that point, I started to become a little bit of anxious. I shouted inside “OMG, I haven’t even remembered the original food and drink menu yet!! And here it comes another??!” But Emma told me not to worry. She would only teach me some table setting skills and serving skills. 

 

For fine dining restaurant in Western countries, there are specific order for food. There goes Drink, Entreé, Main and Dessert. But some would skip the Entreé and jump right into the Mains. So for us waitresses, we need to ask the customers for their orders at least 3 times. Also, we need to remember the positions where the customers are sitting. So we could send the dishes right in front of the consumers who ordered it. Because of that, it’s kind of difficult to take care of many tables. Thus, we are then only accountable for a couple of tables and make sure they get the best services. We only need to take good care of the customers for our table. Namely, section waitress. 

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Some bonus of this job is that we get to taste the food on the menu before they sell it. So we’d know the taste of the food, and can better describe the food. But for me, even if I had tried the dishes beforehand, I still think it’s hard to explain everything to customers in English. (If you take a good look on the menu above, you'd know what I mean.) I will try my best, of course. But I did call out for help a lot when I first started. The customers can be really tricky and demanding sometimes. 

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The chef is Franch, and he is as well very hot-tampered. If we made any mistake in the dishes, he would be really mad. Even Emma were really annoyed by him sometimes. Because he got pissed off a lot. However, the sous chef, Ian, is really nice and are really generous to us. He often saved snacks or desserts for us waitresses. He hid them well so the chef didn’t find out. 

 

At that time, I only had one job, which is hard to support all of my daily expanses. Thus, I came looking for jobs again. This time, I chose to use the biggest job-seeking app, which I previously thought wasn’t that useful. Since there’re too many applicants using that app, I thought it would be extremely hard to find a decent one on that app. However, someone told me that the companies hiring on that app are also many. So I eventually decided to give it a try. This has proven to be very right. 

 

Before dropping my Resumes again, I asked Emma for some advises. (Since May introduced me so she didn’t see my resume) When she saw it, she frowned so hard and she pointed out the problems in this Resumé right away. She went “ Tina, you are not selling yourself. In here, you said ‘despite language barriers’. But there’s no language barriers, your English is fine! Also, you have to write down what you did in different job positions in detail. So the person hiring will know what you are capable of. If you only put down job titles, it’s hard for them to imagine all of your job duties!” 

 

She was right. I was not so confident of my abilities and my English skills. I thought maybe I was not good enough. So I can’t let them have too much expectations on me. But if even me don’t think that I’m the kind of person who worth being hired, why would others choose me? And she was right about my unclear job duties as well. So I was really thankful that she gave me these feedbacks. I revised my Resumé thoroughly and later used this Resumé to find a really decent job in the international airport in Sydney. 

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There’re so much more to talk about. So I probably would write the rest on Journal 4. If you are interested in knowing more stories, wait for it!!

 

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