The past two weeks I have spent getting used to my internship, living arrangements, and the country of Monaco in general. It hasn’t exactly been the easiest thing to do. I mentioned before that Steffan, one of the restaurant managers always takes good care of me and makes sure I’m doing well. When he is at work I get to interact with customers, set up for banquets, work at banquets….basically I get to do and learn what I like. Unfortunately, I was just told that Steffan won’t be back for two to three weeks. That means I am working with Stephane (I know, it gets confusing). Stephane is the polar opposite of my sweet, caring Steffan. Steaphane is another restaurant manager and simply doesn’t seem to care what I’m doing. When I am working with him I usually get stuck working in the kitchen polishing glasses and silver wear. He is very intimidating and probably the most frustrating person I have ever had to deal with. Here is just one story that explains why he is so damn hard to work with:
The other night at work he told me to eat dinner at 5:30 and be back by 6:00. I went to the cafeteria and the food had not been set out. When it still hadn’t arrived in 15 minutes I went back to the restaurant to tell Stephane that that food had yet to arrive. He told me he had told the kitchen to take the food to the cafeteria and snapped at me to go back up and eat. When the food still had night arrived at 6:00 I just decided to give up and go back down and do some work in the restaurant. I just hoped that Stephane would see me and realize that I hadn’t eaten (I was starving after all). When he saw me doing stuff in the restaurant he quickly snapped at me “Hayden, I told you to go eat I can’t afford to have you taking hour breaks, this is ridiculous.” I calmly told him that the food was still not out so I thought I would come back and help set up for dinner until it arrived. He interrupted me and told me the food was there and I needed to eat and come back. Well the food still wasn’t there, so I just decided to sit in the cafeteria until it came. Finally Stephane came up and guess who got yelled at again for sitting in the cafeteria not doing anything?? This is only one of many frustrating Stephane stories. He won’t listen to anything you have to say and constantly interrupts.
So for the past few days I have been in the kitchen polishing or doing other monotonous tasks that require no brainpower or skill whatsoever. I miss Steffan.
Things haven’t been all bad though. I like most of the people I work with….especially a German guy named Andre. He absolutely loves Americans and ironically hates French people (even though he lives and works in France)…so we have that in common, ha. He’s always super nice to me and laughing and joking around, which helps me tolerate some of the things I hate about work.
Also something positive: I got to work at a wedding last Saturday. I was super excited to be able to do something different…especially a wedding since I’m such a wedding fanatic! It was a very interesting ceremony to say the least. All of the guests arrived around 6:00 to the Monte Carlo banquet room upstairs where we served them drinks and hour’ devours. There wasn’t very much in terms of decorations in the room except for a large heart…thing….made out of fake red roses and red ribbon. There were bright strobe lights in every color imaginable provided by the DJ. Like I said, it was interesting. At around 7:00 the bride and groom walked in and had the actually ceremony, vows and all (complete with a full-on make out session at the end) right on the dance floor. To my surprise, they were a much older couple. The entire wedding party was French, which was nerve-racking at first but after a little while I was able to understand them, and be understood just fine.
They had a full five-course menu planned for dinner; however, I quickly found that not everyone was happy with it. One half of the room was very pleasant to serve, and the other half was not. They weren’t happy with practically anything we served them and I can’t even begin to count the number of times things were sent back to the kitchen because “they weren’t cooked properly.” We even had a few guests asked us to make them something else because they didn’t like what was being served. It was kind of unbelievable that these people would have the audacity to ask for something other than what the bride and groom had chosen for them to eat.
That night I ended up getting off work at 3:30 am. I have about a thirty-minute walk home and in order to get to my apartment I have to walk through the train station. I knew that the station usually locks its gates to the entrance I am used to going in at around 2:00 am. So instead of walking my normal way I decided to use a different entrance, one that took longer to get to and had more stairs and hills to climb, but one that I was pretty positive would be open. After walking up the hill and reaching the door, I soon realized that it too was locked. It was 4:00 am at this point, my feet were killing me and I was exhausted. I had two options: I could either wait for the train station to open up in a few hours, or wander around until I found a new route home. I ended up choosing the latter. I just wanted my bed. So after another 30 minutes of walking (all uphill) I finally managed to find my way back to my apartment. I was pretty much dead. Thankfully, I had the next two days off so I had time to recover.
To my surprise and delight, I received a phone call as soon as I woke up the next morning from my cousin, Maggy. She was on a two-week trip exploring all different cities and countries of Europe, and Monaco happened to be the one she was in that day! I knew that she was coming but I wasn’t quite sure which day it would be, so I was excited to hear from her. I met her right outside the palace of Monaco and joined her and her friends as they finished up lunch. It was great to get the chance to see her!
The next two days I spent reading and napping on the beach and just enjoying my time off.
Over the course of the next four days was when I had the news broken to me that Seffan wouldn’t be back for a while…which made work not real enjoyable to say the least.
I’m hoping that I will receive some news about Steffan returning sometime soon when I head into work today….keep your fingers crossed for me!
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