At the Ritz

For the past 4 days, I took up a short stint as a guest relation officer at Ritz-Carlton Hotel. After those 4 days there, I can only say life is tough.

To some, being able to work at Ritz-Carlton sounds glamorous, ya, Liyun, you sounded so envious while Im like more envious of you students. Behind the facade of such a beautiful and classy lobby that guests see when they enter the hotel are complicated, winding staff passageways where I always got lost. Collecting my pay was also tough as there were like so many bureaucratic procedures that I have to follow.

Work there was almost a big killer. I had to stand all day, opening the big glass doors for guests with such a big smile that my face was cracking. Well, actually, what cracked was not really my face, but my 2-inch thick makeup. The makeup was thick enough for stage makeup at Kallang Theatre so much so that when I met Jiadai on the train after work she asked me if Id just had a performance. I dont know if it was PMS but, I was so drained out after work that I felt like dying. My colleagues expected me to know what to do, but I didnt, and after asking, they made me feel stupid. I dont know, but I thought that the people working there spoke in a tone that sounds superior which to my ears made me feel stupid, and they were ALWAYS asking others how were they and I hate it when they ask me that cos you cant really expect me to answer “Shitty!” and I really cant bring myself to answer in their model answer of “Excellent!” cos I really feel shitty.

At the end of the second day, I felt so so bad that I thought I was going to burst. Thanks, Vic, for lending a listening ear! Tuesday night was one of the most remarkable nights ever in my life. After feeling so bad, another chain of incidents really lit up my life again! First there was the nice chat with Vic, then I met Jiadai on the train. There I was chatting animatedly on the phone with Vic when Jiadai messaged me that she was on the same train as me, but no matter how I looked I couldnt see her, finally I heard her voice and went to chat with her. When feeling down, friends are the ones who can provide you with the comfort you would need. Really. Thanks Jiadai! Things didnt end there, just when I was feeling loads better, I met Alexis at the MRT station! He just left camp and was going home cos he had an interview the next day. It was really great catching up with him at the bus stop. That is really what I like most about 4B, you can put any two 4B people together and we can just talk, well, almost all... Its nice knowing from Alexis that basically all the 4B people did very well for the A levels, many people got like 3As 1B, the rest also did reasonably well. Its also nice to know that Alexis applied for dentistry (?!) and was given an interview, all the best to you, Alexis! And also good luck to you over in the army, dont get sent into military jail (although you seem to have half a foot in it already)! Really, after the nice catching up with him, bad feelings? all thrown out of the window liao!

Okay, back to my job... What I liked about the job was meeting lots of different kind of people, being able to lead them around the hotel, rendering them all the help that they can get, and also going around to check the state of the rooms to see if they were all in order. I even went into the presidential suite! but it was to do the most unglamorous job of sending a message... haiz...

In my short (it seemed really long then!) 4 days there, I also learn many things like having to control my temper, even when I think Im right I must also appear to accept that Im wrong. The high points during my work there... I received a nice big tip of $10!! I didnt expected it cos I didnt do much to that pair of guests, just led them around and answered a couple of questions, gave them advice on where to go shopping, so the tip was very sudden. Well, rich people are just rich people... How envious can I get?! The funny thing was that the guest slipped the tip into my hand while we shook hands so Id thought that the piece of paper was some rubbish that he wanted me to help him throw away so I didnt thank him for that tip... Well, in Ritz-Carlton, there isnt any dustbins, so our poor staff always have to improvise as portable dustbins... sounds stupid, but the threat of terrorism outweighs stupidity...

I also got to meet some famous people and one of them was Prof Tommy Koh! He was at the hotel for some UN seminar or something and when he was leaving, I held the door open for him! Sounds pretty unglamorous, but hey, its Prof Tommy Koh leh...

In all, it was an eye-opening experience working there, but Im not in it anymore, my poor legs are all spoilt from prolonged standing, my poor toes are in blisters from the stuffy shoes, my torso is stiff from the prolonged upright posture that I have to maintain to look good in that uniform, my shoulders are aching from all the opening and closing of those heavy glass doors (note: shouldnt it be my forearms aching? I used body weight to open the doors, so its my shoulders that ached... must rmb that someone failed her IFAH, so it was almost impossible for her to use her forearms to open the doors), my face has deteriorated from the heavy use of cosmetics, my head hurts from the tight bun that I have to put up... hai...

But the most pressing agenda I have now is to find someone to accompany me to Faye Wong’s concert... Im getting so desperate that Im willing to negotiate the price of the ticket and suffer a loss... Calling, if you are interested, do not hesitate to call me to negotiate a price, really...

Like. Don't Like.

I like being able to help my customers.

I like being able to answer my customers’ questions.

I like it when after asking if my customer has Robinsons’ card, he takes it out and thus being able to enjoy special discounts.

I like it when my supervisor asks me to help her.

But then again,

I dont like packing stuff.

I dont like folding clothes.

I dont like making mistakes.

I dont like customers who think they are the king and/or queen of the universe.

work. sian.

I have started working again. I dont like it.

I thought that perhaps I could do more cashiering this time, but I am so so wrong. I ended up doing more packing than ever. I had to pack bottles after bottles, tubes after tubes, boxes after boxes of facial wash, shampoo, shower foam, hand cream, masks, blah. Lunch was staggered, so poor little me had to have lunch alone. Luckily, the people there are quite nice and understanding and I was also let off on time, without having to complete what I was doing.

The best thing is that I am off today and tmr. What a nice duty roster... haha... I hope when I return back to work I can get to do more cashiering, but I dont think that would happen. We are now preparing for our sales and need more manpower to do the horrible packing and arranging and blah, the cashier counters are left unattended, only when there are customers then the cashiers will rush over to the counters and even then it is usually the more experienced staff that do the cashiering. haiz...

If only I can strike the lottery, or marry some rich guy, or something similar, then I can spend the rest of my life slacking around in luxury... ...

Fallen Angel Cries...

this is it.

the name of this blogskin coincidentally is a wong kar wai movie title. 1996, starring leon lai and takeshi kaneshiro, it is one of two wong kar wai movies without tony leung chiu wai involved. fallen angels, or duo4 luo4 tian1 shi3, is about hong kong prostitutes, and like most other wongs movies, the plot is forgettable. the blogskin was done by someone called wah_biangz, due credit must be given. i dont know if wah_biangz is a guy or girl, only that that person should be 18 this year, and i strongly suspect that wah_biangz is a singaporean. i mean, which other peoples in the world would call themselves wah_biangz man. here, im bowing three times to wah_biangz in gratitude of this wonderful skin which i think really expresses my deep felt sentiments. with a blog titled castle in the clouds, this angel is now degenerated, only able to pine for the clouds... ...

okay, enough of all the introduction. i hereby proclaim myself yet again unemployed! im done with the stint with john little, made many new friends, some others would be jerlin, julius, jin rong, willy... but ive also met some really qigek people, like this dumb sub packer whom i dont know his name, and dont want to know anyway. he was me and sherrys sub packer for 45min on sunday when our packers when for dinner. in the first min, he had already pissed me off with his lack of common sense. i had this customer who bought over $200 worth of items and my counter was overflowing with lots of small items, so i asked the dear dumb packer to help me pack the stuff first since sherrys customer had only bought a single bag which sherry could easily pack it herself, but my dear dumb packer started ranting that since sherrys customer had only one item, he wanted to pack that first. nevermind that, but he continued ranting that i treated him as if he was a thousand-handed guanyin. like come on man, what your problem?!

okay, i didnt mind that, but not long after, i needed some help with the nets machine as it ran out of paper, and i could not fit the paper in, i asked him if he knew how to do it, he tried but couldnt do it, but later muttered under his breath that feeding paper into the nets machine was supposed to be my job and why wasnt i able to do it. i was so shocked when i heard that, so i asked him what did he mean by that, he was like ohh nothing, i was just talking to myself. hey, if you are not happy say it out lah, what do you mean by saying in that manner?! like you are so great meh?

being a cashier, i had to retain my composure and smile to all my customers even though i was boiling inside. but i did almost lose my cool at one point in time when i was almost done with a customer, left with only one item to scan. my dumb packer was like telling me to just press 3. i mean, press what 3?! only one item was left why did i need to press 3? he went over to my keyboard and pressed function 3, repeat line, cos that item was the same with the previous item. he said that that would have been much faster, but really, walking to the key board and pressing that button was slower that me scanning that item. i told him off, he was damn displeased and started ranting under his breath. really, if there werent many customers, he would have been dead meat!

xumin was also pissed off with him when she came by my counter to collect the used plastic shopping bags and asked him if he could compress those bags when he dumped them in her bag. ya, he started ranting again. sherry was also quite unhappy when our place was filled with plastic bags (my legs was literary buried under those plastic bags) and he ranted that our counter was like a rubbish dump. in actual fact, he was supposed to be the one clearing the bags, but he didnt do it. he blamed us. but when we have long queue of customers behind us, we really couldnt do anything about it. thanks a lot im never seeing him ever again!

but luckily, that 45min was the only bad thing that happened to me during my 8 days of work. also, i got the chance to touch and see a $1000 note, purple in colour, with a picture of the government house on it, and a US$100 note, a true greenback...

looking forward: dinner at hyatts tmr night. chocolate fountain, here i come!!! but then again, i recently gained some weight again, my pantes became tighter. damn scared leh... sekali after tmr night i cant wear my new clothes then how arh?! die... i think i better not eat lunch, keep my stomach empty for dinner, so so looking forward to it! poor friends, i promise to give a full account of my meal in great detail asap so you can imagine yourself eating them. till then, you may quench your appetite with my 12 jan's piece! *giggles* *more giggles* *most giggles*

Warehouse Sales at the Expo

my arms and back are so so tired from all the heavy manual work setting up the wares for sales. my legs are tired from all the walking and standing around over long periods of time. my butt aches from all the long periods of time sitting on the cold hard expo ground. the term cashier was in fact a farce as basically i didnt do much cashiering, i did do some, but most of the time is doing odd works and trying out different ways to skive off work while apparently doing work.

the only thing good that came out of this stint was the friends id made. the girls ive befriends on tues and wed, rose, felicia, andrea, jaime, colleen, it was fun hanging out with them thinking of ways to do work when we werent doing anything at all. confused? an example, packing and folding clothes allowed us to have an excuse to sit of the floor, so we took a box of clothes, tagged them, folded them, sorted them in designs and colours, packed them neatly into the box, all at extremely slow speeds, then emptied the box, and packed them all over again. another example, when we were supposed to put up signages, we took the different signs and walked all around the expo hall looking as though we were finding suitable positions to put them up when we were in fact just blindly walking around and chatting. okay, i aint that lazy! it was just that most of the stuff we were supposed to do had been done and there was nothing to do but we cant blatantly just sit around and do nothing so we had to think of these ways to occupy ourselves!

finally, today i got to touch the cash till and serve customers. n i hell screwed them all up man! i broke down on the first customer i served. i was like so damn slow, made a whole lot of mistakes, and had to trouble my poor in-charge siew geok to help me clear up the mess while i had to endure pissed look of that dear customer. i fumbled on my first customer paying by nets too. id just blanked out on how to operate that stupid machine and had to call in siew geok again. luckily this customer was very easy going and he n his friend actually could joke with me being a pathetic greenhorn. well, to redeem myself, my cashiering skills actually improved along with the number of customers id served. yay!

n i did make more friends today. there is fellow cashier sherry whom i slacked around with today after id got ridden of my cashiering duties, my dear packer ser yang from ntu who had to work for his hostel hall, some other slacking merchandise clearer thian boon and his friend who took sherry and i on a slacking expedition around the expo hall, a poor san who had to sort out ladies wear all by himself until sherry, colleen and i went over to skive by apparently helping him, and many more other fellow slacking souls. another redemption was that john little really employed too many temp staff this time.

working at this expo sales really introduced many different kinds of people to me and it let me see how unreasonable some singaporeans can be. there was this old malay woman who wanted to buy a whole lot of crockery and insisted to the cashier that it is cheaper than we thought so when we knew matter of factly that we were correct. that woman insisted on seeing our in-charge, and when told over and over again the correct price, she decided to leave that big box of breakable items with us and continued shopping while thinking if she still wanted those goods. she came back to that same counter again with another box of similar crockery and said she didnt want the previous box when basically both are of the same items with the same price. really damn kanasai one!!!

the most head shaking people are those women who pick up bags and bags of clothes over to a corner then slowly pick and decide which ones do they really want, then just dump the rest of the clothes around. some women are even more impressive. since this john little sale is not equipped with fitting rooms, those women would pick up bags of clothes over to one side and try them on over their clothes, under their clothes, and when picking out clothes for children, they treated the whole expo area as one big fitting room. those poor kids. by the mid day, most kids were visibly bored stiff. one little boy around 2 years was so fed up with his mother that he kept walking away from her to sherry, colleen and me picking up hangers for us. like duh?! but because we were as bored as him, we humoured him. like even more duh?!

if only there were like some shuai ges around, maybe work will be more fun. but basically the guys there are like so so pathetic, not to mention short, like double the patheticness. haiz...