Getting Out With A Bang!!

Pretty consistently during my career at Cantina I worked double shifts on Sundays.  Sunday was actually my favorite day to work.  It was by far the most profitable…at least the way I did it.  The morning shift was hit or miss, and it was mine to manage.  The second shift manager usually came in at 4:30, but when I was doing doubles my second ‘cocktailing’ shift started at 3:00.  So for an hour and a half I was both the Manager on Duty and the only Cocktail server on duty.  This combination was very stressful and exhausting on those Sundays that were “hit”.

This particular Sunday was one of the stressful ones; after a busy morning in the dining room it was non-stop all night in the bar.  Once all patrons left, all tables were cleared and cleaned, and all monies were counted, I went down to the office to cash out with Darren.

I was so tired and brain-dead that I could barely carry on a conversation with him.  All I could think about was getting home and sleeping.  He said all my numbers matched and I was good to go.  So I said good night and went to leave out the back stairwell.  That is the way I exited Cantina about 90% of the time after my shift.  The door was a little warped and could stick sometimes, but by this point I was pretty familiar with most of the ‘quirks’ of Cantina.

So after I slunk up the stairs, I went to open the door but it was stuck.  I double checked to make sure it was unlocked and tried again.  Still nothing.  What the hell?!?!  I wasn’t going to let this door keep me from my bed so I threw my hip in to it.  Nothing.  Now I was getting mad.  So I started throwing my whole body in to the door trying to get it to budge.

BAM!  BAM! “What the hell is wrong with this stupid door?!?!”  BAM! BAM!

After a little while my hip was starting to get sore so I took a little break.  Darren all the while was just sitting in the office listening to the ridiculousness at the top of the stairs.  When the banging stopped he checked to see if I made it out.

“Caitlin?”

“Yeah?”

...silence...
...silence...

“...pull”

With just the slightest amount of effort, this time I was successful at PULLING the door open.  What a novel idea!

I couldn’t believe my stupidity.  I went back down to the office and laughed uncontrollably with Darren for a solid 5 minutes before catching my breath.  On my way home I was still so embarrassed and giggling so hard that multiple people thought I was crying and asked me if I was okay.  To which I should have responded (if I could’ve stopped laughing long enough to answer) “not in the head I’m not!” 

One Fatal Flush

While living in Aspen I worked at the Mexican restaurant La Cantina.  That job will most likely go down as one of my best jobs ever.  Not only were the money and the atmosphere phenomenal, but the friendships I made with my coworkers are the kind that will last a lifetime.  Over my almost four years on the payroll I saw a lot of people come and go; but throughout there was a core group of us that remained as close as family.  To this day I still consider them as such, even though we are currently spread out across the country.  Darren was (and is) the fearless leader of this family, the Mama Pata if you will.  He was the kind of boss/friend that I told EVERYTHING to and often turned to for advice.

So now that I’ve given a brief background, on with the story…

My usual shift started at 3:30pm.  Often times I would be doing something around town during the day then just head in to work a little early and get ready there.  The restrooms at Cantina are located downstairs, but there is one single handicapped bathroom upstairs located near the entrance to the kitchen.  At some point it was determined that this was the “employee bathroom”.   It was here that I always changed and got ready for my shift, this day was no different.

Before changing my shirt, I took the sunglasses that are always resting on top of my head and hooked them in to my pocket so they wouldn’t fall.  My memory doesn’t allow me to recall exactly what led up to this, but somewhere during my “getting ready” those sunglasses somehow flew out of my pocket and landed with a splash right in to the toilet.

I had not used the toilet while in there so the glasses were just sitting in plain old toilet water.  Any normal human being would have just reached in, grabbed them out, rinsed them off and gone on with their lives as if nothing happened.  If I were normal, and if that’s how this story went, then it probably wouldn’t be on this blog now would it?

I went for option B.  I bolted out of the bathroom in search of Darren.  The restaurant was fairly empty at that time of day so I expected to find him just standing there wiping menus, ready to save the day.  Instead I found him talking to some customers about who knows what.  The customers’ backs were to me so I tried my best to get in Darren’s line of sight and get his attention.  I kept giving him my “It’s important, I need you” look.  I’m pretty sure he interpreted it as my “I have something really funny to tell you and I can’t wait” look and ignored me. 

After what seemed like forever, Darren ended his conversation and walked over towards me. 

“D!  I need your help!  I know this is going to sound REALLY weird, but I need you to come to the bathroom with me and see what I did,” I explained.  Surprisingly, he didn’t question me and the two of us went to investigate.

I pulled the door handle only to discover it was locked.  NOOO!!  I immediately realized that the woman who had been sitting at table 4 just 30 seconds ago had somehow snuck by me and was in the bathroom.

“Smiles, what is going on?” Darren asked.  I led him around the corner and explained what had happened. 

“Why didn’t you just take them out?”
“Because I came looking for you instead!”  DUH!

As soon as Table 4 lady exited, we both rushed in to assess the damage.  We were greeted with an empty toilet bowl.  It seemed as though the glasses were flushed with ease.  Since there didn’t appear to be any clogging, we assumed all was right with the world again; I giggled, Darren shook his head saying, “oooh Smiley, Smiley, Smiley.  You crazy.”  And we moved on with our lives.

The next day I had off so I went down valley to do some shopping.  Early afternoon I received a phone call from the manager on duty at Cantina.  He was calling to inform me that because of my sunglass flushing incident the toilet in the employee bathroom was overflowing and flooding the area.  Apparently one of the other employees on duty hadn’t heard about the incident and used the facilities to go #2.  The combination of her actions with my sunglasses caused a blockage in the pipes and thus the overflowing.  The manager said it was severe enough a problem that a plumber was called; he just thought I should be aware since I was partly to blame.  It didn’t sound too serious and a plumber was on his way, so again, I figured all was right with the world and I went on with my day. 

A few hours later I got a call from Darren, “You need to get in here.”  He didn’t sound his normal chipper self, and he didn’t call me by my nickname…this can’t be good.

Upon arriving back at Cantina I was greeted by a straight-faced Darren, “Come with me.  I want you to see what you’ve caused.”  Apparently the clog from earlier in the day required the plumber to snake the drain.  When the snake met the sunglasses in the drain it caused the device to jerk back.  The backlash of the jerk did this…

Oops!!

Thankfully this incident wasn’t what ended my Cantina career.  I don’t know what it was that made Darren show mercy on me for this very expensive mistake.  Perhaps it was because a family’s love is unconditional, you stick together through thick and thin.  Or perhaps it was because he figured keeping me around was the best way to get repaid.  Whatever it was, I’m grateful for it.  It would have been quite the shame if I had lost that job to one fatal flush!

Welcome to the Other Side of the Pond

When I first started with StyleMark, I was sent to our Polaroid lens manufacturing plant in Scotland for a couple days for training.  Originally I was booked to fly out of Boston Friday evening and arrive in Glasgow Saturday morning.  That’s actually an interesting side story…our flight took off and headed towards Newark, where 90% of the passengers had layovers before their international flights.  Normally that’s about a 45 minute flight.  An hour and a half went by and we were still airborne.  Turns out we had been circling the Newark airport because it was too windy to land.  Eventually it got to the point where we didn’t have enough fuel to continue circling, so we headed back to Beantown. All the other passengers were livid; we were all going to miss our connections. No more flights until the next morning.   Since it wasn’t necessary for me to be in Scotland until Monday, I volunteered to go home and come back the next evening to try it again.

So plans changed a little.  My coworker in Scotland that had been assigned to ‘chaperone’ me while I was there was a guy named Paul, one of our VPs.  As luck would have it, the weekend that I was arriving also happened to be the weekend that he and his family had planned a ski trip up north.  While he couldn’t be there to actually show me around, he gave me a list of great things to do.  I have never had a problem entertaining myself and love exploring new cities; so I was just fine wandering the streets of Glasgow alone.  If I had arrived on Saturday, I was going to spend that day exploring Glasgow and head to Edinburgh on Sunday for the rugby match.  Obviously that’s not how the real plans went.  Instead I spent Sunday exploring Glasgow.

I was still a little bummed out that I wasn’t able to make it to Edinburgh so I looked for a pub in which I could watch the match.  I stumbled upon a fabulous pub right downtown; got myself a Smithwicks, and found an open bench where I planted myself in front of the tvs.  After a little while two guys sat down at the other end of the bench (it was a very long bench).  One of the guys was normal looking (jeans and a long sleeve shirt).  The other guy’s outfit SCREAMED Scotland.  He was wearing a kilt, one of those Irish/Scottish hats, and a rugby polo that was literally the flag of Scotland.  I loved it!  Well it was only a matter of time before we got to chatting.  Turns out it was Mr. Scotland’s birthday (that’s what I’m calling the guy who the souvenir shop threw up on).  After about an hour they had to leave, another party was awaiting their arrival.  They invited me to go with them, but the party required us to get in their car.  My momma taught me never to get in a car with strangers so I passed on the invite, but wished them well.

(not actual photo of Mr.Scotland...the best replica I could create with my ghetto PhotoShop)

Fastforward to later that night…

Paul had left a cell phone for me to use while in Europe, but forgot to leave me a charger.  So he said he would swing by and drop one off for me once he got back in to town.  I was  having dinner at the cute little Italian restaurant right next to my hotel when Paul texted saying he was on his way to meet me.  I texted back to let him know where I was “At Antipasti. Small table right by the big glass wall.  You can’t miss me”.  (Don’t worry I refrained from jumping in to this wall)

Now this was the first time I was meeting ANYONE from our Polaroid Europe team, so I was pretty nervous.  I really wanted to make a good first impression.  Paul arrived, gave me the charger, and hung out for a little bit so we could get to know each other and discuss our plans for the next few days.  A few minutes in to our conversation I happened to glance out the glass wall.  And who do I see stumbling down the sidewalk?? Good old Mr. Scotland!

I tried to nonchalantly turn my body so just my back was facing out.  Then all of a sudden the restaurant was filled with the sounds of loud banging on the glass.  Everyone in the place turned to see Mr. Scotland frantically waving at me.  I gave him a smile hoping he’d walk away.  He walked away, but towards the door to the restaurant.  Mr. Scotland barged in the door bellowing my name, “CAITLIN!! I’m so glad I found you!!  Are you coming drinking with us?!?!?!”  For a second I didn’t say anything.  I could feel the irritated stares of other diners as well as the very confused look coming from Paul’s side of the table.

“Not sure if I’ll make it out.  This is my coworker Paul that I was telling you about.”  I thought changing the subject would distract everyone and take the attention off of me.  Thank God the lighting was bad so no one could tell how red I was turning!

After the two of them discussed the day’s match for a bit (it was a tough loss) Mr. Scotland was ready to continue on to the next pub.

“Well Caitlin, we’re all going to be at Jinty McGinty’s for the next few hours.  Come join us for a pint or two later,” and he was gone.  I turned back to Paul.  With a very perplexed look on his face he asked, “Didn’t you just arrive in town a few hours ago??  How do you know that guy??”

“Yes I did just arrive today.  That was just a friend I made while watching the rugby match today.  I tend to make friends when I’m left alone.  And Scottish people are so nice,” I tried my best to change the subject so normal color could return to my face.

Paul has since become one of my most favorite coworkers (behind Marike of course ☺) and to this day he still loves to tell that story.  I guess I succeeded in making an impression…just not quite the one I had in mind.