t3rribl3on3
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« on: August 26, 2009, 06:08:36 PM » |
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Please note: below this is not my writing and was sentto me by a friend. Hopefully you will find it as funny and interesting as i did.
Hello everybody. I guess you've all heard the wonderful news by now. Yes, Taylor and I are certified fishmongers and we're going to take you through an average day at the Sydney Fishmarkets.
3:53 a.m. Stupid Alarm clock goes off (we set it early because it's always better to wake up and then realize you still have another 20 mins or so to go back to sleep)
4:20 a.m. Alarm number two goes off, and if I'm quick I can usually turn it off and set it for 4:30 before Taylor wakes up. If he does wake up then he gets up and talks about "being late" and "responsibilty" and some other stupid stuff.
4:30 a.m. Breakfast cereal time (which we buy at Woolworths because it's the cheapest grocery store around. Funny aside about Woolworths, when you walk in there is a pyramid of about 20,000 jars of Nutella right at the entrance. So everytime we go grocery shopping we always find a clerk near the entrance and we're like "hey, do you guys have any Nutella?" and then turn around and go, "Oh there it is!"
4:45 a.m. by now we have thrown on our disgusting smelling fishy polo-esque DeCosti Fishmarket shirts (Decosti being the name of the store), our disgusting smelling fishy Decosti Fishmarket hats, and the shorts that we've given up on ever wearing again after this job and sacrificed to the fishmarket cause. (not to mention these huge black socks that I have which are possibly the worst smelling things on earth (according to taylor), although I don't have a problem with them.)
4:45-5:15 a.m. This is where we stumble through the city of sydney on our half-hour walking commute to the fishmarket. It is possibly the worst time of the day because we know we have the whole miserable day ahead of us. This misery is compounded by all of the drunk revelers from the night before (worst on Friday and Saturday mornings), who are merry and full of happiness which just makes us hate them and ourselves all the more. The worst is this stupid bar that is open 24hrs that we pass by when we're almost there. Everytime we pass we hear music and look through the windows and see people laughing and flirting and dancing. I feel like a little orphan kid looking in upon a happy family eating christmas dinner, while I'm out in the snow with no shoes on and holes in my clothes (and black coal smudge marks on my cheeks, and I'd have a Cockney accent).
5:20 a.m. We cross the road and are at the fishmarkets. There is a breathtaking moment when we smell the last wisp of clean fresh air before the wet, awful blanket of fish smell smothers us. Then every day I turn to Taylor and say "Wait for it, Wait for it, steady..., wait, Oh , OH there it is, while wagging my finger and breathing through my mouth."
5:25 a.m. We change into our huge rubber aprons and black rubber boots upstairs in the guys changing room, Taylor always rushes so that he can get down before me so everyone thinks he got here earlier and I'm just a good for nothing, lazy worker. We go out behind the store where there is the pleasant aroma of Dumpster and rotting fish, we negotiate our way past broken styrofoam containers that are pink with fish juice, and homeless kittens who are lapping said juice, underneath the perpetual clouds of flies to the huge Ice machines. BY the way, it's still pitch black outside, I feel like I'm a mole and I'm never going to see the sun again. These Ice machines are huge and there's two of them. They are basically the backs of tractor-trailer trucks and you open these huge heavy doors, climb up inside and shovel out about 2 tons of ice into 40 buckets (that are the size of recycling bins). That's just the flake ice (which we use to set up the display, there is also "chunk" ice which we use to ice down the fish and fish paraphenalia and that is another 20 buckets).
6:00-8:00 a.m. Set up time for the fish. Taylor and I are in charge of the fillets (pronounced like Todd Billet, without the Todd). We haul out stacks of buckets of fish (26 different fish usually) and then we lay them out fillet by fillet decoratively in these large display windows. If we don't lay them out fast enough then we get yelled at. If we don't take our time and lay them all out perfectly and with all the tails lined up in the right spot (although it's a different spot for every fillet), we get yelled at. Basically at this time of the day we have one main enemy,(because our nefarious bosses don't come in until 8:30 or so to yell at us)and that is the motherfucking slowest clock in the history of the world! It looks down at us from the wall and it's like "Oh, it's only been 30 seconds since the last time you looked at me, and I bet you thought it'd been longer! You're so stupid Mat, you keep looking at me, and I'm just gonna go slower and slower) So this is where we pull our hats down real low and go off into our little fantasy world where we sing songs to ourselves and whistle and pretend that we are anywhere but where we are, while letting this miserable task consume the little mental energy we have (sometimes I fall asleep standing up, like a horse, and Taylor yells at me). When we lay the fish out we have to make a judgement call as to whether or not it's gone bad. If it has, then we don't throw it away, oh no!, nothing goes to waste here. We throw it in a bucket labeled "Marinara" and Uncle Jimmy cuts it up and we resell it as "Marinara Mix" to unsuspecting customers. The boss will be like, "Good God man, Get that diseased fish out of the window", and we'll be like "What do we do with it?" Boss will say "Marinara" We really didn't get a whole lot of training on this part, basically they're like, "smell it and if it smells bad, then don't display it." The Jokes on them though, because I don't want to smell bad fish so I always pretend to smell it, then I ask Taylor "Hey Taylor you think this is Bad?" If we're not sure, we're like "Hey, we're not eating it." Sometimes we sing "If you're sliding into first and you feel a sudden burst, Marinara, Marinara. If you're driving in your chevy and your shorts are getting heavy, Marinara, Marinara."
8:00-10:00 a.m. This is the stage where we try to service customers and walk around like we're really busy to avoid our bosses. This worked very well for the first three weeks when we had to contend with Frank, a.k.a. the devil. Frank is the embodiment of Evil, he is a little man with a huge complex and he basically walks around, pissing on everyone's soul for a good 30 seconds, systematically making everyone feel miserable before he goes out and walks around the front talking on his cell-phone. He is an angry, bitter man who I think I'm going to punch on my last day of work. He makes these girls cry at work when they don't answer the phone fast enough. The worst part is that he's so fake, he'll ream you out, and then turn around and put on a huge smile and pretend to be fascinated with some lady's stupid little kid, just so the customer gets a sense of well-being and buys more fish. Now the reason that we could get away with our quick moving and fast-paced doing nothing (which is accomplished by keeping the hat low to avoid eye-contact, walking fast and purposefully-especially when entering or exiting an area- and preferrably holding something in your hand, like a box or a live Mud Crab.) Frank, is like a retarded seagull with Diarrhea, he just goes around shitting randomly at whatever is in his vicinity, and you just lay low and hope the storm passes by without you getting hit. Also he'll yell at you for doing something wrong or tell you to do something, but then forget about it 20 mins later (so you really don't have to always do it.) He's rarely around, he just whirls in, makes people cry, then leaves early (always talking on his cellphone, probably to his mistress with which he is having an affair with, while his son (who also works in the shop (and yes I know there are alot of parentheses in this sentence) ) is standing right there when she comes by. Anyways, Frank is so intolerable that they are trying to move him to another store (They being the Owner George who's brother is married to Frank's sister, hence Franks insurmountable position) This brings us to the new Manager (or manager in Training), Chris.
Now, you may be asking yourselves, "how could anyone be worse than Frank?" And quite Frankly (no pun intended) so were we.
Not for long.
Chris is a huge, fat, bald, cross-eyes, stumbling, sweating, bull of a man from New Zealand. He is the kid that was picked on in school and hence the minute he gets a little bit of authority, takes his revenge on the weakest. Thankfully neither Taylor or I are considered weak (remember we are the Fillet setter uppers) and Chris totally rages on the 16 yr old Greek kids who rinse out boxes and stuff. However, we are still under his insufferable scrutiny. Every second of every day, Chris is ambling around asking people "What are you up to?, or "What are you doing" and if you do not have an immediate task that you are performing, he'll find you one. He is the embodiment of the "Got time to lean? Got time to Clean!" mentality that terrorizes supermaket employees all over the world (and yes, Chris formerly was the manager of a supermarket). For example, We'll be busting our asses to set everything up perfectly and the minute that it's done and Taylor says "hey, let's go out and have fun on our day off in 5 weeks," Chris will hone in on our "Yapping, and Chin wagging" and say, "Mat, What are you up to?" Usually I try to fend him off with inventing something that I'm about to do that needs to get done, like icing down the fillets, or building the ice wall in the back of the display, but there's only so much I can invent, and Chris is a pestering persistent son of a bitch. I'll stammer, and be like " I was just going to ah, um" and he'll say, "Why don't you go into this sub-zero walk in Freezer (which is the size of a large room), take those 500 60lb frozen boxes of salmon out of the freezer, scrub down the walls and floors, re-label all of the prices, then hoist up them back up onto the racks in an orderly way. And when you're done with that come find me, I got something else for you to do. "Yeah sure chris, I'll be right on it, you stumbling, bumbling, lazy-eyed AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!! " So when we go back out to the fillet section and one section is running low, we get yelled at for not keeping the section up to date and fully stocked.
10:00 a.m. Finally it's ten a.m., the clock moving slower than the fish slime down the back of my leg. We go right next door to the overpriced asian run "restaurant" and try to find something healthy and cheap, but it never is either. The clock gets even more comeuppance by moving deviously faster than half-priced swordfish steaks. I barely have time to take off my apron when Taylor's like "come on, we have to get back, it's been 20 mins." Then I point to the clock in the restaurant and say, "no it's only been 15 minutes" That worked for a week or two until Taylor figured out that the clock in the shop was 5 mins faster than the restaurant clock. So now I always say "we have 5 more minutes" and Taylor says "Dude, that clock is faster" and I pretend that I didn't know that. This happens every morning and sometimes we laugh at it, then we cry in the restaurant bathroom (which has this cool foamy soap dispenser, but conveniently nothing to dry your hands with.)
10:20 a.m. Taylor has already sprinted to get back to the store or God Forbid he's 1 minute late from his break (which they barely keep track of anyways), and he's already serving customers by the time, lazy, good-for-nothing Mat shows up, after having sat down for an extra thirty seconds to massage his aching back and feet. Sometimes I really hate Taylor.
10:20- 2:00 p.m. These are the slow hours. The nebulous time between breakfast and lunch which pass by slower than "2001 A SPACE ODDESSY" This is the time when we just serve customers and run around doing ridiculous chores for Chris. Sometimes people will buy a whole fish and want it cleaned. Then we go into the Fillet Room. This is a room with a bunch of tables and knives and cutting implements, also powers saws and hoses and drains and stuff. There are these 4 gay Vietnamese fillet guys (Fong, Dong, Vhan, and Charlie) who are so fast with fillet knives, that If America had been an Ocean Trout, then the Vietnam war would have been alot messier (i'm not really sure what that means, but I'm gonna go with it). Also, they listen to non-stop Vietnamese hardcore Trance music, which is like Techno meets Yanni and the Japanese Flutist. Whenever we walk in, they turn to us and dance with their knives, making very homosexual gestures and winking.
Sometimes we walk out to the back. This turns into a very dangerous operation whenever Dr. Octopus is around. Dr. Octopus is a seventy-year old semi-blind, greek man, who doesn't talk to anybody and he wears these huge pink plastic gloves. He comes in every day and handles all of the octopus and squid related products. One time the sushi guy (a 110 lb. Tiawanese man) and Dr. Octopus got in an argument, and the old greek bastard threw a right hook, and ended up getting the sushi guy in a headlock before it got broken up. You don't mess with another man's octopus, especially when the other man is a mean alcoholic. He drinks bottles of wine out back and then pushes these heavy trolleys around. Since he's drunk and blind, he runs into things, like walls and any unsuspecting ankles. Anyways, he opperates this machine which we call The Rotating Machine of death. It is like a big cement mixer, only instead of cement, it mixes... Octopus! It tenderizes the octopus and beats out alot of the ink and slime and gore. Now, the machine is revolving and all of these Octopi are slopping around like clothes in a dryer. Completely randomly and unpredictably the machine burps out small jets of pinkish Octopus sludge, splattering on the ground along the pathway that you have to take to get from the door to the outside. We try to watch the damn thing and see if there is a pattern so we can time the crossing (like Sean Connery in "The Rock") but it's completely random. The worst thing is that alot of times you're in a hurry and you forget about it, and then just when you think it's safe, splat, Gotcha, You poor poor stupid miserable bastard!, hope you like Octopus, cause it's all over the back of your neck now. And you can't wipe it off, because you have on your disgusting fish gloves. Burp, here's some more!
Sometimes We try to cheer each other up making cracking jokes about the fish, like" Hey Taylor, do you know who the favorite UVA football player is of the Barramundi? The answer of course being Wally Lundi. Or "Hey Taylor, What type of parlor game does the salmon play, and there is only one correct answer. Answer? Backgammon. Or, "Hey Taylor, See this Smooth Dory, who's his favorite Basket ball player? Answer, Robert Horry. "Hey Taylor, what is the Mussels favorite European capital? Answer: Brussels" "Hey Taylor, what is the Ocean Perch's favorite character on the Addams Family? Answer: Lurch." "Hey Taylor, what is the moonfish's favorite eating utensil? Answer: Spoonfish." "Hey Taylor, what is deep-sea Bass's favorite part of a woman? Answer: I hate my life!!!!!!!!!!!"
Sometimes, we amuse ourselves by completely bullshitting a customer. Like if we have a 6ft shark displayed out in the front (which you know who gets to drag and lift, getting blood and abrasive shark skin rash all over themselves), customers will ask, "What kind of shark is that?" "Oh that's a whaleshark ma'am, yeah, he's a baby" Or someone will say, "Do you have any New Zealand Mussels" and I'll say, "Nope, but I got a whole lot of American Muscles!" Or someone will be like " WHy are some pieces of swordfish steaks white and some reddish?" "well ma'am it actually has to do with the physical fitnees of the fish, you see the white ones are the lazy fat fish who don't do anything, while the redder fish are the active ones with better blood circulation and healthy eating habits. See this black piece? Smoker."
Sometimes we think about what we'd name a band (if we had one) using names of fish, like: 'Blue-eyed Cod and the Monkfish'
2:00 p.m. Lunch (which is un-paid) We go back to the same restaurant with the evil laughing chinese man who tries to overcharge us, then laughs when we catch him like it's all a big game or joke. Sometimes we get overpriced cappuccinos and pretend that we're somewhere else, anywhere else. All too soon the half hour is over, and Johnny On-Time over there is like "We have to go back", and I'm like "we still have 5 more minutes" and he says "Dude, that clock is 5 minutes slower than the one in the store" Sometimes I can fool him by distracting him. Like he'll say "we should be getting back soon" and then I can ask him a question about something really interesting or though provoking and maybe squeeze out an extra minute or two before he hops up and races back. Stupid Taylor.
2:30-4:00 p.m. More of the same
3:00 p.m. Stella pays us in cash. Stella is a very nice Thai lady who can simultaneously take money from 3 people and make change, while talking on the phone, and writing invoices. She's like that mexican kid that worked at Guadelaraja who was a wiz on the credit card machine (only some of you will know what I'm talking about) Interestingly enough once we get paid, it is worse because we have absolutely no motivation to work. We get paid on the assumption that we'll finish at 5:00 pm, so if we finish early it's a slight victory, and if not, then well, it sucks.
4:00-5:00 p.m. Packing up and cleaning up. This involves us throwing all of the leftover fillets back into crates and then hauling them into the coolroom. We try to do this as fast as possible because if a customer comes in and sees the fish they'll make you wait on them which takes away from time you could be packing up, which moves everything back, and means you get out of work faster. We'll be throwing the Salmon into the bucket and a customer will be like "do you guys have any Salmon?" and we're like "Nope, sorry" then they'll say, "Well what's that?", and we're like "What's what?", they're like "That fish you're throwing into the bucket", "I don't see any fish, try Claudio's across the street"
5:00-5:30 p.m. We walk home with all of the other Sydney business people in their suits and cushy WallStreet 9-5 desk jobs. Another Day, Another Dollar.
Hope by showing you all how miserable we are, it makes you feel better about yourselves. Forward this to Mcintyre and Soutendijk and anyone else
c
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