My first job in UK

12 Apr 2015

Are you thinking that I arrived in London and started working straight away in computer science? Well, I got lucky and started as a Busser, WTF?

Busser is a person that does everything the waiters don’t wanna do.

Translating: it is the waiter’s assistant, it means that you have to do the bad part of the job, for example, cleaning the tables, the floor, the toilets, helping the waiter, but no tips at all. And the worst part of it: cleaning the cutlery.

I started working in a famous american restaurant on Haymarket Street, close to Trafalgar Square. The restaurant is popular for keeping things (objects) used in Hollywood films and for it’s hamburguer.

My very first day at the job was a bit stressful because of my anxiety, just like any beginner. However, I believe that no beginner can make so many mistakes on his first day at work and not be fired. Before I’ve even started working properly I’ve made a waitress drop all the mustard jars on the stairs, that happened because she was staring at my body! Just kidding, I stumbled on her while she was going downstairs. All I can remember was my boss wagging his head in disapprovement. I think in that moment he was telling to himself: why would I hire a hobbit? He badly knew I was about to do more mistakes.

In the exact same day, I was cleaning some tables and my manager, who I could felt didn’t like me, pushed me to do a lot of things at the same time, so I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t multi-thread, but words came out wrong and instead I said: “I’m alone”. Why God did I do such a thing? He immediately said that I should stop cleaning and meet him in a private office, he kept saying: “I’m your boss. Do you know that?” I can make fun of it now, but in that moment, I was thinking: fuck, fuck, fuck. He spoke for about 30 minutes. I was sure that I would be fired, but because of some sort of elvish intervetion, I was not.

Now you are thinking, how can someone make so many mistakes on his first day at work? Hey, easy there, never doubt of the capacity of Titão hobbit. Same evening, the restaurant was super busy, when I was going towards the toilets to clean them, I spilled sanitizer on a customer. After a long talk and many apologies, I told her that the product would not stain her clothes, I didn’t even know what I was talking about, but in the end she accepted my apologies.

As the days went by I started to feel more comfortable there, I improved my English, I got used with the restaurant and the tasks, and I even started making jokes with my colleagues. But, one think I couldn’t avoid doing was mistakes. Once it was a very busy night, the music was loud and there were drunk people dancing, I saw a customer wagging and calling me. Even though bussers are not supposed to deal with customers, that’s a waiter’s task, I went to see what she wanted and politely I asked her what was wrong. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, I could just notice her pointing to her dish, and I naively took it and throw it away. hahahha! Who in that moment would not do that? However, what she was trying to say to me was that she wanted to take the food away. Upsy-daisy! They had to make a new dish for her and I had to deal with the managers explaining to me what “to take away” means. A certain day I woke up from a nightmare screaming “Take awayyyy”.

One of my tasks was to keep the toilets clean and tidy, and never leave them without toilet paper, every 30 minutes we had to check them, to see if everything was ok. The male toilet was always fine, but for the female one I can’t say the same. How can women clog everything? The sink, toilet, rubbish, everything was a chaos. When you are in a restaurant and your girlfriend goes to the toilet, and then she comes back all smiley and even send you a kiss on her way back to the table, you don’t know, but she has just cloggled three toilets, two sinks and smoked a cigarette while she was doing number two. This is the exact impression the female toilet gave me.

The ladies’ toilets really struck me. Once I went to clean it, opened the door and said: “I’m coming”. This is a good practice to warn the girls that a boy is entering. When we clean the toilets we have to verify if all the toilets compartiments have toilet paper, for that we have to visit all of them. In one of these visits I had a little surprise, one girl was pupping with the door unlocked. When I opened it, the crazy girl was in her moment, I stopped and thought: I’m fucked. When she saw me, she started screaming. I didn’t know what to do, maybe hide or say sorry. How can I say sorry to a girl pupping? Tricking, isn’t it? I think she will never use a toilet in a restaurant again, but if she does, at least she will remember to lock the door.

Other important bussers’ task is to do the cutlery, and most of them hate this, because it has to be done under pressure, and after a while you fell your arms tired and aching. The task was a common reason for discussions in my team.

Every time we cleaned the tables, we had to take the glasses and dishes to be washed in the kitchen. The kitchen of a restaurant is a busy and very fun place. The guys who used to do the dishes were Colombian and they spoke a horrible English. As a result I used to talk to them in Spanish. Several times, when waitresses entered in the kitchen, they used to say to them “usted es una chica caliente” heheheh. The waitress couldn’t undestand them and she aswered “what?”, Then they laughed and changed the subject. Good times! When alcoholic drinks were wasted in the tables I used to bring over to the people in the kitchen, and they love it!

The job of a busser is quite hard, most of the times just one meal wasn’t enough and in the end of our shift we were hungry again. Some employees always order an extra snack to the kitchen, but without the boss being aware of it. Once, a friend of mine kept a hamburguer inside his trousers to eat it later, of course, the food was stored in a plastic bag, it was so funny when he took the hamburguer from his trousers and said to me “do you want to share it with me?”. I politely lied to him and said I was not hungry. I didn’t want to eat a hamburguer with taste of “sausage”.

My job in the restaurant was very hard, every day I used to arrive home from work with my body aching. I used to spend my break behind the restaurant, and it was common to see other employees smoking and eating there as well. Most of the time I wasn’t not alone, there were some mice looking for food in the rubbish.

The biggest problem of working there was my shift hours, I used to start at 5 pm and finish at 1 am, arriving at home around 2 am. And my wife used to work during the day, and it was becoming harder to see her.

Was the job that bad? Well, it wasn’t one of the best ones, but definitely better than being a programmer =). I had the opportunity to meet amazing people, change experiences, make new friends, improve myself as a person in general. I would do everything again, of course, apart from the mistakes.

I hope you like the text I have written, and if you are thinking to come to study and work in a restaurant, know thar it’s a great experience, just tryto beless clumsy.