Work placement 6

Free booze brings out something in people, something scary and dizzy.

Today was a late start; this was because I was working the exhibition opening.
The early part of the afternoon I spent back on the floor working around the lines finishing up the taping with a new roll of tape.

Time consuming as it was it was very quiet and it didn’t bother strain my body as much as it had the last few days. A short time later I stopped for a meal break and the two second year students who were also called in to work the exhibition showed up.

They did the fine details and tidy up jobs and I did a few other odd jobs like securing valuables, like laptops hard drives and various sorts of cameras and accessories.

My final task for the evening was to serve drinks. This was worse then some of my most awful retail experiences. At least in retail I had authority and completely knew what I was doing and developed ways through and around troublesome customers.

It wasn’t that the people were overly troublesome, everyone was well behaved it was more the attitudes some of the people projected at Zach one of the second year assistants and myself when we didn’t know what they wanted or couldn’t keep up with all the orders. We managed and for the most part people were polite and patient. Just a few unpleasant looks and sly comments ruined it.

On the plus side I was complimented on the way I opened the bottles of sparkly bubbles, it went along the lines of being very professional how when I opened them I never spilled any or sent the cork flying.

I did however make a big noise during the speech marathon. We had just emptied another bottle of the bubbles and a lady wanted some so I opened it and it was rather loud. The guest all looked over at the drinks table and all I could do was say "it was her fault." Pointing to the lady she took it in good humour as did the rest of the guests.

At one point I was worried that we would run out of the champagne (bubbles) I even told Sue that we were running low and it would only be a sort time before we ran out. Silly me, a short time after that as I started moving the other bottles into the other tubs and keeping them close to the drinks table I seen another container. In it was another 8 bottles of the stuff. It was quite fortunate.

I quite like the idea of having more then is needed then not having enough (when practical), and when serving people not to give away how much of anything is left until it is all gone. When they asked for a drink they got a drink eventually, sometimes a fresh bottle of whatever they ordered needed to be opened but no one suffered from dehydration.

No one but Zach or I knew how much of anything was left until the end of the very end of the night, I think it helped keep an illusion going that at this opening what they wanted that could have if they asked there was no one rushing around for fear they might miss out.

I was nice to see a few familiar faces in the crowd, like some of my current and former teachers.

It was a nice learning experience but I don’t think I want that many speeches at any exhibition I have unless it is an exhibition about speeches. 40 minuets of talking got mind numbing very quickly. Maybe I'll have the speech part as a video piece so people can watch them later on and I'll just go down the local pub while everyone else does the exhibition opening thing and come back just before the end of the night when people have seen it and are heading off. That way I miss out on all the brown nosers.

In the end I'll like to say the following;
Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends!