From The Ashes ...

My Legs Fucking Hurt!

I got home from work tonight, on a Friday night, at 1:30 am. Not 5:30. I love it, but this will take some getting used to. I got my basic schedule for next week. I'm off tomorrow. I work in a nightclub and I get a Saturday night off. It's madness, madness I tell you. I'm working Sunday through Friday and then I get next weekend off. What the fuck? I have a management job in Bizarro World.

Not to brag (OK, that's a lie) I fielded a phone call today from The Hammerstein Ballroom wanting to speak to me about a management position. This is one of the biggest venues in New York City. The main stage /theater has a capacity of 2,500 ppl. That's just on one level. Oprah Winfrey taped a week of shows from New York City in an upstairs (smaller) ballroom. One year we did an awards show for Soap Opera Magazine. I was way more into the soaps then than I am now. I am happy to report that a lot of the guys on soaps are pretty damn gay and they do likes they liquor. But I worked for Hammerstein many years ago as a bartender for special events when a friend of mine was the events manager. To say that their approach to co-ordinating the logistics of a multi-level event were haphazard would be generous, at best. You always felt as if you were riding a runaway train with no brakes during an event where you would routinely run out of ice, mixers, cups or any number of critical and (seemingly) obvious items that can bring a bar to a screeching halt. And considering many times the bars were complimentary well, let's just say you don't want to get between someone who believes they are terribly, terribly important and his free Absolute and cranberry. But by god, it would cause someone to speak in clipped tones to someone else via walkie-talkie. Not that anything usually happened as a result, but walkie and then talkie took place. Of that you could be sure.

So I took a modicum of pleasure in informing them that I had already accepted a position with another company, but I appreciated their interest (NOT). The point of this story is that after two weeks of very focused job searching, I was lucky enough to get some attention from some of the largest, multi-faceted, most profitable venues in the city. Granted, the job market is much improved from the last time I was looking for work, but truthfully, I think my confidence in myself, in my experience, in my ability to think on my feet, is reflected in my resume, and as a result, at least for now, I'm an attractive hire. I wish I could figure out a way to translate this attractiveness to my ass. Any suggestions?

In any case, I'm both pleased and chagrined that I spent the last three years underestimating myself and my abilities and my monetary worth, only to find out what I know and what I know how to do, was worth more than I've been getting paid for. Lesson learned.