Long weekend



Of the wrong variety, since I have yet another full weekend shift at Bastardstone's Books this weekend. Only the 3rd full weekend shift in 6 or 7 weeks. And in between those Saturday shifts as well. How to keep you staff happy, make them work all the fucking time and pretty much every weekend for a pittance (and no extra pittance for working weekends and evenings). And this week there was an article in the Herald and Post (free Edinburgh paper) with tourist chiefs complaining that waiters/waitresses, hotel staff and shop staff gave poor service and put off tourists... Gee, here was me thinking they come over for the millennia of history, culture and architecture... It never seems to occur to these wankers who moan about poor service that the people they are moaning about are among the poorest paid in the UK and have to work the longest anti-social hours and put up with rude customers who treat you as if this were the Victorian era and you are a lowly serving serf, beneath their notice. So next time you think your waiter isn't being ultra-fab or your bookseller seems a bit grumpy when you insisted on chatting on your cellphone all through the transaction and you tosse your card over because why would you hand it to them jus think on that. And please don't give me all that 'this is your job shit'. Most folk in service areas do their best, but we have to put up with a lot of rude bastards for fuck all money and work evening and weekends to keep the fucking public happy and we're expected to have the fixed smile of a chat show host? Bollocks.



Still to pass the time I will nip down to our basement occassionally to torture some Iraqi dissidents for fun.