Lilac Colored Glasses

I’m not talking about the weather, which was warmish for a whole day a week or so ago and has dipped back down to irritatingly, but not quite freezing cold.

No, I’m talking about something else entirely.

See, I haven’t been blogging much about work (okay, I haven’t been blogging much about anything), but that’s sort of a good thing. It means no drama, no problems, no nothing. The worst thing I could say about it is that my knees have really started to constantly hurt from standing for hours, but that’s partially my fault for forgetting to take a five minute break to sit every couple hours or so. There are some interesting things that occur, like last week when we ran out of milk at 5:30 in the evening. All we could serve for the rest of the night was black coffee, milkshakes (made from a milkshake mix, not milk), and tea (but not the chai steamer, cause that’s made with milk). Talk about impotence…a coffee place with no milk.

And there have been a few encounters with shitty customers, although in all honesty I can only think of two right away and they were both yesterday. One guy was pissy cause his cappuccino was taking too long and he was yelling at me to hurry up and tried to grab his drink while I was putting a lid on it, so I tossed the lid at him and he slammed it down and stormed away. Hey, if you decide to get into a huge line during rush hour and ask for a drink that requires the barista to foam the milk (takes 5 minutes tops if there’s no spare foam around, which there will never be during rush hour), well, you’re fucking stupid. So don’t do it if you’re in a hurry. There was also a woman who ordered a coffee and a croissant (3€) and put a single euro down on the counter, insisting she’d already paid me the other two. Which was complete bullshit. The order was still on my register and no receipt had printed cause she hadn’t paid me yet. Although it is more interesting to argue with someone in Dutch as opposed to the mind numbing repetition of “milk or sugar? cocoa or cinnamon?”. I won that one though. The woman haughtily said she’d check her money to prove she’d paid (cause, like, I would have had a clue what she started out with in her wallet in the first place?) and afterwards she shut her face and gave me two more euros. Cause that’s what she owed me and her wallet must’ve proved it to her.

There have been two encounters that I know of where kids have made fun of me for speaking english (both times I was replying in English to coworkers who only speak english or prefer to speak english). The first time didn’t bother me much cause they were teenage girls and understood enough that I could be passive aggressive enough to embarass the one and my Dutch coworker told off the group of them. The second time was some bratty ten year old who never made eye contact and spoke in a fake voice and was, in general, an asshole. He was incredibly amused when I asked my Turkish colleague for a strawberry milkshake and basically stood there mocking me to his friend while I contemplated simply handing his money back and telling him to get his milkshake somewhere that met his language standards. That one bothered me more, though I really can’t say why, it just did.

Cause for me it’s still a really big accomplishment that I can speak a second language. Plus I can stumble through enough French to take a French speaking person’s order, and I’m picking up a bit in Spanish as well. In Belgium it’s no big deal to be multi-lingual, but for me it is and it’s hurtful to be mocked, even if it is by an insignificant little pest.

So anyway, through all of this, there are my coworkers*, all of whom I get along with and most of whom I really have fun with. And the hours are a little weird, but I don’t mind it so much, especially because I’m able to request the days I prefer to have off as long as I ask a few weeks ahead of time, so there is tons of flexibility. And I received my first full month’s pay yesterday and I’m definitely making about 300€ more a month than I was at the crèche.

But yesterday (yes, a lot happened yesterday customer interaction-wise) I received what I consider to be one of the best compliments I’ve gotten since I moved here. There was a man in his late sixties or maybe seventies who had ordered a cappuccino and was waiting patiently for his drink (which earned him major brownie points from me before h e even opened his mouth). I was trying to explain something to my Romanian colleague in English but ended up switching over to Dutch to finish the conversation and afterwards the customer said to me (in Dutch, of course), “You speak with perfect American English accent and a perfect Flemish accent. Where are you from?”
And I grinned and told him I was American and he said, “Your Flemish accent is perfect!”
And I thanked him and after he got his drink and walked away I did a little happy dance. It was one of the warmest little rays of sunshine I’ve ever had in Belgium.

*You will never read about my Belgian colleagues cause I have none. Apparently immigrants make the best coffee.

I was not born a morning person.

My parents can vouch for this.
As a child I never found it easy to get myself up in the morning. I was never one of those teenagers who spent two hours locked in the bathroom before school, primping and preening to look my best. I was the sweatshirt/t-shirt and jeans girl whose hair was always swept into a ponytail and who rarely wore makeup. Not because I didn’t want to look nice, I just could never get up on time to put anything more fashion-friendly together. That and I was too self conscious to try wearing anything too trendy, since most of my friends and classmates were a size 4 and I was a 12. In retrospect and compared to what I am now (16W…sigh), I should’ve flaunted more of myself when I had a nice figure to flaunt. But I digress.

Me. Not a morning person.
Until CB and I started talking regularly and my insomnia faded off. After a few months of almost daily chatting, I figured out that if I woke up at 6 in the morning, that was right when CB took his lunch hour and we could chat for an extra 45 minutes or so before I went to work. But of course, I had to be showered and dressed for work, so that led to me to getting up around 5:30 in order to be ready for work before we started talking. At the time I was also taking night classes a few days a week for my masters degree, so I wouldn’t get home until after 9 in the evening and then I often had readings or assignments or parent conference materials to work on, so I had no trouble falling asleep before midnight and getting up early the next day.

After CB visited me the first time, I briefly changed jobs, before returning to my old daycare (the new daycare had had better benefits and a 401k, but the staff was verbally abusive to the children and no insurance policy is worth selling out my morals). Upon my return I was assigned to a new classroom and given a new schedule. For the first two years at CHCC I had worked the 10-6 shift and had spend almost an entire year trying to get that changed, unsuccessfully. I had also been trying to get moved to a classroom where the two main teachers got along better, also unsuccessfully. Now, upon my return (despite my tendency towards the school of hard knocks, I do often emerge as the prodigal child) I was in a the 3 year old room (which meant I got to stay with the kids I’d been with in the twos room) and my schedule was 8-4. Work was a lot more pleasant and I had almost two hours of talk time with CB in the evenings instead of a meager 45 minutes in the mornings.

So basically, I converted myself to a morning person (and quit smoking, thanks to the power of loooove). And I liked it that way! I liked the early morning darkness and quiet and solitude. It’s why I really didn’t mind working the opening shift in the Brussels crèche. It wasn’t the waking up early that bothered me at all, it was the way the commute sucked up so much of my time and also how the boss and managers treated me like dirt and made me the fall guy for everything that didn’t work out how they wanted. Even after I started my job at the coffee kiosk, I was still set internally to wake up around 5 in the morning until recently.

See, now I work the evening shift, which is usually from 1:30-2:00 in the afternoon until 9:30-10:00 at night. this means I’m not home until 10:00 or 10:30 and often not in bed until close to 1 in the morning. So my body clock has finally given up its hold on the early morning wake up time and has now flip flopped and I find myself waking up around 10 am or lately even closer to 11 am. And I hate it! I feel like I’ve slept the whole day away. And it doesn’t help that Cb has never been, nor has ever converted, nor likely ever will be a morning person. So he’s pretty cool with me not moving or fidgeting or turning on the light before dawn anymore. But seriously, 11:00 in the morning? This can’t continue. There has to be some sort of happy medium and I have the next two days off, so I guess I’ll try to start reprogramming myself tomorrow.

On this, my second day at my new job, I have learned the following:

1. Belgians drink a hellaton of chocolate milk. I work in a coffee place and over the past two days I have sold, by far, more hot chocolate than coffee.

2. Those irritating people that rub and crumple the nice shiny new bill in order to be absolutely sure that it isn’t two bills sticking together are an international phenomenon.

3. Leaving work smelling like cocoa powder is not as yummy as you’d think.

But overall, everything is okay. I haven’t worked a basic counter/customer service type job in years so I’m not used to standing for almost 8 hours straight, but I’ll get used to it. Otherwise, it’s exactly what I just said; your basic counter/service job. I’ve done it before and I have no problem doing it now. My coworkers all seem very nice and it’s corporate, so I don’t have to deal with any tyrannical bastards.

This idea occurred to me at some point in the last three months or so, that in many employment situations, employers and employees both are guilty of regarding each other as something akin to, but not quite on the same level as human. To clarify, during a very brief interaction with the owner of the daycare chain I worked for, we both found out that the other wakes up every morning at 5 am. He seemed surprised that I woke up so early, as it probably never occurred to him that I have to get up that early to be able to make it to work on time in Brussels. I, on the other hand, was not surprised that he got up so early, as it just added to my impression that my boss is sort of the francophone Belgian version of American Psycho‘s Patrick Bateman. Of course he got up that early. That would give him plenty of time to go to the gym, hit the tanning bed, get a manicure, meticulously trim his hair and retrieve one of his spotless tailored suits from the cleaners before arriving at work.

So this got me to thinking that all job applications/interviews should include a section for people to list some of their endearing traits. You know, little things about themselves to remind their employer that that they are, indeed, human; as opposed to mindless, lifeless automatons that serve only to further your mission of lining your pockets as thickly as possible. And vice versa.
If I had known something small about my employer, like that he collects seashells or secretly wanted a puppy, perhaps that would have softened the “highly polished, manipulative bastard” vibe I got from him during most of our interactions (which weren’t that many). Perhaps not, since I’m pretty sure those vibes were basically who he was, but even highly polished manipulative bastards once dreamed of becoming an astronaut or harbors a secret love of gummy bears. Everyone has at least one endearing trait.

So I’ve decided to list some of mine and I invite you to do the same, either here in the comments, or maybe in your own blog.

1. I love the smell and feel of laundry right out of the dryer. Sometimes if no one else is around, I take a big armful out of the dryer and bury my face in it.

2. I love stuffed animals, especially teddy bears.

3. I can’t grow them and I’m usually allergic to them, but I really love flowers.

4. A tiny little part of me will always believe that fairytale and mythical creatures are real.

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God (insert something secular) Almighty, I am free at last!

And two workdays sooner than expected.

Here’s what went down yesterday…

Since my bosses decided last Friday not to add a third person to our crèche to help with the ten (soon to be eleven or twelve) children ages 4 months to 15 months (which was also a major catalyst for quitting when I did), they also either never took into account, or simply ignored that, with one of us opening the creche and one closing, there was a 3 hour gap where each of us was working solo. The result being that from about 9:00 until 10:30 in the morning I was alone with 8 children on Tuesday and Wednesday, and 9 children yesterday.

Which is not only a mental and physical strain, but is also illegal in pretty much any modernized country. In Pennsylvania, the child:teacher ratio depends on the age of the youngest child. So, since the youngest was 4 months old, legally, had I been in PA, the ratio would be 4:1. According to Kind en Gezin, the governing body of childcare regulations in Belgium, the ratio for the age group in my creche is 5:1. Either way, I was pretty much running at double the legal capacity. I sent a message to my manager saying I was alone with 9 kids and it was too much, but she never answered me back.
Needless to say, it was insane. So much so that at least 3 parents commented on the situation and I was left to shrug and say, “I dunno.”

Because there is absolutely no fucking excuse for leaving one daycare worker in charge of nine children, half of which are babies, alone. Anyone, even someone with no experience in childcare can see that. But anyway, that’s the situation I was in for the third day in a row (the week before a few kids were sick so I was caring for 6-7 children alone for the first few hours) and that was about the time my physical ability to endure the work load failed. I’ve had a knot in the mid-left side of my back for a week or two now and yesterday the knot turned into a fire ball.

Lifting my left arm and shoulder began to cause back pain.

Standing up caused back pain.

Breathing caused back pain.

So I finally caved and called the doctor (while juggling two kids on my lap and keeping another entertained with my foot) and made an appointment.

CB came with me to better explain the full situation (I could’ve done this myself but he knew how stressed and upset I was so he came for moral support) and after hearing the whole story, plus seeing the fact that I was clearly in pain, the doctor told me I had to rest my back and he gave me sick leave for the rest of the week.

I will never have to go back to Brussels again.
Okay, that’s a lie, cause the embassy is there and sometimes some good concerts and events.

But I’ll never have to go back to that particular place again. I’m mailing the keys, uniform and sick note today and spending the next several days enjoying Gent and the tranquility of a city that takes it’s time and treats its residents like human beings (well, mostly, with the exception of Immigrant Hell, although Immigrant Hell borders on pleasant compared to Brussels rush hour).