The famous words of Brian Flanagan… wordled.

http://www.wordle.net/ to make your own

On my way home from a long day of school to put in an even longer night of work, I reached the usual highway construction area. There is about a 7Km strip of the highway were they are making “lane improvements.” However in order to make these improvements highway traffic needs to be stopped for hours and hours a day. These delays follow a schedule that changes at random… Not only this but, and I quote, ”Because of the nature of the work including danger rock and safety issues - you may will be subject to longer closures without notice.” 

Ok, so I didn’t quote the construction company word for word, but i’ts better than giving the public a sense of false hope. Secondly, what is “danger rock?” Sometimes I think I would rather face this “danger rock” that sit in my car and watch a fat man ride a bulldozer for hours.

Rawr! Danger Rock!

Stops often go 1/2 hour to 45 minutes longer than scheduled, making arriving on time near impossible. Unless of course, I wanted to arrive 3 hours early. Not only this but the stoppages make what would be a 45 – 50 minute trip into a 1 1/2 hour trip.

But, I cope. For one year… I have been coping. Until tonight.

Tonight there was a rockslide. I can only assume that the fat man in the bulldozer was too busy smoking a dart and checking out the totally unattractive sign lady when he drove straight into a pile of rock that shouldn’t have been driven into.

Good work out there!

So here I am, sitting in my car debating if i should get a hotel room, drive half way to Vancouver to get home or hit the booze and sleep in my car.

I hope someone covered my shift…

I had just arrived to work after purchasing a large, face – sized, sun viser. My friends and I thought it was amazing that people actually buy these things. They are like sun glasses for your face. Incase you do not know what I am talking about I have provided you with a picture of myself wearing the visor at work.

 Also note that I had found a pair of ear phones that day, which I am also wearing. Let’s just say that after a long weekend of drunken idiots I wasn’t in any particular mood to deal with customers. How awesome would it be to neither see nor hear them! So, I decided to take the night off from my typical customer service, and work the server well. For those of you not down with the industry jargon, just consider “the well” a bartenders station, the well being the bin where the ice is stored. So in theory when working the server well, I would only be mixing drinks for servers to deliver to tables..

I work at a busy bar. Infact it is down right rediculous. The server well even has a nick name… “hell well.” Why? Well I made nearly 2000 drink orders that night. At an average of 5 drinks an order, thats a lot of drinks. And naturally, when I am in the rythm of things, I find it frusterating to get interupted.

So when a welder comes up to me and asks me for… I can’t remember, a rye & coke or maybe a kokanee (typical labour force drinks), I have to politely say “Sorry man, I am making drinks for servers,” pointing to the ‘SERVERS ONLY’ sign directly above my head.

He stopped begging for a drink when he realised I was completely ignoring him. Then he asked me another question. Since I was wearing noise cancelling ear phones I couldn’t quite make it out, but I think he asked me something about melting metal. I took my ear phones off to get a better listen. Yes, he definately was asking me welding questions. I really had to tell him I had no idea what he was talking about. Unfortunately for me he noticed I was wearing a face visor and ear phones. He, the genious that he was, deduced I was wearing these to make a mockery of the welding profession. He told me I shouldn’t wear a welding mask if I wasn’t a welder and some really well thought out profanities to go along with his advice.

He had a point, but I was wearing a face visor.

I made sure that none of the staff served him for the rest of the night. He probably had a long day of melting metal in the morning and I wouldn’t want him to be hung over. I even offered him my face visor but apparently he had a better one.

After meeting my first welder, I have decided I don’t need to meet anymore… although I am thankful for there services.