Bloody heat

Today was another pretty hot day in London. Not as hot as earlier in the week (because at times the heat got ridiculous, especially at night................I really hate having a boiler in my room and unopenable windows!) but it was still hot. So I went to meet Dheeraj in town and had some very nice thai food. After spending much of the afternoon in the centre I had to go back home (in a packed train since everyone was trying to get back home for the England game) but unfortunately I had to go to the hospice so I couldn't see the match.................or so I thought. The nurses had the tvs switched onto the match in every room so that as they walked past the rooms they could see snippets of the match. Since one of the tvs was in a room just next door to the nurses quarters where I do my phone answering I was able to go watch the match (of course at the same time listening out for any phone calls). Funnily enough no one called during the match.

So England are through to the next round and czech blatantly will be. I'm happy.

Dough in your face!

Yesterday was a day full of horrible customers. Usually you'll get roughly about 4-5 rude customers a day if you're unlucky but for some reason (my mum thinks its due to the sudden onset of very hot weather making people crazy and irritable) it seemed almost every second customer would be rude and have a go at us for no reason. For example a woman ordered a caramel coffee frappacino light. It was made for her and the drink got called out. She didn't come and pick it up. This was at a busy time when other frappacinos were being made. When she eventually came over she took someone elses mocha frappacino. 3/4 of the drink later she walked over to me and started to shout. She went on about how she now felt really sick, that the frappacino was disgusting and that i'd ruint her day. We pointed out that she had actually taken someone elses drink. We offered to remake the drink she'd ordered and not taken but she just went on about how sick she felt and reiterated the fact that she thought the frappacino was disgusting. Funny how she managed to get through 3/4 of it before complaining. She ended up getting a free drink voucher from us which I personally think was her sole reason for causing the scene but what can you do.

One of my fellow baristas got screamed at because she asked whether a customer wanted their frappacino to have in or take away. The customer just answered, 'does it matter?' in a rude tone. So the barista explained that to put in the order the till requires you to put in whether its take away or eat in first. So the customer just started shouting. And another customer got angry because they ordered a slice of carrot and passion fruit cake (it was double checked with them whether it was actually that cake that they wanted because some people say they want this cake but actually mean the skinny carrot cake) and then when it was given to them they said they'd asked for the skinny carrot cake and started shouting.

But yesterday wasn't all doom and gloom. In the evening, having won the 'cleanest store in the district' prize and having got a lot in the way of tips, our Starbucks store went out for a meal. It was also a goodbye meal for one of my fellow baristas (although she happens to also be going to Leeds in September so i'll be seeing her then) and a birthday meal for another (although this barista didn't know this and so got a surprise but i'll talk about that later).

The meal was fun. We ate in La Porchetta in Muswell Hill. They had the Poland vs. someone match (i'm short sighted so couldn't see who the other team was but I knew Poland was playing because two of the baristas in my store are Polish and so that fact got pointed out) projected onto a wall and we all were just chatting away for most of the night. There was also 'discrete' birthday card message writing going on. I happened to be sitting right next to the birthday girl and so did the most blatant 'i'm just turning away from you so that I can talk to the other person sitting next to me, really I am'. Amazingly the card was signed by everyone without the birthday girl catching on. There was one point where she almost did, having noticed some very blatant movement of the card under the table. But when she questioned it a couple of us instantaneously questioned her on what she was going to have to eat.

We also gave the barista who was leaving her large leaving card (which had been signed throughout the week by everyone so there wasn't any under the table message writing going on this time) and then we moved onto stuffing our faces with pizza and pasta....................well I guess I was the only one to stuff my face since I was the only one who managed to finish the whole pizza. Then there was the sound of banging followed by the birthday girl getting the 'happy birthday pizza dough' on her head. We all ate chocolate cake (mmmmmmmmmmm chocolate cake!) which had been brought as a birthday cake for the birthday barista. When one of the other baristas went to the toilet she got happy birthday pizza dough in the face (we had given the happy birthday pizza dough to some children to play with and they'd proceeded to go to the toilet and have a dough fight. The barista had then entered the war zone just as some happy birthday pizza dough got chucked in the direction of the door).

After the meal most of the other baristas/supervisors/manageress had to go home for various reasons. So that just left me and the barista who will be going to Leeds. We went to a pub where we bumped into some of her friends and so we spent the evening chatting to her friends, drinking and generally just having a good time.

Today was just spent working. I did the afternoon shift and we were expecting it to be quiet since England was playing during the shift but it wasn't (it seemed all the woman had come to starbucks to escape the football). And then in the early evening it went frappacino crazy. I hate frappacinos..................unless its a chocolate chip frappacino and i'm drinking it.

Hospice help

I started my voluntary work at the hospice the other day. I was kind of worried because i'm on evening phone duty (which involves quite a bit more than just answering a phone). Theres a set way of doing things and until it becomes routine I was worried i'd muck up. But surprisingly it was fine. I'm not going to go into details since i'm not allowed to talk about what happens in the hospice to anyone who doesn't work/volunteer there but I had quite a range of things to deal with in the phone calls and I solved them without any problems. And the nurses and doctors were all friendly so its all good!

Potty training

Ok its another blog entry involving toilets. I'm sorry. But i'm also sorry I had to experience what i'm about to write about.

When going to clean the Starbucks toilets the other day I was greeted by a nasty surprise. Someone, who obviously had never been potty trained, had gone to the toilet, missed the toilet hole and had instead done their business on the toilet seat. Nice. Thank you customer who can't use a toilet, let alone clean up after yourself. Thank you very much.

And the other day we had another visit from the crazy bitch. But I was left feeling very disappointed with her. She came in, went to the toilet, came out of the toilet (quite a while later), sat down at a table and then just left. The crazy bitch just left! Without any crazy comments or crazy complaints! What a bitch!

Back

Had a really good time in Czech but unfortunately it was too short. However we managed to fit alot into 4 days.

We ate really good food, saw Brno castle (which I had seen before but it was many years ago), went up a tower in the town centre and looked out over Brno (which strangely I had never done before even though i've been going to Brno for years now) and went to some clubs in Brno which was quite fun (unfortunately we couldn't get into one of the ones that we wanted to go to. The bouncer kept saying something to us which was either 'full' or 'fool.' We decided to take it as 'the club is full' and so we just went to another club). We also went around the town shopping and eating (I got myself some Bata shoes and a t-shirt saying Ceska Republika as well as many chocolate BeBe biscuits and paprika crisps). And most importantly we had some ovoce knedliky (fruit dumplings)!

Of course we made a trip to the cinema to see X-men 3 (I had to let Dheeraj try the cheese popcorn!) Unfortunately in the cinema I ended up sitting next to this strange woman who brought a bagload of stuff and started saying something to me about my drink (which was in the drinks holder between my seat and hers). So I moved my drink (I wasn't going to risk leaving it there with all the attention it was getting from her). She then took out bag after bag of stuff before proceeding to cry. She cried before the movie started, she cried when the trailers were showing and then when people actually died in the movie she started to bawl. It was scary.

The tower in the town centre:


The view from the tower:

Cheesy smile time (taken by some random German woman):


You can see the castle on the hill in the distance:


Cheesy smile time part 2:


The market square (and market):

The castle entrance (the castle is called Spilberk, pronounced Shpilberk):


Part of the courtyard bit of the castle:


The castle bells that play one of many different tunes on the hour:


The view from the castle:


These are actually pictures from Dheeraj since I didn't bring my camera. Unfortunately there isn't a close up picture of the castle itself (or the actual interior of the castle/dungeons since we didn't have time to see them).