Section 2. My first job.

The first job I ever had was as a waitress.

I did it the summer before I started at university, when I was 18.

I was working in a very nice hotel in a small town in Scotland where there are a lot of tourists in summer, so they were taking on extra staff.

I arrived there in the evening and met some of the other girls who were working at the hotel.

We all lived in a little house opposite the hotel.

Anyway, they were all really friendly and we had dinner together and then sat around chatting and drinking coffee.

I didn't get to bed until after one o'clock in the morning.

I had to be at work in the dining room at 7, 7:30 in the morning to start serving breakfast.

Well, I didn't wake up' stil 7:15, so I threw my clothes on, rushed over to the hotel.

I must have looked a real mass because the header waiter just looked at me and told me to go to the bathroom to tide myself up, I was so embarrassed.

The first thing I learned was that there were these two heavy swing doors into the kitchen from the restaurant,one for going into the kitchen, and one for going out.

So the waiters coming in didn't bump into the ones going out.

Anyway, that morning, I was so frightened of the head waiter that I didn't listen properly to what he was saying.

so when one of the waiters asked me to give him a hand and take two plates of eggs and bacon and an orange juice out to the restaurant,

I went straight towards the wrong door and collided with another waiter coming in.

You can't imagine the mess, eggs, bacon, orange juice all over the floor, the door, the waiter and me.

The other waiter thought it was quite funny, but the head waiter was furious and made me clear everything up straight away in case someone slipped and fell.

After serving breakfast, at about 10 o'clock, we had our own breakfast.

I was starving by them, and just wanted to sit down and eat quietly.

But some of the waiters started making fun of my English accent, they were all Scottish.

I think they were just trying to cheer me up and have a joke, but I was so upset and hungry that I just rushed off to the bathroom in tears.

I thought everybody hated me.

By the time I came back, they'd cleared up all the breakfast things, and I hadn't had a chance to eat anything.

Well, straight away, we started getting the dining room ready for lunch, cleaning the silver, setting the tables, hoovering the floor.

The room had a beautiful view over a river with the mountains behind, but of course, as soon as I stopped work to have a look out of the window, the header waiter spotted me and told me off again.

I didn't make too bad a job of serving lunch, one of the waiters looked after me and showed me how to do things.

One of the customers ordered some expensive white wine, and I gave him a bottle from a cupboard, not from the fridge, so it wasn't cold enough.

But fortunately, the other waiters hid the bottle I'd opened wrongly and I gave him another bottle from the fridge, so the head waiter didn't find out.

I would have been quite happy, but I had another problem which was that I'd got up in such a hurry, I just put on the shoes I'd been wearing the night before.

Well, these shoes looked quite smart but they had really high heels, and after a few hours on my feet,

I was in agony and there was nothing I could do about it.

There was certainly no time to go and change them. I can tell you, I never wore those shoes to work again.

Anyway, after lunch, we had our own lunch, I managed to get something to eat this time, and we were free in the afternoon.

I went for a walk with one of the other girls and we got a bit lost, so I didn't have time for any rest before we went back to work at 6.

By the time we finished serving dinner at about 10:30, I was completely exhausted.

I'd never worked so hard in my life, I think.

Of course, I stayed up chatting with the other girls that night too, and most of the other nights I was there, I fell into bed at night and out of it at 7 the next morning.

But I loved the job after a while, believe it or not, and I even went back to work there the next year, I never got on very well with the head waiter though.