If you pay any attention to the side bar of the blog, you will have already noticed the "Fake Names" section listing the motels I've worked at, under false names, along with the dates that I've worked there. You may also have noticed that the Gary Carter Express Inn has three different sets of dates with it. You'll also notice that I only worked at El Crapface Lodge for one day. Let me explain:
After working almost a year at the Pretty Good Inn, I left Lethbridge to work in Fort MacMurray, Alberta for a lawn care company. It was just a temporary job for the busy spring clean-up season. The reason I took the job up north was two-fold: it paid better, and I needed to hit the reset button on my social life. So when I was done with that job, and with a brief stay in Edmonton working for my sister, I returned to Lethbridge in August of 2003. I didn't want to go back to the Pretty Good Inn, so I sent resumes to several motels and hotels in town. None of those businesses were the Gary Carter Express Inn. I got two interviews. The first was at the Adlaw Inn (yes, that's another fake name), but they told me in the interview that they were hiring for the Gary Carter as well, since it was owned by the same guy. The second interview was at the El Crapface. I was pretty much offered the job at El Crapface immediately, and I accepted. My one shift (the 3-11 babysitter shift) didn't impress me at all. The lobby smelled like cigarette smoke. That was the first red flag. The next thing that alarmed me was a tour of the premises. The place was a run-down, smelly dump. The third strike against them was the fact that I wasn't allowed to sit down for the entirety of the 8-hour shift. Now, I know there are a lot of jobs that require the employees to stand the whole time. I've worked some of those jobs, and some of you are probably calling me a baby even as I type this (how you're reading it while I type it is a mystery, but I stand by my statement). But let me tell you about the hospitality industry, especially the cheaper properties. You work in little spurts, for the most part. You can go an eight hour shift and do as little as a half hour of actual work. You're mostly there to hold down the fort and be available for anyone who needs you. Every other motel I've worked in has allowed me to sit when I wasn't dealing with any guests. This one shift I spent at the El Crapface Lodge was spent leaning against a wall or a counter while my legs gradually got more and more sore, followed by a 45-minute walk home when I was done. (I had recently killed my car.)
The day after I worked my first shift at the El Crapface, I got a call from the Gary Carter Express offering me a job there. I took the job, and called the manager at El Crapface as soon as I got off the phone with the Gary Carter to quit.
The Gary Carter is the smallest of the four motels that I've worked at, with only 37 rooms. At first, I worked the morning shift from 7 until 3. It was a pretty good deal. I checked everyone out and ran the continental breakfast, and then I had four hours to do whatever the heck I wanted to. It was also a 30-minute walk from my apartment instead of 45. For that first two-year period, I worked every shift at one point or another. I spent quite a bit of time working the night shift, which was easy most days. There were nights that I didn't see a single soul for the entire shift. Not even a phone call. There was a cot in the back office for some reason, and I'm ashamed to admit that I would sometimes take a 45-minute nap at around 3:00 in the morning. After a year or so, the owner switched me back to the morning shift and made me the front desk supervisor. The turnover in motels is high, and I was by far the senior employee by this point. The problem with the promotion was that the owner - a Korean gentleman who didn't speak English very well - would often get me to do his dirty work. This soured my attitude towards the job. It didn't help the the owner had a bad temper. One day, after making me screw over a guest for $65 extra dollars, I gave my two-weeks notice, and shortly thereafter started working at the Birch Lodge.
I absolutely hated the Birch Lodge, but stuck with it for two years to put myself through college while my wife was on maternity leave. During those two years, the owner of the Gary Carter sold the motel to another Korean guy, this one much more pleasant than the first. My cousin, who I had hired a few months before I left the Gary Carter, had moved up the ladder to become the front desk supervisor himself. He called me up one day and, with the permission of the new owner, offered me a job back at the Gary Carter making $0.50/hour more than I was making at the Birch Lodge. I jumped on that like a fat kid on a Smartie. I gave my notice at the Birch and was working the babysitter shift back at the Gary Carter two weeks later.
I graduated from college with a management diploma in December of 2007. I applied for a paid internship in Municipal Administration, and I left the Gary Carter and Lethbridge behind in April 2008 to go to central Alberta to work for two small urban municipalities for a year. It was a start at a real, decent-paying career. After my internship was up, I got a job as the Assistant Administrator in the town of Picture Butte, which is where I still live today. I still live there, but I only worked there for five months. I grew to hate the sound of my boss's voice and started avoiding her, which ultimately led to me being fired for lack of communication. I spent a year on Employment Insurance, trying my hands at a couple of commission-only sales jobs that went nowhere because I'm a god-awful salesman. I'm pretty sure I was legitimately a little bit insane during this year. After my third child was born, and as the EI was nearing its end, I swallowed my pride and went back to the Gary Carter Express to ask if they had any openings. The second owner, Jin, had always liked me, so he hired me back as soon as I asked. And I've been here ever since, working the babysitter shift for two years now since returning. Jin sold the place back in August, but the new owner kept me on, and there's no end in sight. No end at all.
Oh God, I need to write a novel and sell it to a publisher.
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