Honestly, Beautifully : honey blade

2002-03-05 - 11:45 a.m.

Uni in two hours. I might actually get time for breakfast today :)

I'm not going to talk about Minami because, frankly, it was horrible. Best if I just walk away from it (I've already vented about it on my Livejournal, no need to do it here too).

Instead I'm going to talk about work last night. It was Monday, so it was quiet. Because we've started a new promotion, Zhenhaj was in the office putting flyers into envelopes. Now for the thing I wasn't expecting - Zhenhaj has shaved his head.

I asked him why he'd done that and apparently it was too expensive for him to go to a hairdresser's to get it trimmed, so he asked one of his friends to cut it for him. And his friend cut the whole lot off.

He told me he didn't like it like that, but he asked me if I liked it. I said no and he said "oh", then he turned around and went back to filling envelopes for a while.

He was pretty talkative last night, actually, especially considering what he was like when I first met him. His English is improving a bit, but he still has a fairly strong Chinese accent so it can be a bit tricky to hear him sometimes. He told me he wanted to "ask me some questions" when I finished, so I said OK and spent the rest of the shift wondering what he wanted to ask me.

As it is, he wanted to know how he could go about applying for university.

The thing is, I don't really know what the procedure would be for him. He's lived in Britain for about 5 years, apparently, but whatever qualifications he has, he got them in China and I don't know what the standard is for Chinese exams. I mentioned to him that I had a Chinese friend that I'd been to university with (Ting Ting, of course) and asked him if he wanted me to phone her so he could ask her about the procedure, but he said no. Oh well.

I'm not completely sure whether Zhenhaj speaks the same kind of Chinese as Ting Ting, either. She speaks Cantonese as far as I know, but I asked Zhenhaj whether he spoke Cantonese or Mandarin and he just looked at me.

Jian speaks the same language as Zhenhaj, I'll ask him.

Other entertainment we had last night was the bloke who complained that his beer "smelled". Now, bearing in mind that this was the only person we'd had complaining, amongst other factors, this sounded like utter bollocks to me, but unfortunately the manager had left already so I was left in a difficult situation.

Basically, he reckoned the beers smelled like mouse poo. I asked if there was any evidence of it on the bottles and he said "no", but he was insisting about this smell and saying he was concerned about the hygiene and so on.

Now, here's the deal - we get our Carlsberg in crates of 24 and don't remove them from the crates until someone orders them. It isn't actually possible for mice, if there are any (and I doubt there are any, we keep our kitchens and storerooms very clean), to get into the crates.

Besides which, if there have been mice anywhere near the crates, it's an issue for Carlsberg, not us.

This took bloody ages to sort out. I had to phone Camden and fill them in on things, phone that guy back, listen to him whinge some more, then I phoned the manager and passed on all the details to him. As far as I know, he sorted it out but I don't know what happened. I'll ask on Thursday.

I do not like customers. I truly do not. Well, I like the ones who'll order more than �12.50, not be awkward about what they're after and pay by either cash or cheque, but we don't get too many of those.

Yes, my ideal job is one where I don't have to work with other people. Definitely.

I might go to Reading tonight after my Japanese lecture. Nii-chan's asked me to pick something up for her in Camden too, so I may go up after my lecture this afternoon.

I'm going to be off now. Breakfast awaits :)

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