Last night I returned from a surprise 6-day non-stop session of working 15+ hour days on the train.
I don't know quite how to drive home what an insane situation this was. I arrived in Alaska the evening of May 31st. The following two days I had a truncated version of training, along with about 13 other people who had come up late. Most people who started this year had a full week of training in mid/early May.
I had a day off after training. Then I was signed up to go on a "training run" the weekend of June 4 and 5. At that point, I was not on the next week's schedule. When I finished my run, one of the managers asked when I was working again and I told him I didn't know. He said I should be on the schedule, and they would call and let me know if they found runs for me to do. I wasn't terribly concerned. I was supposed to do CPR training Wednesday, which would have meant having Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday to get set up and settled in to my new apartment and living situation in Anchorage. A little break didn't seem like such a bad thing, especially after having basically zero transition time between leaving Brown and getting here.
However, it was not to be. Tuesday morning I got a call saying I'd be doing another mini-training run on Wednesday (instead of going to CPR training). I'd be doing a "meet-and-back," which is just what it sounds like. The North and South- bound trains meet at some point towards the middle every day, and sometimes you can hop from one to the other and not have to spend the whole two days working. This was so I could see what a “ship day” is like, because days where we pick people up from their cruise ships are run very differently than the normal Anchorage-Fairbanks and back days. The call also informed me I would be working a Friday-Saturday run, in addition to the Sunday-Monday one I was on the schedule for the following week.
Here’s the catch. When I got to work on Wednesday (at 4:45 in the morning, the greatest challenge of ship days, in my opinion) I found out that they were short on bartenders, so instead of training and getting back that night, I’d be going all the way to Fairbanks, staying over, and coming back working the next day. Which made 6 days of work in a row. It also meant that I had to improvise on toothbrush and pajamas that night. I ended up rooming with Sarah, the bartender I’d trained with a few days earlier, and she was helpful on both counts. She and I also did a bit of yoga with a server who was staying in a room nearby, a boy with a long red pony tail and sweet demeanor, named Tomas.
Funny tidbit: Sarah kept describing me as “shy” and “timid.” I’m always amused when that is someone’s first impression of me, though it has stopped shocking me. I tend to be rather quiet and introverted for the first few days or weeks that I am in a brand new social landscape. I like to take it in and get the lay of the land before I decide how much of myself to share, and which aspects. But oh the cognitive dissonance. Quiet, shy Shana. :D
At this point, those 6 days have turned into something of a blur. The first run I was paired with a rail guide named Debbie. She’s about my parents’ age, and from New Jersey, and had the accent to go with it. We got along well. Most of that run was devoted to trying to figure out where everything is on the train, what sorts of duties I’m supposed to do and in what order, and just sort of figuring things out. Wednesday was a really long day, but went all right. Thursday was absolutely out of control. I had passengers for the first two legs (each leg is around 4 hours, and includes one meal). I am fairly certain I wouldn’t have made it if I’d had passengers for all 3. I was serving drinks constantly, without breaks. We had some impatient and whiney drinkers, and some who were good-natured, but still thirsty and rowdy. By 4pm, I had missed employee lunch completely, had been on my feet, running around for 8 hours, was hot and hungry and exhausted, had been hit on by an obnoxious dirty old man from Massachusetts, who wanted to get his wife drunk because she wasn’t having enough sex with him, and felt like I was nearly going to faint. I spent the next few hours trying to make sense of my cash register and cleaning up. That was also the day my cash ended up short, so on top of all the other challenges of the day (including cutting myself while trying to produce more lime garnishes) I had to take $16 out of my tips to fix that. Needless to say, I was not thrilled by the prospect of needing to get up at 5 the next morning, walk back to the railyard and do it all again. Four more times.
The second run also had plenty of challenges and frustrations. I felt more like I knew what I was doing, but I still made some mistakes that made my life more difficult. I also had to work with full cars all of both days, and I was tired to begin with. I got my own room at the BVI, and was excited about the privacy and chance to relax, but I was unable to get any sleep Friday night. So I was extremely cranky and concerned about facing my life the next day, with three days still to go. Saturday we also had completely full cars throughout the train for the last 8 hours, which meant there was no place for me to sit down at all. I served a LOT of coffee in the dome and wine for diners downstairs, neither of which I make any tips on. But I survived to serve another day. Or two.
Two different people on that trip asked me for milk. I was surprised by their request, though it turns out we do have milk on board, downstairs, and they were both surprised when I asked them to pay for it. Also, one Indian woman asked me-- mostly by waving it at me and looking sad, to microwave popcorn she had brought on board for her. It was the middle of dinner service, the kitchen was a place of bustling chaos, I didn’t even know where the microwave was, I strongly suspected her family wasn’t going to tip me, but against my better judgment, I did it. They did not tip. They did drink a lot of free coffee, though. And some milk.
Saturday night I was back in my apartment in Anchorage. It was empty when I got here. I was hungry, but too incoherently tired to do much of anything about it. I decided to heat up and eat a can of black beans. The problem is that we don’t really have a can opener. Blair has a Swiss Army knife he’d left on the counter, which has a camping opener, which I had never used before. I hacked at the can for a while, spilling bean juice on my uniform shirt which I was, for some reason, still wearing when I began making food for myself, and eventually got it open to the extent that I could get my beans out. Zack and Blair made fun of me about it yesterday though, saying it looked like Wolverine had attacked the can.
I collapsed into bed for a short while after the Bean Incident, but then I heard quiet chattering and giggling. Nicole, Hope, Caitlin and Blair had all returned from their day off, which they had spent at a music festival (lucky twerps), and were having a slumber party here, on Blair’s king-size mattress because they were all accompanying me at work the next morning. I hadn’t yet spent any time with any of them, because our schedules had been opposites, so I got up and joined them. I regaled them with some ridiculous tales from the past 4 days, hysterically and deliriously laugh-crying my way through them. We got about 4 hours of sleep, but I think the chance to talk and laugh about my experience, and get a little sympathy, and see some familiar friendly faces, was worth the trade-off of a slightly more insufficient night of sleep.
By my third run, I basically felt like I had gotten the hang of it. There is still certainly a great deal I can work on, improve and fine tune. But I think I understand the basic mechanics and procedures and schedule of the job now. I had a lot of nice passengers who were pleasant to chat with, but who did not order many drinks, and thus did not produce much profit for me. As far as I’m concerned, this is somewhat secondary. I did come out here hoping to make a great heap of money, so I could spend the rest of the year having guilt- and employment-free adventures and traveling. I don’t know yet how feasible this will be. However, I know I don’t like to be too hung up on money. I’d rather enjoy the experience, and genuinely connect with people, instead of calculating how much they might be worth to me.
My favorite part of my last run was meeting this family that belongs to a mechanic of Alaska Railroad (ARR for short, :D ). There was a little girl whose 7th birthday was yesterday, and her little brother Lyle, who was 4, and their mother. I made them all some smoothies, and brought them juice and coffee, and chatted with the kids a few times. Apparently the mom appreciated it, because she tipped me over 50% on their bill. I hope I see them again, riding the train to visit their dad who’s stationed in Fairbanks for the summer, not because of the tip (though that was nice), but because they were adorable, and I enjoyed talking to them.
I also stayed up past my bedtime on Sunday to watch the end of the Tony’s on TV at the BVI. I do so adore the Tony’s.
Thankfully, I got a couple of dead legs on this run—dinner going north, and breakfast coming south. I maximized the utility of both—by sleeping. And I survived this grueling test of endurance, and now I have a couple days off. And it looks like I’ll be on a more reasonable schedule for the next week or two. But now I know…I can do anything! I’m thinking about testing this theory further, by staying in Alaska for the winter as well. And swimming in some glacial rivers. We’ll see.
Disclaimer: In case this came across as an incessant bout of whining, I'd have it known that I'm pretty sure I like this job. I'd prefer not to work in such extreme bursts, and it would have been nice to ease into it a bit slower, but I think they like the trial-by-fire technique, and it seems to work well enough. Now I know I can withstand basically whatever they send at me. I'm excited about getting better at it, and I think I'll enjoy doing this more than most other things I could have spent my summer working at. I don't know yet if I'll come back for more next year, repeating experiences generally isn't my style, but I expect I'll be able to apply what I learn to other stuff I'll do in the future, like working more typical bartending gigs, or...you know, other things.
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