Then there are the bad days... (Cirque update)

[jbsegal]

Sometimes, (almost) nothing goes right.

Yesterday, I was unsure what time I was supposed to report for work, so I called Adecco@Cirque and talked to one of the company folk who told me, very clearly and distinctly, that I was working INSIDE and should be clocking in at 3, thus arriving at 2:45. I walked in the gate at 2:40 and the 1st words out of the mouth of the Adecco person handling check-ins is "You're late". "Huh?" I sputter. "You're late. You're working outside and start of shift was 25m ago." I explain yesterday's phone call and she says, more or less, "that's weird, see, on this master schedule, you're working outside. Go clock in."

So I do. I'll note that I didn't bring sunscreen. Luckily, this doesn't actually become an issue.

I head up front and find 2 people - a pair who normally work together - at tent 1 - and no one at Tent 2. I figure that tent 2 will need coverage and prepare to spend my day there. A moment or 2 later, the pair and the outside mgr (a nice guy, really) come over, and I'm shifted over to tent 1. This is no big deal.

Small positive note: the e-ticket scanners are actually working.

Someone comes and joins me. I explain the job to him. This takes 60s or so. :)

So far annoying, but survivable.

The employee shopping time is the 1st break so, as this is Sales Tax Amnesty day in MA, I grab the 1st break.

I go sweep after everyone's in. Fine. I head in to the merch tent to shop. I gather my stuff. A couple of minutes later - as the break is nearly over - the necessary merch mgr is located to actually consummate the transaction. I prepare to hand back approx. 8 hours of my pay to them, do the cc transaction and get the receipt.

Oh, look, what's this? It's sales tax. I point this out. He goes "Hm. Let me check in to this." In the mean time, another usher has had to give up on her attempted purchase and head back to her station. Merch Mgr returns and - once I figured out his accent and lack of volume - says "Sorry. No employee sales today. I am incapable of doing both of A) giving the employee discount and then B) NOT charging sales tax on the resulting total."

Is there anyone here who's worked retail who can possibly explain this to me? If I were them, I'd have had the person who had root on the merch system change the tax rate to 0.00 for the day and all would have been done. This might have involved a call to Montreal. I expect the system does this already on its own and such a change could be enqueued remotely, or that there's a hard-wired terminal in the Box Office trailer connected to the system that could make this change.

If I were more awake and better with basic maths, I could have suggested that he just discount enough that the total with tax came out right...

By the time he voided my cc transaction, my break was over.

A bit later, the Outside Mgr says that they're short someone inside, and that I should go to door six for the 2nd act and ush there. A few minutes earlier, it was looking like I'd be sent to door 7, as the inside mgr had seemingly shuffled the people working the doors so that there was no one who knew the special duties of door 7 working there, and there'd been a problem with the tech guarding (keeping the patrons from even thinking about touching any of the rigging that the rigging guys are mucking with down at the base of the towers during various bits of the show) the night before.

This is probably the only part you care about...
Here's the one solid pock of the day: There's a change to the acts for this show... Dergen (the guy on crutches) isn't doing his act. In its place is an aerial hoop act - a (woman?), a hoop on a rope, sailing gliding, twisting, hanging, and such. Very Very Nice. I'm very glad I got to see this. This was the 1st Cirque act I'd seen in a while that used a safety line at all... one trick was starting from a knee hang, drop to an ankle hang. A reasonable thing to safety...
And now it's done.

Anyway, the 1st show ends, I help clean the big top a bit and head back out to Tent 2. I then notice that I still have the mag-light for door 6 in my pocket and run it back to its place.

As we're letting in the next batch of people, Outside Mgr comes and asks if I still have that mag light. I say "No, I'm certain I don't" and he goes away. A couple moments later, he's back and asking if I'm really sure. I explain that I'm absolutely certain, as I'd forgotten to put it back and then went and did so.

A while later, someone else is sent out to check if I have the light. No. Really. I don't.

Dinner is ok, with fairly good food and ok conversation. I discover that, if you wait til you have only 10m left of your break, the really good food shows up, for the performers who'll be out to eat shortly.

Having had reasonably good other stuff, I go back for some Very tasty lamb. Mmm, lamb.

Finally, at the end of the evening - I'm not chosen for closing. I don't know why... - I try to talk to the Adecco guy I'd talked to on the phone yesterday. I attempt to explain that I'm missing .5 hr of pay due to his fuck up, and is there anything he can do about this. He is repeatedly confused by this, eventually says "hold on, let me check on this" and then vanishes, not to return - quite possibly he showed back up moments after I timed out and headed to the T. I don't know.

On the way home, all's fine til Park St., where the wait for a red line train is interminable and hot. The saving grace here is the discovery of a local trio playing on the platform, The Third Life. They're very good and their CDs are cheap - $3 and $5. I pick up the cheaper one and finally head out on a train home.

I'm back there tomorrow, starting at 11:45, til about... 8ish... it'll be raining. Odds are, it'll still be a better day.

But at least this time I KNOW I'm working inside.

Oh... Next week's schedule:
Weds: 2 shows, inside
Thu: 2 shows, inside
Fri: 2 shows, outside
Sun: Standby. (This means: Show up. You'll be paid for at least 2hours, even if you're sent home in 30m.)

So, quietann, deguspice, gilana, see you there.

dancingdeer, we'll have to reschedule...

Comments

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Bleah, that sounds awful. I'm sorry. :(

[amberwood.livejournal.com]

Wow that sounds like a lot of hassle, really sorry you had to go thru that. I hate days like that.

[exponentialdk.livejournal.com]

What frustration.

Though much of it is all too common in jobs that give the employee no
respect, and in which the supervisor is all-powerful. There are generally
jobs for the lower classes. This is the kind of thing that seems to greatly
aggravate classism from the, uh, downhill of the fence.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

I think the biggest problem is that my supervisors and my employers are 2 distinct groups, making communication and coordination more difficult.

[totient]

Sales tax amnesty days are a giant pain in the ass for retailers. It's not as simple as just changing the tax rate to zero; you have to keep track of how much sales tax you would have charged, separately from tax-exempt sales (and clothing is tax-exempt, so I imagine Cirque has a lot of tax-exempt sales). For a big organization a tiny fraction of whose income is actually exempt, it may be worth it to eat the sales tax rather than file the paperwork. In which case it's probably easiest to implement it as a discount rather than figuring out how to make your register use two different zero percent rates and keep them separate. And lots of registers allow only preprogrammed discount levels.

Annoying that you didn't get your extra 5% off, though.

[kimeepower.livejournal.com]

Sorry dude. I actually quit on Thursday, as did much of the Food & Beverage people. I just got sick of the bullshit lies we were told & the constant screaming at us to do this & clean that & whatever. I made sure to make my purchases & actually buy a ticket at the discount first. I wanted to hang around for all the perks at the end, like the staff party & stuff but something tells me that that is a lie as well.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

I've been told no lies, I've not yet been screamed at, nor even spoken harshly to.

The travellers I was out with tonight say that the end-of-city staff party is real.

Sorry you had such a bad experience. I was venting on one bad day - which seems to have been a bad day for nearly everyone I came across.

Today was much beter.

[sauergeek.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine interviewed with them, and got yanked around a lot about scheduling and times. She finally told them to go piss up a rope. Sad to hear that it seems to be endemic.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

"yanked around" how?

I've had exactly one miscommunication about scheduling so far, and this was for a shift they called me to fill in on.

Other than what amounts to an emphatically made mistake between "You're working outside" and "You're working inside" made not in my favor (If they'd said out when they meant in, I would've arrive 30m early...), I've had no other problems.

Most of my cow-orkers - local and travellers - are fine people.

[sauergeek.livejournal.com]

Sadly, the details are in a locked LJ post. Short form: not told about interview times, not told about mandatory training on a weekend, and her first choice of job position was filled -- before anyone was hired. I think she did the right thing by telling them to stuff it.

[dancingdeer.livejournal.com]

No problem; we'll talk later.

[blankkittyblack.livejournal.com]

JB,

Hey! I should be sleeping, I have organic chemistry lab tomorrow at 7AM, but instead I saw you added me on LJ, so I thought I'd pipe up.

I am anxiously awaiting my discount. I want to pick up one of those Icarus masks, the one with ridiculous feathers that costs $395, to wear to a masquerade party; the only problem is it is tomorrow. I was told the registers are in training mode until Monday, so I guess either I'm out of luck or pay full price. Sucks.

Tonight was the best fun I've had in a long time. After the cirque show I went to Alchemy at Nation. It's a weekly Goth night, there I saw the Cruxshadows perform. It's funny, I never heard of the Cruxshadows (I kinda got out of the scene for awhile) until I was talking to an acquaintance of mine, the same guy who turned me on to Cirque. Check out the third photo down, right upper arm of the middle character, he is the lead singer in the photo you can see his Alegria tattoo. http://www.thelastdance.com/index_frame.html . Tonight, I got to meet Rouge and Rachael. I was probably the only straight female there more excited about meeting Rachael than Rouge, but see she plays violin on the above friend's album, so is more like a personal hero. Unfortunately, she wasn’t feeling very well, having trouble with her eyes or I would have talked longer. I got them both to sign my stuff.

Maybe I haven't read enough of your journal to know, but which cirque performers have you met? Who are the followers? Do they have LJ?

Did you see the finale where you told me to stage guard? Initially someone's (whose?) coach was standing where I needed to go and you said it was ok, not to get in his way. I think after awhile he recognized that he was serving as an impediment to my doing my job, because he let me pass in front. During the finale he was shouting joyfully (not like during the juggling routine) in another language (Russian?) at several of the performers and laid his hands on my shoulders. (Russians?) are such an affectionate people, I was glad to share in the joy of the moment.

Well, I do need to get some sleep. At the very least a shower, so I'm going to sign off. I don't work Friday, they later added me, but I'm working two jobs. I told my primary job to work my schedule around this one, but originally I wasn't scheduled, they put me on after the fact. Saturdays, I'm not available, Sunday, I'm a standby. Since we were short tonight, I don't think finding someone to fill in for should be a problem. If nothing else I'll bring my text book and get some studying done. Are you going the party Sunday?

[blankkittyblack.livejournal.com]

Oh, I forgot to ask did you hear they released the name for the new MGM grand show?