A summer of twos...

[Twos is a funny-looking word. It looks spelled wrong...but it's not! Moving on.]

Basically, I need to blog. I promised I'd write about my summer, but I think I should also do an update on my life coming up...the next chapter that I've been so eagerly anticipating for...about four years. Wow.

So, first the wrap-up of summer/day in my life...

I feel like my summer has been divided into two parts.

I've had...

...two jobs

...two time clocks (I enjoy clocking out. Muchly.)

...two work schedules to balance (I like how both of these schedules have "last day" written for me. YAY!)

...two bosses (heh, I don't take pictures of them.)

...two sets of co-workers (I get to work with Erika at Comfort! Which is nice because she packs lunch. And as for the other picture...let's just say I like feeling tall and NO I was not standing on a chair or anything!)

...two work uniforms (I know, I know...I look creepy in both of these. All black is really not me, and the mirror picture is such a fail. STOP LAUGHING.)

...two sets of work policies to keep straight...

...and two paychecks (Fridays are doubly good!).

It's been rather exhausting, actually. But I don't want to complain! I definitely realize how blessed I've been to have two jobs in an economy where many people can't even find one. Even though the two work schedules have conflicted occasionally (I can only work one at a time!!!), it's been pretty perfect as far as money-making goes.

Lat Friday was the day that I chose for the "day in my life," so I will proceed to tell you all how that day went down...

Because Erika had to do breakfast at the hotel, we got up a little earlier than normal because she had to clock in by 8:00.

I think we were up by 7:00, showered, ate breakfast, packed lunch, and out the door by 7:30 or so.

I drove so that Erika could finish eating her breakfast...

Erika headed into work at 8:00 and I had an hour to kill before I was allowed to clock in to start cleaning rooms.

So, I did my makeup...
wrote a letter...

and read my Bible.
At 9:00, I headed into work (normally housekeepers can't clock in until 9:30, but they made an exception for me because I have to be there early with Erika anyhow).

I got my housekeeping list...

12 rooms to clean....pretty average. And the most awesome thing in the world is finding a Do not disturb sign on the door, meaning that I can cross the room right off the list!
Basically, each room has to be stripped (the sheets, pillowcases, towels, and trash taken out) and the laundry taken downstairs to the laundry room. Then the beds are made, the bathroom cleaned, the room stocked with everything it needs, everything dusted, the floor vacuumed....and voila, a clean room. Not the most exciting job...but hey, a pay check's a paycheck!

After my rooms were done, I helped Erika with hers (usually it works the other way around because she's faster), and then we clocked out and headed home around 3:15.

We got home around 3:30, giving me an entire hour to eat, change into my other uniform, and head out to the restaurant.

As it turns out, that night (of course) was completely different than any normal night, so telling you what I did wouldn't give a very good picture of the average night at the restaurant. (I had to take care of a family reunion that was being held there of about 30-35 people, so I kept about 8 running tabs for the different families represented, bringing them everything they needed. It was so. much. running! And kind of difficult because it was my boss's family and...yeah.)

So, on a normal night, I'll have anywhere between 2 and 9 tables (two being a REALLY slow night and nine being an awesome night in which I fly around non-stop).

On Thursday through Sunday, we have a hostess who takes care of seating people in each of our sections. When she seats someone in my section, she writes out a ticket with my name, comes and finds me and gives it to me. The ticket tells me how many people are at the table and where they are...

Next, I go to the table, welcome them, introduce myself, tell them the specials, and take drink orders. Pretty standard. Generally after I take their drinks to them, I'll take down their meal order and turn it into the kitchen. Most meals come with salads, which the servers have to make themselves (that can get interesting when I have a table of twelve and have to make...twelve salads while everyone else is in the tiny salad space, trying to make theirs!) Also, each table automatically gets bread and butter, so I generally carry out the salads with the bread.

When their food is ready, the kitchen calls me ("JESS, YOU'RE UP!!") and I run the food out. After that I basically babysit the table...bring more drinks...bring dessert...bring the check...bring whatever...

And sometimes I have really cool tables like this one. :)

I kind of love this picture.
and then when they finally leave, it's the fun part: collecting money from the table, haha.
Nearly everyone tips with one dollar bills, which is why I end up having to torture the bank tellers by depositing literally hundreds of singles. They tell me they don't mind...

So there you have it: Waitressing 101. :P

To sum up...a day in my life this summer was roughly twelve hours of work. But it wasn't horrible...I actually enjoyed some aspects of both jobs and I had great coworkers, which always helps.

But now...it's all over! As I write this, it's Saturday morning and last night I clocked out at the restaurant for the last time (my last day at the hotel was Wednesday). Not gonna lie, it's a good feeling.

And now I have today to finish packing because we leave early tomorrow morning for Washington DC for a two-day family vacation, and then I'm getting dropped off in Virginia at PHC. So excited about that!!!

I feel like I should also mention that my summer wasn't ENTIRELY filled up with work...I did have days off to do fun stuff like sleeping--oh, I mean, see friends and such. Don't believe me? Here's a link to my summer facebook album which captures some of the fun stuff that happened this summer, including driving to Ohio with Erika to see the kids from the family I stayed with in Mexico. We totally surprised them. :)

Also, since I kind of left everyone hanging as far as the Spanish tests that I was so terrified of, I should probably mention that I passed them both at intermediate high, meaning that I'm totally done with PHC's language requirement. :) I'm so thankful.

God is way too good to me.

Thanks for reading; I'll try to keep you all posted about my college life!

PS: This makes me laugh.