Meat Jell-o

Yesterday I worked my ass off!  That is figurative as I have a big butt already and it would take a long time to really work it off.  So anyway, I worked f'in hard! I spent the first half of my day cleaning as a real bona-fide housekeeper at a condominium time-share resort.  The units are rented out fully furnished for a week at a time (this is also where I had been stripping temporarily which I now know is a much easier job and more fun too).  The unit inhabitants only have one week to mess them up then a crew comes in and wipes, washes and polishes all the nooks and crannies to ready it for another round of Canadians or people from Texas (I know this because the units have the visitors name and hometown info on the room cards and most of them are Canooks or Texans).    I went into it thinking it wouldn't be so bad since my stripping experience was rather like a piece of cake.  Cleaning = not fun = people are pigs.  

After one week in a clean slate condo people manage to spill all sorts of crap in the fridge and apparently feel no need to wipe anything up.  In every fridge I cleaned there was the inevitable goo under the produce drawer.  I refer to the goo as meat jell-o as I think it is most likely hamburger, steak or chicken juice/blood that drips off the racks and puddles under the drawer.  Not only is it gross to look at it--the junk is also stinky and sticky and takes way too much elbow grease and time to rub out.  Blah!  Wipe it up people!  WTF!  You were there one week!  What does your home fridge look like?!?!?!?!?!  Also, when staying at a hotel/resort, please tell your children NOT to take the tube of toothpaste and squirt lines off it across the bathroom mirror.  Someone has to clean that.  Someone else also has to clean the pine needles off the couch cushions.  Why were there even that many pine needles on the couch cushion?  Did you take it to Glacier National Park on a hike and use it to sit on the trail when you were tired?  I am still perplexed by that one.  

My saving grace of the day was pairing with an OCD maid who had a penchant for bathrooms (thank God!  I shall refer you back to my earlier postings about hairy toilets...) and wearing my red Dansko clogs (I love you Dansko.  You make my feet happy).  I did the front half which is the kitchen and living areas.  Wipe and dust EVERYTHING.  Clean EVERYTHING.  Polish EVERYTHING (even the pots and pans).  By EVERYTHING I mean each frickin surface you can see and can't see.  Much like cleaning an apartment or house for a new tenant--that kind of clean--except it is fully furnished and decorated with pictures on the wall that need dusted and the glass cleaned and silverware to boot.  Kicked my ass!  It was quite a work-out too.  So if you look at the bright side--which I do as I am usually an optimist--I got paid to work-out yesterday.  Woot!  Woot!  I will just keep telling myself that the cleaning gig is like that exercise boot-camp that chicks pay craploads of money to attend only I get paid to attend.  Next, I shall trick others into coming with me and start my own cleaning agency/boot camp and not only will I get paid by those I am cleaning for, I shall get paid by the rich bitches that are too stupid to realize that they are paying me for the opportunity to clean someone's house.  Oh yeah.. Now that is a plan.  I shall work on putting that into action....(I didn't realize I could become an entrepreneur until I typed that..I am so onto something here) 

Gottcha Where I Wantcha....

On Friday, while working at my condo-stripping job I was reminded of a series of horribly stupid, long-winded jokes that we used to tell as children.  Maybe you remember them.  The jokes all center around people staying in a hotel and checking out early based on scary voices they hear chanting mantras such as "Gottcha Where I Wantcha, Now I'm Gonna Eatcha," or "When the log rolls over we will die, we will die."  Usually a brave person tracks down the source which ends up to be an old women in a closet holding a bloody booger on her finger or a bunch of talking flies sitting on a turd that was left in the toilet.  Not the best jokes but they were funny to a 7 year old.  The funniest part is why my temporary job on Fridays cleaning hotel rooms would remind me of fodder that is embedded in my mind from almost 30 years ago.  Any guesses as to why??  Honestly, the truth would make you barf.....No pictures associated with this post.  I am still too busy trying not to vomit little bits in my mouth in order to draw what I have witnessed.


Note to Self:  While staying at hotels or resort, be sure to bring ample kleenex and not to use the bed sheets as tissue paper especially while suffering from bloody sinus pressure.  *Barf*  Don't get me started on the toilets again....  

Yellow River.....

There are certain jobs that I just won't do regardless if turning them down would disqualify me from collecting unemployment each week.  Those jobs as we have come to know most likely involve animals, poop and blood.  I suppose I had left out urine.  Here is an announcement from good ol' Careerbuilder about a job in my area--even though it was categorized as not a good match they sent it to me anyway.  I have posted it below as proof. I am not a doctor.  I will never be a doctor.  I have not ever been a doctor nor a urologist.  I don't work with the yellow kind of pee-pee and I don't work with men's pee-pees or women's hootchies.   This job is definitely not for me although it would be a good match for any urologists you may know looking for work especially if they are trained in the computer program listed.  

BTW--I used to have a job that worked with urine.  Not a fun thing to do.  I worked in a probation office and one of those "other duties as assigned" included watching females urinate in cups and verifying that they had not tampered with the urine about to be sampled.  Two people were required to do this for safety and liability--as you might suppose, it would be rather easy for a person to say someone acted inappropriately while watching them pee.  Strength in numbers.  In addition to watching a person pee or watching the person watch the person pee (I preferred to watch the watcher), I was lucky enough to be the one who packaged the urine samples and sent them off via Fed-ex.  This duty as assigned involved wrapping the pee in ultra-absorbent barriers so as not to leak about the box should the lid come dislodged.  The worst part was that while I waited for the Fed-Ex carrier to arrive, the pee samples sat on my desk.  Yep.  Right next to my coffee.  Good times.  I will divulge that the whole reason I went back to university was because of this job.  I wanted a job where I NEVER had to deal with pee again.  Now I just deal with the crap that comes along with unemployment.  Aargh!

Stripping

In all my years I never once thought that I would ever utter the words "I have been working part-time as a stripper."  To clarify the aforementioned statement one should realize that by stripper I do not mean I have been baring my naked body while dancing on-stage to Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me" and performing acrobatic stunts while attached to a stripper pole.  I am referring to stripper in the form of the action verb for a job which entails removing the sheets and towels from resort- or hotel rooms in order to prepare the room for the housekeeper to clean.  It is a good stripper--not a bad stripper.  

Unlike the other type of stripping where you are paid to remove your clothes, I am paid to remove toiletries, linen and foods left in the refrigerator--most likely from Canadians as they seem to be the only tourists still visiting this town with money.  I do not receive tips like the other kind of stripper either.  The tips that were left in the rooms go to the housekeepers who following my stripping the room of the nasties and unmentionables that guests leave behind.  I also get to restock the rooms with linens and towels to replace the ones that were used and change out toilet paper, paper towels, soaps, candles, dish washing tablets and other assorted niceties that one would expect in a fully furnished condominium unit that is rented weekly.

Luckily, I have not been stationed in the laundry room as I had expected.  That is good because I do not fold symmetrically very well.  In fact, I can't even draw a decently round circle (it usually looks more lopsided like almost an oval or a badly shaped cookie).   Assigning me as a stripper was a much more logical approach.  My initial feedback after my stint as a stripper on Fridays is that I am the best stripper they have ever trained.  I asked questions that no one had ever asked before and it made the head stripper pleased as I could understand the logic of why things were performed in a particular manner and therefore wouldn't make mistakes like other strippers.  I am still unsure of what mistakes others would make besides not being able to count.  It is a rather basic process to determine if you need flat and fitted sheets for twin and queen beds and how many replacement towels would be needed to restock a room.  There is even an inventory sheet that shows how many of each item are required to be in a room.  (Example:  A room requires 6 striped pool towels.  I count the towels that are still folded in closet.  There are 4 so I go to the supply van and retrieve 2 more towels to bring that number back to 6.  See.  Easy as pie.)  I suppose the compliment was also related to the foresight that we were low on pillow cases so I restocked the supply vehicle without being asked.  I was particularly pleased with the compliment about being the best stripper that had ever been trained.  I was also told that I learn quickly.  Yeah!  :)  That actually did make me feel happy inside.  The best part is since the head of housekeeping is a friend of ours she told my husband what an excellent stripper I am!  She also said this in front of others who may not have understood the context for which it was intended to be referenced and that made it all the better......

Being a stripper has also taught me that from now on whenever I stay at a hotel, I shall ALWAYS leave my towels and washrags in the bathtub so the housekeeper or stripper doesn't have to walk all over looking for them.  I will remove the sheets and pillow cases from the beds and place those in a pile that is also easily accessible.  Finally, I shall verify that all toilets are flushed and that I haven't left pubic hairs all over the rim of the toilet like I shaved standing over it.  YUCK!!!!  (I am very serious about that last sentence.  There were 3 units where the toilet rim had more hair than a 20 year old man.  Frickin' disgusting.  Who would do that?  What is wrong with them anyway and is genital hair loss really an actual reality or are these sickos actually shaving their junk over the toilet?)

Clearing the Air...

Captain's Log:  Week 10, day 5--
I have been officially unemployed for over two and 1/2 months.  I am out here flailing around in unchartered territory.  Others may have visited this area before but they have left no trail behind to help guide me in my exploration. I am not sure how to find my way out.  I was told to apply for jobs and interview.  There are not many jobs out there besides jobs that I would accept only to bide away my time while still looking for other jobs (see earlier post about that, week 1 I believe).  I have been applying  numerous times a week and still it does not appear there is an end in sight.  Oxygen levels are decreasing and I believe my brain may be shrinking due to the lack of stimulation other than reading comics, playing evony and updating my status on facebook.  Afraid it can not last much longer...Need job...Help.  Must have job...
Wondering if my job search is being stymied by an offensive odor mysteriously attached to my application materials.  Much like that time I sent a letter to my boyfriend while he was at basic training and my younger sister thought he must miss me so she took the letter from the mailbox after I put it in there with the flag up and then she sprayed it with like a half-gallon of Aspen perfume (this was in 1991 mind you).  When the letter arrived at the barracks he had to read it and then discard it since it stunk up the sleeping quarters.  They also gave him a new nickname because of it.  I believe they called him Stinky or something much more offensive after that.  I was always afraid to ask what nickname they gave to me after that debacle.  My sister did confess after he asked me to not spray my letters with perfume and I was unsure what he meant.  Has my sister again been lurking around and doing this again?  Maybe this time she is using that fart-smelling air freshener my teenage son has a joke.  Also, how is she attaching that smell to my emails as most of the applications are electronic?  Curious and curiouser...

Zilch, Zero, Zip

How is it possible that there are no decent jobs out there?  Certainly with unemployment this high, good employers realize that now is the time to fire sucky employees and hire really good ones to replace them for lower wages.  You know what I mean too.  Everyone has worked with that person who made the other co-workers wonder how that person every possibly got hired.  Who did they know?  Who did they do? The irony...

I am still searching diligently however this week the only new jobs have been for cleaning positions or bill collectors.  I most definitely do not want to be a bill collector.  I do not like them.  At all.  As for a hotel cleaner, no.  House cleaner, no.  I don't even like to clean my own home.  Although, if I was guaranteed a killer vacuum like the one shown I may consider it...


I did have an interview this week and I think it went positively.  It is hard to gauge that sometimes as I have never really had to interview.  I have been rather lucky that way.  My first job was found after 2 interviews that was 17 years ago.  I then transferred departments and didn't have to interview for subsequent positions there.  They just asked me if I would like to have a better job.  I said yes.  


Then I moved to Idaho.  That was some slim pickins back then.  I remember that was frustrating.  I didn't really look that hard. I was only actively searching for a month or so with maybe 3 interviews before I found the next job.  I had a typing test.  I remember that part.  I had to format a letter that had errors.  I passed.  I got the job.  Then after 3 years I left that full-time job to go to college.  The department head of another department asked me to work for him part-time while I went to college.   So I did.  I graduated college.   They gave me a better job.  Then another better job opened up there.  This is how that interview went "Do you want the job, if so, it is yours.  You have 24 hours to let me know."  I said yes.  


After a few years of that I decided it was time to move.  I went on-line and looked up the flathead valley and happened to find the job listing for my job that I just lost due to budget cuts.  I applied. I interviewed.  I got the job.  It was the only job I applied for at that time.    Now I am looking again.  I sure hope it gets easier soon.  I am not digging the interviewing part of the job search.  I am always afraid I will do something embarrassing like that dreaded feeling on a date when you accidentally fart....