Flashers, Freezer and Foes

It was very dark in the walk-in freezer. And very cold obviously, but it was the darkness that was bothering me more. I knew there was a handle but I couldn’t see it and I wasn’t sure how long he’d leave me in there for the craic. Before complete panic set in one of the kitchen porters opened the door pretending to look for something I knew he didn’t need. He was helping me, which he’d pay for later with a frying pan flung at his head at the sink.

I used to tell the story of that job differently, I’d laugh at working in a place that required you to break the overnight crust on the bucket of coleslaw as your first job of the shift, or the chefs who would make cocks out of peppers on your staff pizza before work. I even had a hilarious story about being locked in that freezer only now, looking back at this age, I realise it wasn’t funny, or fun.

I’ve been thinking about all the jobs I had as a young woman a lot recently because some of my nieces and nephews are now at the age I was when I started working and we’ve all been talking about the value of a part-time job.

I was 16 when I worked as a chambermaid in a hotel in Dublin city centre. A taxi would come and pick me up at 6 am because it was too early for buses. I thought it was the height of sophistication. There were brilliant older women working there who had been in and out of practically every hotel in the city. They had tips and advice galore – hotel carpets are patterned so you can’t notice the dirt so only hoover the bits you can see; if the room has only been occupied for one night use your judgement on the sheets, sometimes all they need is to be pulled tight and tucked in properly, if you knock and someone says come in, keep your eyes down low until your sure it’s ok to look, some of them are dirty bastards.

Before we scrubbed and made up the rooms we did breakfast service.

There were American guests and they wanted fresh fruit and egg white omelettes – they got tinned grapefruit and scrambled eggs. That was four-star service in Dublin in 1994.

Occasionally someone would want breakfast in bed and we would take turns bringing those up. The hotel had no lift so you would check and double-check your tray before climbing the stairs carefully, making sure not to spill any orange juice we made up from cans of concentrate every morning.

One particular morning it was my turn and when I got to the door it was slightly ajar. I knocked and was summoned and lying on the bed, naked, with a corner of the sheet barely covering his genitals, was an older man with a beard. He patted the bed and asked me to lay the tray down beside him. I stepped forward nervously, tray shaking and deposited it while trying not to look at anything but the carpet. He began to speak but I bolted for the door and down the stairs. By the time I got back to the kitchen he had rung down to say there was no fork and I was to bring it up to him. ‘Same girl please’ he had said. I was 16. The night porter came in, grabbed a fork, mumbled ‘dirty bastard’ and brought it up. He was an important guest and he made a complaint. We were reprimanded. I hadn’t yet said what had happened when the porter called him that and only realised later, that he must have done it before. Dirty bastard indeed.

When I was 20 and living in London the job centre sent me for an interview at a property company. It was on Baker Street, above an opened fronted newsagents. I arrived for my meeting and was greeted by a very meek, blonde Scandinavian woman. I didn’t get her name. The office was shabby and I sat on a rickety chair beside her desk. After about 40 minutes I head a booming voice on the stairs speaking in a language I didn’t recognise. I saw my colleague’s face flush and her shoulders tense.

The door was flung open and in he walked. ‘Job Centre’ he shouted at me. I nodded. ‘Stand’ he shouted again. I did. He collapsed into the chair behind the other desk and picked up the phone. He started speaking, looking me up and down as he did. He seemed to approve of me. He hung up. ‘We go now,’ he said.

I wasn’t sure where we were going or why but when we got into the ageing sports car parked outside he locked the doors. As he pulled into traffic he pressed play on the stereo and the song of the summer started. It was I’m Horny. Remember that? He looked at me and laughed.

Eventually, we pulled up in front of a fairly dilapidated three-story house in west London. He went inside and left me in the car. I saw him look out the window at me a few times. Eventually, he came back. He didn’t’ seem in great form and we sped back to the office. When we got back in I sat back in my ancient chair beside my blonde friend. He went to the bathroom.

As soon as the door closed she looked at me and said ‘go, now’. I had decided I wasn’t going back the next day anyway but the look on her face and the urgency in her voice were enough to make me leg it.

I ran down Baker Street and only stopped when I saw an employment agency. I’d been in and out of enough of them over the previous weeks to know that they’d make me do a typing test. So I went in, asked them to test me and hid out. He probably wasn’t chasing me, she was probably fine, but I’ve thought about them a lot in the intervening 20 years. When I went back to the job centre they knew about my absconding and were very reluctant to deal with me, even when I explained what happened.

There were other jobs. Ones where everyone was roared at every day by a manager barely older than us. A retail job where we were robbed so often by people with knives security only bothered coming down every third or fourth time. And ones with the usual amounts of innuendo and inappropriate ‘hugging’.

Of course, in all of these, I also had great friends, nights out and loads of craic.

I know things are different now, I know we live in a changed world. I know that if a geriatric flashed a 16-year-old the guards would be called, but still, I’m wondering now if sending a teenager out into the world of work really is the fun, character-building experience I was so sure it was.

Why are we so keen on everyone growing up so fast. The working life is long enough and hard enough, do we really need our kids to enter it so soon?

Maybe we did the awful jobs so they don’t have to.

Of course, this all could just be me. Maybe everyone else’s part-time and summer jobs were lovely and easy and flasher free!

Jennifer Stevens, June 2020