Workin' hard or...?
Hardly Workin': Your New Orleans Work Stories
We've all had that terrible boss, those unreasonable work demands, the impossible colleague, the bad day at the office...here are some choice tales from the coal face of working life in New Orleans...
- I was working at a 100 year old hotel. The kind of place that is never really clean and had been neglected for 20 years. I opened the walk in door one day and found my boss on the ground picking up 20 pounds of cooked beef that he had dropped on the floor. Making eye contact the entire time, he handed it to me to be put on the line to serve it. I quietly warned all the staff not to eat it. This guy runs 1,000 dollar a night hotels and restaurants.
- I managed a locally-owned spa, and the owner asked me to be on the call list for the home medical alarm of the elderly woman who lived with him.
- I worked at a bar that had six apartments upstairs. Tenants and bartenders lined the alley with their trash, and at 5pm daily the bartender hauled said trash to the curb for pickup. One Saturday, after a tenant moved out, there were at least 30 free weights, ranging from 5lb to 50lbs. I was TOLD by my boss, not asked, to open all the messy bar bags, and evenly distribute said weights. Following the completion of that, I lugged those weights filled bags to the curb for the poor, unsuspecting trash handlers. Still can’t believe I didn’t stand up for myself and the city workers who could have been injured.
- My boss would constantly ask me to clean his car, pick up his dry cleaning, etc, even though it was nowhere close to being my job description as a retail assistant.
- In the 1980s, a Burger King manager asked me could he spray the mustard and ketchup from the plastic dispensers onto my boobs. I said no, stupefied. Didn’t get many hours after that ,so I quit. I was...18. I can still remember his name and face.
- Literally, and unsolicited, my boss tried to buy pot from me.
- My boss still kept in touch with many friends from college and one of them was writing a novel and had asked them to read it. Because this boss was incapable of honesty, she told her within a few days that she 'loved it' even though she hadn't even picked it up. Well, her friend was meeting with her editor the following week and asked if my boss might get her notes to her by Friday so she had a chance to absorb them before the meeting. Instead of confessing, my boss stormed my office in a panic and asked me to read her friend's book and provide notes on post-its in the margins that she would re-copy later. I told her I would read it on the clock but if she wanted a book report, that was going to be $150. It all went down and I had almost forgotten about it until about 6 months later. The author attended a party my boss was hosting and we ended up in conversation : "(The boss) is really the best friend I could have...she reviewed my book for me and made so many important suggestions that truly helped me with my editor. I'm so grateful." I chugged my wine.
- My boss would constantly get me to let people go, even though I personally did not have that authority. It was just something they really hated doing. Yeah, me too!
- Always fun to be in the back of the house and prepare a 'special' dish when David Duke would come to dine in the 90s...
- I once had to buy a bunch of flowers for my boss to give to a VIP, and when I returned with the flowers, she said they were "too bridal” and sent me back to swap them, saying: "Don’t pay for a fresh bunch, get him to exchange them for something more dramatic." Same boss once asked me to go on a daytime television program and pretend to be her, and to be interviewed as if I were her. She was thirty years older than me, French and quite well-known in industry circles but she did not think anyone would notice. She once fired someone for writing her a memo in biro, not fountain pen. And she also fired someone for having green eyes.
- I worked as an admin at a school, and I had a workplace accommodation to get written instructions for my disability, which causes memory loss. There was a summer event that they expected me to attend and they started emailing me about promoting it, way in advance. It was an event that I needed to promote, that's all that was written in the email. I bought a plane ticket that left the day of the event to visit my long distance partner. One month out, I received a detailed list of the things that I would be responsible for AT THE EVENT. I let them know that I wasn't aware that I needed to attend, and that I was sorry that I had travel plans for that day. The Communications Department staff became incredibly passive aggressive with repeated emails, phone calls, and eventually a video call where I was singled out, interrupted, and made to cry. They acted like I was asking them to move mountains to send me a written summary of our verbal conversations. I found out my direct supervisor and HR Department had never documented the work accommodations, even though it was a condition of my employment and that just asking for the details of the conversations would affect my Employee Review at the end of the school year.
- I had one boss that made me oversee the online auction for his car all day. Now, it was easier than doing my actual work, but it had nothing to do with my job and I don't think corporate would have been too impressed.
- It was Mardis Gras 2010, and I had set out to face-paint at a parade uptown. I jerry rigged a set up around my waist with paints, paint brushes, and a water bottle to wear around my Tu-Tu. As I arrived, a very well dressed uptown lady had approached me and said "I want a black a gold Fleur-Dis-Lis!"
"You got it!" I enthusiastically said.
I had painted SEVERAL at this point, so I was feeling very confident. I dipped my paint brush in the black paint and begin to paint the outline, when all of a sudden, a GIANT bag of beads GETS THROWN AT MY FACE from one of the floats passing by, and my paint brush made a single line all across the woman's face, causing my WATER TO SPILL all over my legs. It was level 10 panic at this point. There I was in my tutu and paint set up, struggling to find water to clean this nice ladies face up.
"Anyone have any water?! It's an emergency!"
2 people immediately offered me some, and I began to wipe off the sad Fleur-Dis-damage on her face.
"Oh honey are you ok? Your face is red!" She kindly said as I was cleaning her up.
"Yeah I'm good. Just embarrassing!" I laughed.
After I had collected my self, I painted a Fleur-Dis-Lis on her cheek, and she handed me a guilt ridden $20.
- My boss told me that the reason I hadn't been promoted in four years (despite consistently hitting targets, etc) was because he thought me "too valuable to replace". In his exact words: "We could never get someone as good as you for what we pay you". I left soon after that.
- I worked at a good restaurant in the quarter, I was a culinary intern and it was my first job in the city. My chef called me "salad girl" for a whole evening until I spoke up and said that I have a name. We would use a plank and crate system to get to the walk-in anytime it rained because the floor would flood, and the alleyway where we would smoke would be referred to as 'hanging with the rats'. I have also worked at a restaurant where, after my maternity leave, I was asked to bring my baby to work with me so my partner could fill in an empty shift, which led to a coworker trying to get me fired for doing what I was asked to do.
- I used to do in-person visitors surveys for a museum. We would entice people to do the survey by telling them they could go into a draw to win a $50 gift card. After asking the boss about who the winners were several times, we found out that there was no prize draw; they hadn’t been doing it for over a year. They basically had me looking people in the eye and lying to them for a year. I will never forgive them for that!
- I used to work the ticket desk at the LA state museum in the Cabildo in the French Quarter. The entrance is such that you can kind of see people about to come in. One day, I turned to the security guard and said "Hey check it out, this dude coming in looks like John Malkovich." He came along with two other guests. I tried to play it cool and not alert the large tourist crowd behind him. Upsold him on the combo tickets, and he bought them. Ran his credit card, which confirmed it was the man himself. I texted my wife (also a huge fan) and she insisted I needed to say hello and thank him for his work. About an hour and a half later, I was coming off my lunch and saw him waiting around. He was alone, we made eye contact, and I nodded hello. He said hello, and I casually thanked him for his work. He asked me what my favorite film of his was, and I was so stunned that I tried not to say the first thing that came to my mind (Con-Air) and instead said "Red". He laughed and thanked me again.
(And an adults-only one to finish...)
- Every year in the summer there is a huge swingers convention that is held in New Orleans. And the hotel I worked at on Bourbon and Canal, as a valet, was completely booked with swingers for that weekend. We were told to not enter the hotel, and had to run all the way around it to get to the garage, instead of going through like we usually did. A part of the job as a valet is retrieving things from people's cars that they forgot. It's an easy way to make tips, so you always want to volunteer when people ask. So on Friday night of that weekend a lady and her husband walk up to the valet stand and ask us to get a pink drawstring bag from their car. I volunteer first and start running to the garage. This garage is about three blocks from the hotel and you have cross Bourbon to get to it. So I get to the garage, grab the keys, and find the car. I open the backseat passenger door and I see the pink bag. The only problem is, it's overflowing sex toys. Some were outside of the bag so I had to quickly stuff them in. It doesn't close all the way though, but I have to run back to the hotel. When I get onto Bourbon, though, the bag flies open and toys spill out onto the street. I get some cheers and whistles from the Friday night crowd and I quickly pick up and start to run again. I walk up to the couple and hand them their bag. She tips me $5 and as I turn to tell my coworkers what just happened, she says "wait". I turn around and then she proceeds to ask me if I wanted to go to her room with her and her husband. Given I was 18 and the 40 year age gap, I respectfully declined.
We've all had that terrible boss, those unreasonable work demands, the impossible colleague, the bad day at the office...here are some choice tales from the coal face of working life in New Orleans...
- I was working at a 100 year old hotel. The kind of place that is never really clean and had been neglected for 20 years. I opened the walk in door one day and found my boss on the ground picking up 20 pounds of cooked beef that he had dropped on the floor. Making eye contact the entire time, he handed it to me to be put on the line to serve it. I quietly warned all the staff not to eat it. This guy runs 1,000 dollar a night hotels and restaurants.
- I managed a locally-owned spa, and the owner asked me to be on the call list for the home medical alarm of the elderly woman who lived with him.
- I worked at a bar that had six apartments upstairs. Tenants and bartenders lined the alley with their trash, and at 5pm daily the bartender hauled said trash to the curb for pickup. One Saturday, after a tenant moved out, there were at least 30 free weights, ranging from 5lb to 50lbs. I was TOLD by my boss, not asked, to open all the messy bar bags, and evenly distribute said weights. Following the completion of that, I lugged those weights filled bags to the curb for the poor, unsuspecting trash handlers. Still can’t believe I didn’t stand up for myself and the city workers who could have been injured.
- My boss would constantly ask me to clean his car, pick up his dry cleaning, etc, even though it was nowhere close to being my job description as a retail assistant.
- In the 1980s, a Burger King manager asked me could he spray the mustard and ketchup from the plastic dispensers onto my boobs. I said no, stupefied. Didn’t get many hours after that ,so I quit. I was...18. I can still remember his name and face.
- Literally, and unsolicited, my boss tried to buy pot from me.
- My boss still kept in touch with many friends from college and one of them was writing a novel and had asked them to read it. Because this boss was incapable of honesty, she told her within a few days that she 'loved it' even though she hadn't even picked it up. Well, her friend was meeting with her editor the following week and asked if my boss might get her notes to her by Friday so she had a chance to absorb them before the meeting. Instead of confessing, my boss stormed my office in a panic and asked me to read her friend's book and provide notes on post-its in the margins that she would re-copy later. I told her I would read it on the clock but if she wanted a book report, that was going to be $150. It all went down and I had almost forgotten about it until about 6 months later. The author attended a party my boss was hosting and we ended up in conversation : "(The boss) is really the best friend I could have...she reviewed my book for me and made so many important suggestions that truly helped me with my editor. I'm so grateful." I chugged my wine.
- My boss would constantly get me to let people go, even though I personally did not have that authority. It was just something they really hated doing. Yeah, me too!
- Always fun to be in the back of the house and prepare a 'special' dish when David Duke would come to dine in the 90s...
- I once had to buy a bunch of flowers for my boss to give to a VIP, and when I returned with the flowers, she said they were "too bridal” and sent me back to swap them, saying: "Don’t pay for a fresh bunch, get him to exchange them for something more dramatic." Same boss once asked me to go on a daytime television program and pretend to be her, and to be interviewed as if I were her. She was thirty years older than me, French and quite well-known in industry circles but she did not think anyone would notice. She once fired someone for writing her a memo in biro, not fountain pen. And she also fired someone for having green eyes.
- I worked as an admin at a school, and I had a workplace accommodation to get written instructions for my disability, which causes memory loss. There was a summer event that they expected me to attend and they started emailing me about promoting it, way in advance. It was an event that I needed to promote, that's all that was written in the email. I bought a plane ticket that left the day of the event to visit my long distance partner. One month out, I received a detailed list of the things that I would be responsible for AT THE EVENT. I let them know that I wasn't aware that I needed to attend, and that I was sorry that I had travel plans for that day. The Communications Department staff became incredibly passive aggressive with repeated emails, phone calls, and eventually a video call where I was singled out, interrupted, and made to cry. They acted like I was asking them to move mountains to send me a written summary of our verbal conversations. I found out my direct supervisor and HR Department had never documented the work accommodations, even though it was a condition of my employment and that just asking for the details of the conversations would affect my Employee Review at the end of the school year.
- I had one boss that made me oversee the online auction for his car all day. Now, it was easier than doing my actual work, but it had nothing to do with my job and I don't think corporate would have been too impressed.
- It was Mardis Gras 2010, and I had set out to face-paint at a parade uptown. I jerry rigged a set up around my waist with paints, paint brushes, and a water bottle to wear around my Tu-Tu. As I arrived, a very well dressed uptown lady had approached me and said "I want a black a gold Fleur-Dis-Lis!"
"You got it!" I enthusiastically said.
I had painted SEVERAL at this point, so I was feeling very confident. I dipped my paint brush in the black paint and begin to paint the outline, when all of a sudden, a GIANT bag of beads GETS THROWN AT MY FACE from one of the floats passing by, and my paint brush made a single line all across the woman's face, causing my WATER TO SPILL all over my legs. It was level 10 panic at this point. There I was in my tutu and paint set up, struggling to find water to clean this nice ladies face up.
"Anyone have any water?! It's an emergency!"
2 people immediately offered me some, and I began to wipe off the sad Fleur-Dis-damage on her face.
"Oh honey are you ok? Your face is red!" She kindly said as I was cleaning her up.
"Yeah I'm good. Just embarrassing!" I laughed.
After I had collected my self, I painted a Fleur-Dis-Lis on her cheek, and she handed me a guilt ridden $20.
- My boss told me that the reason I hadn't been promoted in four years (despite consistently hitting targets, etc) was because he thought me "too valuable to replace". In his exact words: "We could never get someone as good as you for what we pay you". I left soon after that.
- I worked at a good restaurant in the quarter, I was a culinary intern and it was my first job in the city. My chef called me "salad girl" for a whole evening until I spoke up and said that I have a name. We would use a plank and crate system to get to the walk-in anytime it rained because the floor would flood, and the alleyway where we would smoke would be referred to as 'hanging with the rats'. I have also worked at a restaurant where, after my maternity leave, I was asked to bring my baby to work with me so my partner could fill in an empty shift, which led to a coworker trying to get me fired for doing what I was asked to do.
- I used to do in-person visitors surveys for a museum. We would entice people to do the survey by telling them they could go into a draw to win a $50 gift card. After asking the boss about who the winners were several times, we found out that there was no prize draw; they hadn’t been doing it for over a year. They basically had me looking people in the eye and lying to them for a year. I will never forgive them for that!
- I used to work the ticket desk at the LA state museum in the Cabildo in the French Quarter. The entrance is such that you can kind of see people about to come in. One day, I turned to the security guard and said "Hey check it out, this dude coming in looks like John Malkovich." He came along with two other guests. I tried to play it cool and not alert the large tourist crowd behind him. Upsold him on the combo tickets, and he bought them. Ran his credit card, which confirmed it was the man himself. I texted my wife (also a huge fan) and she insisted I needed to say hello and thank him for his work. About an hour and a half later, I was coming off my lunch and saw him waiting around. He was alone, we made eye contact, and I nodded hello. He said hello, and I casually thanked him for his work. He asked me what my favorite film of his was, and I was so stunned that I tried not to say the first thing that came to my mind (Con-Air) and instead said "Red". He laughed and thanked me again.
(And an adults-only one to finish...)
- Every year in the summer there is a huge swingers convention that is held in New Orleans. And the hotel I worked at on Bourbon and Canal, as a valet, was completely booked with swingers for that weekend. We were told to not enter the hotel, and had to run all the way around it to get to the garage, instead of going through like we usually did. A part of the job as a valet is retrieving things from people's cars that they forgot. It's an easy way to make tips, so you always want to volunteer when people ask. So on Friday night of that weekend a lady and her husband walk up to the valet stand and ask us to get a pink drawstring bag from their car. I volunteer first and start running to the garage. This garage is about three blocks from the hotel and you have cross Bourbon to get to it. So I get to the garage, grab the keys, and find the car. I open the backseat passenger door and I see the pink bag. The only problem is, it's overflowing sex toys. Some were outside of the bag so I had to quickly stuff them in. It doesn't close all the way though, but I have to run back to the hotel. When I get onto Bourbon, though, the bag flies open and toys spill out onto the street. I get some cheers and whistles from the Friday night crowd and I quickly pick up and start to run again. I walk up to the couple and hand them their bag. She tips me $5 and as I turn to tell my coworkers what just happened, she says "wait". I turn around and then she proceeds to ask me if I wanted to go to her room with her and her husband. Given I was 18 and the 40 year age gap, I respectfully declined.
