And there we are in our uniform! actually i think its not that ugly.. at least i feel the polo t is nicer than the checked shirt.. luckily we got the polo t! To add on, we made a lot of Singaporean friends in the US! Besides me n yingni, the rest of the people in the photos are students from SMU.. namely Amrita, Cheryl and Alex. Yeap, and we were waiting for the shuttle bus to bring us to the park from our apartments.
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My name tag, which indicates my name (what i want to be called), and my country... the country is necessary becos we have a lot of international students working here... but i somehow believe its some sort of gimmick. becos i can tell that many of the customers were rather fascinated that there were so many foreign employees. well, its just a guess.
And below is the shuttle bus which we take to the park, to downtown where there is a library to access to fast internet, to the supermarket and to the mall. There is this rule that u can only have two people to a seat... and everyone has to be seated i.e. no one's supposed to stand. I seriously dun understand if three can fit to a seat.. why not? Many people were late for work becos of this reason. Becos the bus comes like at most once every 15mins... and if u cant get up the bus, u have to wait for the next one. common sense will tell u to take an earlier bus... BUT, its really tiring working here... and u would want to sleep more. PLUS, there is really nothing much to do if u go to the park too early.
Ok, the working conditions in Cedarpoint has really been the worst i have experienced so far in my life. Long working hours, bad scheduling, little breaks, horrible accomodation, yucky food... u name it, we've got it. I remembered for the third day of work, which is also the opening day for this summer, i worked 15hours straight without a break the whole day... yes, no food for 15 hours. And it was freaking cold, like below 10 degree celsius... without a sweater! (becos we din know it will be so cold, it was supposed to be summer!) and when we were leaving the park at the end of the day, we kind of got lost because we went to the wrong exit and we were looking for the right exit in the extremely cold winds at night. All i could think of was, "i wanna get out of here." After that, i fell sick. On the second day after i fell sick, i turned up at work with a fever and told my manager that i cant work and wanted to go home. He said he was short staffed for the morning and made me worked for two hours. so i worked... and i was aching from pain in my back becos i was really sick. and it was so cold in the open. and this is not the end of the story. becos a supervisor/manager has to sign us out (we do not have a time card mahcine in my department), i waited 1.5 hours just for the supervisor to appear back in the camp! this is so ridiculous. that night, my eyes swelled. Next day, i just called in and told my manager i am not going to work. kns, he told me that i will get 4 points for that and hung up on me. (in cedarpoint, if u call in but dun turn up for work without a medical cert, then u get 4 points, and when the points accumulate to 16, u will be terminated) I guess this was the most intolerable incident that happened to me there, but other people have experienced things worse than me.
For the next 5 weeks, i worked an average of 12 hours a day with only an hour break. which means if i have my break at 1pm, i have to work from 2pm-10pm without any break. and because we usually only have one person at each stall, we cant go to the toilet until some supervisor walk past. this sounds absurb but it was what happened. sometimes i just heck care though. cos if i really need to go, i have to go wad. and i will just take the money with me, close shop and go lo. there are many more horror stories... and i cant possibly finish them in one post.. so maybe next time i will continue on them.
We stayed in the employee accomodation while working in cedarpoint. 16 of us survived in this 5-room run-down apartment. each room housed 3-4 people.. and there were only 2 bathrooms. the living room was rather small (considering its shared by 16 people) with the cooking area at one corner. ya so 16 of us shared 2 bathrooms, one small cooking area and a refrigerator. try to imagine the groceries of 16 people in one refrigerator and how we have to queue up to take a shower when everyone comes home after the park closes. And things get worse when u have inconsiderate housemates.
Food was a major problem too. everything is fried. and/or fattening (u can literally see the fats in the food). they are also too salty or too sweet. fried chicken strips, french fries, beef patties, burgers, very creamy soups. all chicken and beef, not much veggie, fruits or seafood. we would very much love to cook our own meals, but we seldom have the time to becos we come home late and we dun usually buy fresh ingredients because we dun know when we will have the chance to cook them. i tried to be healthy by packing turkey and cheese sandwich and buying salads... but i grew sick of them after 2 weeks or so. many nights we would have instant noodles for dinner... and it was good initially, but i grew sick of it too.... and that was when i started to miss home. On good days, we would have someone home early to prepare our meals.. and those are the happy days! like haveng hainanese chicken rice, chinese-style omelettes, home-made potato salad and waflle with ice cream to top it up!
Even with all the bad events, i must say i never regretted going on this work and travel program. becos it was really an eye opener and i made many new frens from around the world(who i really miss) and learned much about their culture. and there is this girl from slovakia who really inspires me! the next post will be on them!
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