I've been living in Queenstown for about two weeks now, and life's been pretty good to me here. It's a stunning place, with jagged mountains on all sides surrounding a gigantic, bright blue lake, and I really think most anyone would be hard-pressed not to enjoy themselves here. It's also a bustling little town, with people from all walks of life and hailing from most every country in the world coming and going by the thousands each week, and every day feels like a Friday here. I haven't had too much time for adventuring and exploration yet, though, as I've been working two jobs almost since the day I arrived.
I feel very blessed to have found employment so quickly in Queenstown, as almost everyone who visits New Zealand hopes to visit here and stay for a good while. There are lots of things to see and do nearby, and tons of people to meet. This makes the demand for jobs much higher than the supply, and several of my friends from the North Island who have congregated here are still seeking employment. To have secured two jobs that I really like is nothing short of an extraordinary stroke of good luck, and I'm grateful every day to have been so fortunate.
My first job is at an American diner called Arnold's, where I wait tables. The diner is themed after and named for the drive-in restaurant from the T.V. show Happy Days, where the show's characters would gather and socialize, much to the informative benefit and comic satisfaction of the audience. Arnold's here in Queenstown really takes the theme of retro America dead seriously, featuring Coca-Cola swiveling bar stools, a life-sized statue of Elvis, old-fashioned milkshakes in tins, and a neon Wurlitzer jukebox that constantly pipes in rock classics from the fifties, sixties, and seventies through the diner's speaker system.
I'm the only American on staff at Arnold's (surprisingly, most everyone else who works there is Dutch), and a lot of our customers appreciate having at least one American waiter at an American diner, in keeping with the theme of the place. Other Americans especially are happy to meet me, as I am happy to meet them, and we often get caught up in conversation for a bit too long about all the wonders of New Zealand and the profound differences from home. There have been a lot of Americans hailing from Washington coming in lately, and it becomes all too easy to fall into conversation about American football and the recent super bowl victory of the Seahawks. The second most common state people come from is Texas, and we talk about similar things along the lines of TCU, where I spent the last four years going to school. Some people have even had family members that are studying there now, and I swear I've never felt more strongly that it really is a small world.
It's not uncommon that conversation turns to the music that's playing, and it's always Americans who ask me to please turn the jukebox up. The music at Arnold's is another one of my favorite things about working there, as many of my favorite bands get lots of airtime courtesy of our trusty old neon Wurlitzer. It's never more than fifteen minutes before another song by Queen, the Eagles, or AC/DC comes on, and it's hard to resist dancing around the place as you move from table to table.
I only work at Arnold's during the day; at night, I'm the bartender for a tequila specialty bar and Mexican restaurant called Coyote grill. Coyote is an equally fun place to work as Arnold's, despite the fact that all of the music that gets played there is in Spanish. The staff at Coyote is full of incredibly nice and energetic people, and we have such a good time working together that all of us constantly have ear-to-ear smiles plastered across our faces. They aren't the kind of hospitality smiles that are designed to please customers, and are gone as soon as you turn away from a table, but more the kind that comes from truly enjoying the work that you do and the people you're working with. Everything's a joke amongst the staff at Coyote, and even when something goes terribly wrong we can't help but laugh about it and figure we definitely won't be making that same mistake again in the future.
I'm the only bartender on staff at Coyote, which makes for a really great work environment because I almost always have the whole bar to myself. I set it up when I come in and close it down when we're done for the night, so everything is always exactly where I leave it, and I'm pretty much left to run the bar and make the drinks in whatever way I feel most comfortable. One of the managers will come and give me a hand behind the bar whenever drink orders become particularly abundant, but most of the time I'm left to my own devices. It's a cool position, because almost all of my time is spent mixing up drinks; I don't have to take orders or put them into the system, I don't have to check customers out, I don't have to set up or clean off tables, and only when we're very busy and the rest of the staff is occupied do I need to run drinks to their tables. Usually, the waiters and waitresses take the orders, put them onto the customers' tab, and present me with the ticket that indicates what drinks need to be made. After each order of drinks is ready to go out to its table, I just group them together on the bar next to the ticket, and then move on to the next order. I'm also responsible for wiping down the bar to keep it tidy, stocking the bar full of the necessary beers and drink ingredients, and keeping the chips and salsa full since they're kept at the end of the bar, but otherwise I'm usually pouring jugs of sangria, shaking up margaritas, or mixing La Palomas, El Diablos, and Tequila Sunrises. Here again I'll comment briefly on the fare of my workplace: our margaritas are delicious and come in all different flavors, and our specialty cocktails taste wonderfully exotic and are marvelous to look at. You can get a margarita in the varieties of traditional, mango, strawberry, pink, or golden, all of which can come either shaken or frozen. It's also worth noting that we don't use pre-bottled sweet and sour mix for our margaritas, as is traditional in the States...rather, our kitchen prepares the necessary ingredients for us, including homemade sugar syrup and fresh-squeezed lime juice, making for the best margarita I've ever tasted. My favorite specialty drink is probably the El Diablo, which consists of our house tequila, lime juice, ginger beer, and fresh cut lime wedges, all topped off with red creme de cassis which slowly trickles down the cocktail in mesmerizing fashion. And, of course, we stock all the usual Mexican beer suspects, like Corona, Pacifico, Bohemia, Sol, Negro Modelo, and Dos Equis. One other fun fact about the drink possibilities at Coyote: our house tequila comes bottled in either a gigantic rifle or revolver pistols, which either way makes for some pretty interesting shots to pour. I'm waiting for the day when one of the customers asks me to pour the shot directly from the rifle into their mouth.
Our staff's easy-going attitude is maintained even in the realms of cooking and drink-mixing; whenever I make too much for an order of margaritas, I slip the excess into the kitchen, and am quickly rewarded with a bowl of nachos from a batch that was too big for a plate or a dish of sliced up steak that was too much for an order of fajitas. Also, we get a tap beer and staff meal every time we clock out, which usually consists of a bowl full of heaps of everything we use in the kitchen, which I call an enchilada salad. Most of the time, it's made up of rice, steak, refried beans, chili rellenos and other veggies, guacamole, sour cream, and a whole bunch of cheese, with some tortillas on the side. Yesterday, though, we each got half a chicken covered in molé sauce alongside the usual rice and beans, as well as a big plate of churros and cinnamon cream. All things considered, I don't think I could imagine a better place to work.
Getting people drunk in the adventure capital of the world and getting paid for it,
~Jack
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