Tuesday 14 December 2010

A series of awkward events

As most awkward moments pass by fleetingly (yet stay with me for many hours after!) they don’t warrant a full post, which is why this post will be a collection of some of the smaller yet more mortifying times of the last week.

Tidying up

Much of what I find awkward passes other people by, but this incident will make even the most shameless person squirm. This week I’ve had my first guests and of course when you gather a group of people together to be looked after by 2 strangers the first few conversations can be stilted and difficult. A practiced and experienced chalet girl will be able to cope and help the tea time conversation flow but a fledgling cleaner like myself will make a giant awkward tit of herself. The conversation went something like this:

Guest – “oh so have you come to this resort before?”

Me – “ yes, in fact I actually stayed with this very company that I’m working for now!”

Guest – “oh wow, what’s that like then?”

Me – “well its quite weird being on the other side of the tracks, it makes me wish I’d tidied up more when I stayed!”

Guest – “….oh….what are you trying to say….”

I followed this comment with a desperate back pedal and lots and lots of apologies, I don’t think they worked….the guest in question still seems pretty awkward around me!

Ski Safety

On the slopes there are two types of “looks” - cool and stylish (snowboarder) or warm and safe (badly fitting clothes and a helmet) and I definitely fall into the second category. So picture me looking like this, and lumbering along the road in my ski boots with all the grace and balance of a one legged giraffe. I had hit a particularly icy patch of road when a small and hobbitty French man approached me and started speaking fluent and scary French. I look around me in bewilderment assuming he must be talking to someone else and not the obvious tourist! However he then realises that of course the silly foreigner doesn’t speak his language and he changes to English

“Do you feel safe on your skis?”

“eerrr, yes?”

“well you obviously don’t feel safe in your ski boots, and I find this strange”

And then before I could even react to his odd comment he’d walked on his way to perplex and amuse more unsuspecting English girls!

The Wide Mouth Frog

You know those times when you tell what you think is an amazing joke but then no one else finds it funny? This happens to me quite often, for example

“what do you call a chicken in a shell suit?”

“an egg”

Yes, exactly. I can hear you NOT laughing. Well, the only thing worse than telling the awful joke is telling the joke that no one finds funny and then being asked to repeat the joke over and over because your friends think the silent reaction and your “way of telling it” is hilarious! The joke in question is the “Wide Mouth Frog Joke” I’m sure you can find it on YouTube and see how its meant to be told. The awfulness of this joke and my “way” has preceeded me and has culminated in a bar man actually asking to hear the “wide mouth frog joke” because apparently it’s so bad its good. Awkward. I just stood there and stared at him, and then swayed a little bit, and then turned a bright shade of puce.

Monday 6 December 2010

Tears and tantrums

There’s a thin line between awkwardness and pure humiliation, I think this lies at the point where others point cease to be embarrassed and start to pity you. Today I found, and crossed this line.

It was the first day all the staff were allowed out to ski and so lessons were arranged and groups formed. Bear in mind that although I’ve been living with all the staff for near 2 weeks I still wouldn’t feel easy enough to be a complete fool in front of them, I’m still endeavouring to make a good impression after “the face” incident. As this is the case I wanted to make a good impression with my skiing, I’m definitely not a brilliant skier but when I throw style and grace to the wind I can make it down most slopes!

In the morning i put on my new ski boots, did up all the fastenings and left the flat. Our flat is at the top of a very steep, very icy slope and so carrying skis, poles, helmet, goggles etc down this while wearing boots was a bit of a mission. On the way down I managed to, as only someone truly awkward can, pull all the muscles in both calves! However, I kept quiet and thought it would all go away as a group of 5 of us met the instructor and off we went up the bubble lift.

This was where the awkwardness began, trying to keep smiling and chatting whilst also trying to hold back tears of pain was problematic and difficult. Being in a social situation when you aren’t completely mentally there is a very difficult time in the life of any awkward girl, its equal to being in an amazing conversation and wanting to stay but also desperately needing the loo more than ever before! That nagging feeling that creeps into the front of your subconscious and makes you say stupid things because you weren’t listening carefully enough.

(side note: this happened to me once at work when I wasn’t listening carefully to the conversation held between my older and more sensible co-workers who were talking about the restaurant chain Zizi’s and one asked what the name meant and the idiot in the corner (me) shouts in the silence “PENIS” it was mortifiying!)

Anyway, back to our story; the lift came to the top of the mountain and everyone sprang onto the snow, everyone apart from me who hobbled like a drunken cripple on ice. It was at this point where I realised the pain had become too much and I probably wasn’t going to be able to ski for fear of being stuck halfway down a mountain and not being able to move. All of a sudden while having a group picture taken it all became too much for me and I burst into sad pathetic little frozen tears. This was the point where the situation went from awkward moment to humiliatingly pathetic, my friends who had seen me swell like the elephant man the week before now saw me breakdown at the top of a lift on beautifully sunny day. I can deal with embarrassed faces of my friends and colleagues but when the looks changed to sadness and pity I shrank into my shell and started to wish for a freak avalanche

Needless to say I put my goggles over my face (to hide my shame) and got the lift back down to the town centre. Anyway, the moral to my sad little tale is never cry at -15C because it burns like hell, never do all your fastenings up tight before walking down a hill and always listen carefully to your co-workers conversations!

Sunday 28 November 2010

A difficult trip to the doctor

We were warned by returners that the first week out in the Alps was going to be difficult but none of us were prepared for the training, early mornings, late nights, limitless alcohol and of course living away from home with a bunch of strangers! Most people muddle through this ok; evening situations are lubricated by the free vino and day time chats over a toilet bowl worked a treat to create friendships!. This would have been manageable if it wasn’t for what happened on the first morning.

I woke up at 7 ready for a hard day’s work and feeling keen, however I was also feeling a bit odd … a bit lobsided perhaps. I thought nothing of it and kept on with my routine, it wasn’t until the make-up part of the morning with a mirror that I noticed something was wrong. The whole side of my face around my jaw and ear had swelled up into a red, puffy, lumpy mess. I looked like a mumps victim!  I was now officially the Elephant-man of the valley and we hadn’t even been there for a full 24 hours. Good start. I slunk into breakfast hiding behind my hair and tried not to show the people I hadn’t even known for a full day that I looked like a gargoyle. I sensed that i wouldn’t win any friends, just maybe a few disgusted looks and an admission into a freak show. Each day for breakfast we have a selection of cereals that all look and taste like rabbit food and are just as difficult to chew, while desperately trying to masticate my breakfast I noticed my face aching and swelling even more and so I was fairly certain that the problem was somewhere in my jaw. My medical knowledge being limited to “pills and a glass of white” meant that self diagnosis was not an option so I took a few ibuprofen and hoped it would just blow over.

It didn’t. It just got worse, a lot worse. When you meet new people who you are going to be living and working with for the next 6 months you want to give a good first impression. I can tell you now that a girl who keeps whinging about pain and whose head looks like a balloon does not give a fantastic impression. After a few days ibuprofen wasn’t working and eating was proving difficult so a visit to the doctor was in order.
If you have never been in a resort before it opens to punters let me explain what its like - everything is shut. The town runs on a skeleton service of 1 bar, a small doctors and a post office. Whereas during the season there would be several English doctors and town full of pubs and clubs and lots of places to shop. Since this was the case I had to visit the French doctor, after being turned away from the pharmacy (for being too repulsively ill I suppose?).

I can’t speak any French at all, I covered the basics at GCSE and then never looked back. I’m embarrassed to be one of those English people that are completely ignorant to other languages but seriously, if I tried to speak their language the natives would probably deport me for word-murder! I entered the surgery close to closing time so I received dirty looks from receptionists who obviously wanted an early exit, these looks of contempt swiftly changed to disgust and worry when they saw my face and listened to me trying to explain that I needed to see a doctor urgently in grunts and hand gestures. After 5 minutes of me making a very “English” knob of myself, the most handsome doctor came into reception. He was a typical tall dark man with a French accent and so I tried my best flirty and mysterious smile……….. he recoiled. The situation got worse when he told me “I talk small English” and since I talk “small” French I knew we were in for a long haul. First we had to enter in my details into his computer, a simple task you might think, but noo, it was an ordeal in itself and involved me leaning over his desk to type my name and birthday when I got frustrated with the language difficulties.

Imagine you’re a helpful and goodlooking French doctor and into your surgery lumbers a swollen sweaty girl with a red face and a distinct smell of fried food (I’d been in the kitchens all day) and then imagine her leering over the desk at you in an attempt to grab your keyboard and type things. Now you can sympathise with the poor man and truly place yourself in the awkward situation.

Next he politely asked me what was wrong (wasn’t it bloody obvious??!) and I gestured to the affected area and it was his turn to make mad hand signals. He asked questions I was expecting eg. is it a problem with your teeth/ear/gums, too much alcohol etc but he also asked some surprising questions: “do you swell because you punched in face?” My answer was a bewildered “errr….no” but now I was wondering if I looked like the sort of girl that engaged in barfights? Then he asked if I was pregnant and the interchange went something like this;

“you maybe pregnant?”

“er… what does that have to do with anything?”

“you pregnant?”

“no”

“you sure?”

“yes”

“you definitely sure you not pregnant?”

“yes I am really really sure!”

Having to go through the humiliating questioning and his reticence to believe me made me wonder why he was so adamant? I know they say chalet girls put on weight but it had only been 4 days! It was very very awkward. After that he had me up on the bed to look at my face more closely and it was all going smoothly until he suddenly jumps in the air and shouts “you wait, no move” and then runs out of the room. I didn’t know what to think, I just sat on the bed dripping slushy snow  everywhere and feeling abandoned but he shortly returned with latex gloves which he snapped on and then turned to me with his most charming smile and uttered the classic line;

“I put my fingers in your mouf?”

And that was the moment I underwent the single most awkward moment of my trip so far. I lay prone on the bed with my “mouf” wide open, breathing garlic breath at him while he had both hands in my mouth pushing around. To use an overused phrase – I wish the ground had swallowed me up! Shortly after that harrowing experience he managed to work out I had an infection in my jaw (at least that’s what I think he said) and the prescription was settled no problem.

A word for the more cautious and awkward among you, if you are in a foreign land with a painful yet not life threatening illness, wait for the English doctor. You won’t have a funny story at the end of the experience but you will still have your dignity intact!

An introduction to awkwardness

Hello, my name is Laura and I am an awkward person. 

You see, most of the general public seem to be able to swan through life without  being too aware that each individual moment has the potential create a situation where you want to curl up and die and then be swallowed into the earth. I am not one of those people. This may sound a tad melodramatic but I’m sure everyone has had at least one moment in life where they’ve done or said something inappropriate, been caught and then felt a mixture of burning shame and embarrassment. Due to an assortment of social ineptitude, tactlessness and a loud voice this seems to happen to me more than most. After years of confusion I am now aware of my affliction and so I’m always on the lookout for life’s awkward moments and when I’m not watching for them I usually find myself slap bang in the middle of one!

These moments usually go like this - the awkward comment/action is committed and noticed by everyone but me…..silence……. then realisation followed by sweating, panicking and finished with a swift back-pedal which, 9 times out of 10, makes the situation worse.  Then finally I go and hide somewhere to carry out the awkward dance. The awkward dance is a special action in the life of any socially strained person, it usually involves limb flailing, curling into a ball while standing and then wiggling – it sounds like hard work but it is the only thing which makes me feel a little better and releases the tension from the previous ordeal.  So now that you understand the outcomes of my day to day interactions, can you follow my logic in applying for a job abroad in the tourism and service industry!?

I understand I am not the only person who feels this way, I’m sure across the globe there are a few lonely soles hiding in toilets and cupboards doing their own awkward dances. This blog is for those people, as a guide to surviving a ski season without spontaneously combusting from awkwardness and as a way of keeping friends and family updated on my daily humiliations.

I am currently out in a popular resort in the French Alps working for a mid-sized company and doing a chalet-host job which involves being the public face of the chalet, dealing with the guests and a hell of a lot of cleaning! I’ve only been out a week so far but if you think this is too short a time for some serious awkward moments then you truly don’t understand the life of a SAP (socially awkward person) So here, l’ll show you what I mean.