Feedback is welcome via the CONTACT tab on my profile.
*
I thought I'd think back to my early 20's when life was still waiting for me to slow down a bit. This is the account of my last summer before leaving university.
I'd worked in hotels doing various low key jobs on and off for years to make some extra cash. The main reason I liked the job was that many hotels would offer accommodation for free or for a nominal amount. It was also a hotbed of sex and piss-ups as all the staff partied their wages away. This hotel was a 3 star seafront resort hotel on the south coast (England) and catered mainly for retired people on coach tour holidays. There were other guests but it was probably 75% these tours.
The hotel had a top floor that was in dire need of refurbishment but was, for the foreseeable future, staff accommodation. The lucky ones who'd been there a while got poky little singles but the part timers like me had to share a twin room. There was one bathroom, 3 in total, for every 5 or 6 rooms to share and there were about 25 staff living in these rooms. When I first arrived I was in a twin room on my own but after a month I was sharing with an Irish guy called Paul who was working there as part of his hospitality management course.
Once I'd got a feeling for my colleagues and shared a few drinks got to know who were the party types and who weren't. The end block of rooms were all the long term staff who might have the odd drink but kept away from the rest of us after hours. Because of the shifts there were always people coming and going around us. This is where things began to get interesting!
I was out with ten others and we went to our usual pub. The pub was a busy one that was a bit 'spit and sawdust' but the beer was cheap and they had a room with two pool tables. We took over the pool room as soon as we arrived and were just drinking and playing a few games of winner stays on. A while later one of the waitresses (Sandra) turned up with five of her friends, all of whom were pretty good looking. I went up to play Ray who had been on five games unbeaten and made my brake. Ray then proceeded to pot balls as I chatted up one Sandra's friends. It wasn't long before I realised that Ray was on a roll and was on the black already. It was an impossible pot so I guessed he would play a safety. Instead he slammed the white ball so hard it jumped and, having come off two cushions slammed into the black which hit two more cushions on its way to the hole. I watched as the black trickled towards the middle pocket, kissed one of my balls, eased over the edge and down!
Ray then shouted at the top of his voice, "EIGHT BALLED!" The group then started to chant, "Eight Balled, Eight Balled!" and I laughed at my misfortune. My first game with this lot and I never even got a shot off. Then Steve, the hotel's security guard (really just a porter with a fancy title) came over and pulled me to one side. Steve explained it was a pub rule as well as a hotel staff rule that if you get eight balled you have to run a lap of the pub with no trousers on. "Basically Tony you have to show everyone your 'equipment' and be a little humiliated."
