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| What’s your New Year resolution? This can be the cruellest question What’s your New Year resolution? This can be the cruellest question | |
| (about 17 hours later) | |
| The thing that stands out for someone working in a low-paid, dead-end job in the service industry who is trying to remember a holiday is that none of them stand out. I could write a whole chapter for a book that was nothing but stories from the holiday season – but I wouldn’t be able to tell you which year anything happened in. When you work through your holidays, they don’t serve as a decent demarcation between the old year and the new. | The thing that stands out for someone working in a low-paid, dead-end job in the service industry who is trying to remember a holiday is that none of them stand out. I could write a whole chapter for a book that was nothing but stories from the holiday season – but I wouldn’t be able to tell you which year anything happened in. When you work through your holidays, they don’t serve as a decent demarcation between the old year and the new. |
| New year celebrations are for the young, the vibrant and excited – for people eager for fresh starts. But cheery means chatty and I hated working New Year’s Eve in a position where I had to talk to customers, because the one question I would always get asked all night was, “What are your resolutions this year?” The people doing the asking were always bright-eyed and full of lust for life and the possibility they could see from the beginning of the calendar. I never had an answer. I don’t believe in resolutions because resolutions are plans – and plans never worked out particularly well for me when I was working for a few dollars an hour. | New year celebrations are for the young, the vibrant and excited – for people eager for fresh starts. But cheery means chatty and I hated working New Year’s Eve in a position where I had to talk to customers, because the one question I would always get asked all night was, “What are your resolutions this year?” The people doing the asking were always bright-eyed and full of lust for life and the possibility they could see from the beginning of the calendar. I never had an answer. I don’t believe in resolutions because resolutions are plans – and plans never worked out particularly well for me when I was working for a few dollars an hour. |
| My New Year’s Eve tradition for 15 years was to put on a polyester shirt and watch the evening progress in snapshots, at one or other of the interchangeable sorts of jobs where you have a name tag, as though the whole evening is played out in strobe tableaux before me. The perfectly turned-out older ladies and gents who might have a few drinks with friends before going home to see in the new year in their pyjamas would be followed by their perfectly turned-out children having a late dinner. At about 10pm, the mood of the revellers would begin to shift, as the alcohol started to separate the social drinkers from the partiers. | My New Year’s Eve tradition for 15 years was to put on a polyester shirt and watch the evening progress in snapshots, at one or other of the interchangeable sorts of jobs where you have a name tag, as though the whole evening is played out in strobe tableaux before me. The perfectly turned-out older ladies and gents who might have a few drinks with friends before going home to see in the new year in their pyjamas would be followed by their perfectly turned-out children having a late dinner. At about 10pm, the mood of the revellers would begin to shift, as the alcohol started to separate the social drinkers from the partiers. |
| That’s when the night turns dangerous and amusing and infuriating by turns, when people aren’t sober enough to behave well or clean up after themselves – and it’s even odds whether they’ll leave a fat tip or become irrationally angry about the fact that you’ve sold out of whatever they wanted to buy. | That’s when the night turns dangerous and amusing and infuriating by turns, when people aren’t sober enough to behave well or clean up after themselves – and it’s even odds whether they’ll leave a fat tip or become irrationally angry about the fact that you’ve sold out of whatever they wanted to buy. |
| It’s the most entertaining night of the year to work if you like watching people’s lives unfold | It’s the most entertaining night of the year to work if you like watching people’s lives unfold |
| It’s a fascinating parade – the women getting slightly cheerier and forgetting to check their makeup quite so often; the men brimming with bravado and recounting increasingly improbable tales in an attempt to try to get laid; the people who’ll be going home alone stopping in to recount hilarious tales of their evening while they pick up some crisps and a bottle of water to sober up with. It’s the most entertaining night of the year to work if you like watching people’s lives unfold. | It’s a fascinating parade – the women getting slightly cheerier and forgetting to check their makeup quite so often; the men brimming with bravado and recounting increasingly improbable tales in an attempt to try to get laid; the people who’ll be going home alone stopping in to recount hilarious tales of their evening while they pick up some crisps and a bottle of water to sober up with. It’s the most entertaining night of the year to work if you like watching people’s lives unfold. |
| I have been to one New Year’s Eve party in my life, at the turn of the millennium when I was 17. I felt full of excitement and sophistication as we clinked champagne glasses and kissed perfect strangers (all of whom seemed very attractive through the rosy glow of my first bubbles) and it was the last time I would experience the buzz of time’s vibrant potential until I was in my 30s. | I have been to one New Year’s Eve party in my life, at the turn of the millennium when I was 17. I felt full of excitement and sophistication as we clinked champagne glasses and kissed perfect strangers (all of whom seemed very attractive through the rosy glow of my first bubbles) and it was the last time I would experience the buzz of time’s vibrant potential until I was in my 30s. |
| Instead of partying, I have spent the year’s major holidays trying to pay rent, which is certainly responsible but not what one might call “thrilling”. The contemplation of your next year isn’t heartening or exciting from the staff room of a fast food joint; it’s more a girding or acceptance. | Instead of partying, I have spent the year’s major holidays trying to pay rent, which is certainly responsible but not what one might call “thrilling”. The contemplation of your next year isn’t heartening or exciting from the staff room of a fast food joint; it’s more a girding or acceptance. |
| I spent most of those year-turnings resigning myself to what must come next. Another year where I would do my damnedest and never accomplish anything more important than my own bare survival; another year to lose my youth in; another year in which, if I was lucky, I might make a new friend or find time to both plant and then water a garden. | I spent most of those year-turnings resigning myself to what must come next. Another year where I would do my damnedest and never accomplish anything more important than my own bare survival; another year to lose my youth in; another year in which, if I was lucky, I might make a new friend or find time to both plant and then water a garden. |
| Years of working in hamburger joints and diners, bars and gas stations makes you lose your sentimentality for calendar dates and your hope that even once a year, you might find yourself feeling lovely and fairy-lit. Until I became a writer I worked every Christmas and Easter. I worked on my birthday and my anniversary. I worked New Year’s Eve and New Years’s Day and through my children’s infancies. | Years of working in hamburger joints and diners, bars and gas stations makes you lose your sentimentality for calendar dates and your hope that even once a year, you might find yourself feeling lovely and fairy-lit. Until I became a writer I worked every Christmas and Easter. I worked on my birthday and my anniversary. I worked New Year’s Eve and New Years’s Day and through my children’s infancies. |
| For someone on their way to a party to ask a service worker who’s on the clock how much harder they vow to work, or how much more self-disciplined they plan to be, is crueller than you can imagine. Resolutions are meant to bond us because we all want to lose five pounds and finally get to start on that novel – only it doesn’t work when you’re talking to people who accept their weight will fluctuate with their employment and mostly hope to keep a roof over their heads this year. | For someone on their way to a party to ask a service worker who’s on the clock how much harder they vow to work, or how much more self-disciplined they plan to be, is crueller than you can imagine. Resolutions are meant to bond us because we all want to lose five pounds and finally get to start on that novel – only it doesn’t work when you’re talking to people who accept their weight will fluctuate with their employment and mostly hope to keep a roof over their heads this year. |
| A new year is a new opportunity for hope and joy and wonder for those who have the luxury of starting afresh on an annual basis. For the rest of us, at least we get to watch the party. | A new year is a new opportunity for hope and joy and wonder for those who have the luxury of starting afresh on an annual basis. For the rest of us, at least we get to watch the party. |