CategoryRoad Trip

My keys journey… Part 2

I think this is turning into a weekly event, Me coming to Fort Zach that is. As I sit here at my picnic table I can’t help but think how lucky I am to get off work and in less than an hour have gone home, changed and I am sitting at the beach. I know people dream about this stuff all the time but don’t actually do it. But enough about today and back to my story of how I ended up in the keys. I had about 10 to 12 hours of driving ahead of me.

On my way down all I could think about was that I am starting this new life in a place that I don’t really know anyone. I did have 2 people that I had met while I was on vacation in Key West the last time in 2011 and I kept in contact with them. The first was Tim, a guy I had met at the local hotel bar and he is what I call a yacht mover. He travels all over the world picking up these sail boats and taking them anywhere the owner wants to meet them. What a job right? Sometimes I think about taking a sailing class or something so I would know what half the stuff he is talking about is. The second person I knew down here is Barbie a women I would always talk to on Twitter and finally met in person and she is just like me, 20 years later. Decided to move down here on a whim, met her husband and is still here 20+ years later. I think about it all the time “Is that how it’s going to work out for me?” Will I meet someone and this is where I will stay? Guess only time will tell. I finally make it to Key West, drive up to the house and meet Mirco. Well I’m still alive so I guess you know that by now I wasn’t killed and left in a ditch on the side of the road. He was actually a very nice guy from Serbia and the part about helping me find a place to live was I can live at his place that he was renting. This is where Iva and David come into the picture. They own the house and like most places here in Key West there is a small little house on the back. Back then it was where the help would live but Iva likes to refer to it as the Goat Shed. Yes I said Goat Shed, now I know what you are thinking. This girl must be crazy to think she can live here right? Well my Goat Shed has very nice wood floors, AC and a bathroom. Not your typical shed I think. The place is small but it is the perfect size for someone who doesn’t actually have any furniture down here. I love my little house, the first thing that I had to get used to was showering outside. This is not exactly normal where I come from so you can imagine my shock when I had to take my first shower. I have to be honest I actually kind of like it now and think its cool. It’s great on days when I come home from the beach and I don’t have to worry about getting sand everywhere. Iva is in the process of building another shower on the other side of my house so I have more of a deck and a shower to myself. The one that I am currently using is used by anyone that wants to rinse off after getting out of the pool – hot tub. The best way to describe it is think of the size of a normal hot tub and double it. This thing can be heated up to 103 or as low as 65 degrees.

After a wonderful relaxing nights sleep I set out on the town to find myself a job, resumes in hand. I must have passed out what felt like 1000 but was more likely 25. I ended up going out with one of Mircos friends, Ljubomir on Friday night and got to meet some other interesting people. By Monday I had been out to the bars, relaxed on the beach and remembered why I decided to move down here. My job hunting game plan was if I give my résumé to every single hotel on the island 1 was bound to hire me right? I was correct, I went into a hotel around 10am got an application and was sitting there filling it out when the general manager walked in. I was interviewed and hired on the spot. I should have thought something might be fishy since they hired me so quickly and wanted me to start the next day. I was right… There were quite a few things wrong with this hotel. After working there for only a week I knew the writing was on the wall and I needed to look for another job and fast! To me it seems like they were past their prime and really needed some major remodeling to be charging the prices they were. In my opinion the quality just wasn’t there. From what I have heard they used to be the goto hotel for lesbians and when the economy crashed they decided to make the hotel all welcome about 4 years ago. Yet when you look at the make up on the staff only 3 people are male and out of that only 1 is straight. When I was making reservations I would have people that were really upset that the hotel allowed men and didn’t understand why they changed the policy. That whole thing just irritated me to begin with. If you are gay or lesbian all you hear about is they want equality and they want to be treated equal but when it comes down to it they don’t want to vacation with a couple who is straight? That just doesn’t add up to me I think some people don’t understand that they are take a step backwards in a way. Don’t get me wrong I’m sure you know that I would never judge someone by their sexual orientation or what ethnicity they are. It seems to me that Key West is a very large melting pot for people from all over the world. Another thing that just drove me nuts was they were breaking major labor laws. When they did payroll if you clocked in at 11:52 for a Noon shift they would just put on the payroll sheet that you clocked in at 12 noon. I understand its only 8 minutes but its the principal of the matter and if you add it up like I did it was almost 2 hours missing from my first check. Something else that they were doing is not paying overtime. I can understand sending someone home early so they don’t get any overtime hours but if you work the time you should be paid for it. I pretty much had decided that this was not the place for me to work and I needed a new job. It was another great learning experience that I will remember if I am ever managing employees and or running a business.

Part 3 coming soon!

Peace, Love and Tweeting! – tOr