My New York Internship Hell – New York, USA

By: Tristan Ciancio

golfclubnewyork We drove a hot mid day zig zag out of JFK with a driver who must have thought he was in hell with 5 over excited students in the back of his mini bus. Thanks to KLM only 3 of us had all our luggage, a scenario which would play itself again on the return, but for now I was just glad to have a change of shirts.

As part of our hospitality college course we had to complete a 4 month placement over the summer in a hospitality establishment of our choice. Most students choose somewhere close to home but myself and 4 others choose a Country Club in Long Island, New York. With hopes of glamour, freedom and money we signed off our visas and bought our tickets.

We were met on arrival by John Shaw, the general manager. He had slicked back hair and greeted us all with a stern handshake. He looked like the person who, in his yearbook, probably had ‘most likely to be a manager of a Jewish Country Club in New York’ written below his smirking picture. After a lunch of cheeseburgers we were shown to our ‘accommodation’. As the other students in my group were girls they were grouped together. Their room didn’t seem as bad as expected. A set of bunk beds and a shared bathroom could be managed for 4 months.

Then I got taken to my accommodation by a Mexican grounds keeper called Jose. It seemed strange we needed to go there on a golf buggy but after 10 minutes of bumping on and off the grass verge of the golf course we arrived. On approach there was a large house next to which were 2 small trailers. My accommodation, was of course, one of the said trailers. Inside it was a mess. It was dark and about 100 degrees and when we opened the trailer door the flies actually flew out of the door as if to say, ‘thank God, about time.’ I peered inside the toilet and wash basin room and immediately wished I hadn’t. There were 2 sets of bunk beds in the main trailer and a small ‘living’ area to the front, although it looked like the only living done in there was by a messy tramp. It was shared with 3 other students, 2 French and 1 Italian guy. The other trailer was occupied by 2 mad Russians, Anton and Vlad. I could hear Ramstein blasting from their slightly opened side window.

After Jose had gone and I shared a Budweiser with one of the French students, Pierre, I asked where we got showered. ‘Come with me’, Pierre said and began walking off into the house next door. Inside a door led to a changing room. It looked like my old schools changing rooms after a heavy cross country session. There was grass and mud everywhere. It turned out to be the changing/shower room for all the Mexican grounds men. There was one solitary shower with a curtain which was half ripped from the top so it peeled back allowing everyone to peer in. I imagined some angry, muddy Mexican staring at me through the gap waiting for me to finish showering.

We had a few days to get our bank accounts opened and chill before the real work started. A group of us were also given a lecture by the manager on club etiquette, rules and regulations and the members themselves. Why I didn’t just say, ’thanks for the cheeseburger, I’m off’ after that I don’t know. I thought it was ironic that although the members were Jewish, the rules sounded like something from Hitler’s Third Reich. There was a paper list of abbreviations which the members would use when placing orders; EWO, FF, SPL, AM CHE, MUN, SOS, I felt like spelling out the last one in large letters on the golf field.

My first shift was on breakfast. I was already tired because the one golf buggy we shared in the trailers had broke down so I had to walk to the club. Service was formal and the Mexican restaurant manager, Alfonso, we later found out, was like a Mexican Jekyll and Hyde. After serving a few people breakfast I noticed one of the members call over Alfonso and was ranting quite loud about how I hadn’t toasted his ‘lightly toasted’ bread enough. Alfonso apologised profusely and gave an apology and said I was new so wasn’t used to everyone’s foibles. The member then just said , ‘Well if they can’t get fucking toast right send them back on the plane home’.

I had never observed, coming from a humble northern background, someone overreact over something so trivial to me but what seemed so important to him. This set up the scene for summer and it took some getting used to. Not all the members were so unpleasant. For some reason Mrs Levinson took a shine to me and would always take time to chat and say hello. She was old but sweet enough, and always thought I was Dutch so would talk loud and slow to me, “SO…. how is Amsterdam this time of year?”.

As the summer drew on we all got used to the members and used our one day off to see New York City. One such day in July Lucy, my girlfriend, and I travelled up the WTC Twin Towers. It took whole minutes to get to the top and I remember thinking how difficult it was to exit from the top with a distinct lack of signage. I actually said ,”If there was a fire we would be fu**ed”.

So of course the events of 9/11 happened just 2 months later. We were working on the morning of 9/11 which was cloudless, still and warm. As the news broke we gathered around the TV shocked at what we were seeing. I distinctly remember it feeling like a summer blockbuster action movie and expected Bruce Willis to appear on CNN claiming he had foiled the terrorists and Yippee K’Ay. It was so removed from reality I still feel as if it never actually happened. I also remember the members still going on as normal demanding lightly toasted bread and decaffeinated coffee. As we all tried to phone home to tell people we were fine we found we couldn’t get through. The frustration was unbearable as we knew our families would be worried. We finally got through and calmed down ourselves and our parents.

We left as soon as the airports opened again. JFK airport was eerily quiet and the smoke from the Twin Towers still sat over Manhattan like a blanket. Each time a security announcement was made reminding people not to leave their bags unattended I sat up like a startled hare thinking it was announcing a bomb going off. The flight home was quick and everyone slept the majority of the way. We found out when we arrived in Manchester it was so quick because it didn’t have anyone’s bags in it.

So the moral of the story- don’t go to New York with KLM, it’s a downward spiral.

photo by j.s. clark on Flickr