Summer has never been my favourite time of year, for reasons I don't truly know but blame on being born in the Autumn I have always been a winter person. Summer in hospitality can be especially brutal, although we don't get the scorching heat of the European continent summer is especially cruel in our industry; especially if the place you work is right near an international airport.
As always the best thing you can do to keep yourself going during this time of year is to find little moments of happiness wherever you can; it's all about your mindset. You can stand there bitter about all the people heading off on holiday or you can see yourself as their first step to a nice experience and take a pride in making their first day of holiday great... It helps if you have booked yourself a holiday at the end of summer (as I always do) so that you can also stand there knowing that when the hell is over; your time will come.
In the first place I worked, in fact, almost every place I've worked, the guests seem to arrive in great waves. I have joked many times over the years that someone puts some kind of shout-out, our guests all meet up in the car park and then suddenly they all charge the door at once. The restaurant was surrounded on all but one side by thick hedgerows, once after a particularly busy and short-staffed day, I joked to my colleague "Stitch" about how the "bush folk" all came out at once. She looked at me in confusion and I told her that by this point I had decided all of our guests live in the bushes surrounding the place and that's how they seemingly appeared out of nowhere all at once. Stitch laughed and agreed with me, and whenever the scenario happened again I'd turn to Stitch and say "The bush folk came out again".
One particularly hot summer's day a young man appeared in the garden, he didn't stand out from the crowd, he was polite, he was quiet but oddly he seemed to be alone. I say oddly because although we had plenty of customers who came in alone he did not look like he worked either at the airport nor the surrounding office buildings nearby. I can't explain what made me zero in on him but something instinctually just felt a little "off" to me. As the hours of my shift ticked down, the man remained, alone, at a table in the garden. I approached him and asked if he was ok, I had seen people move away from the man after a few seconds of talking to him off and on throughout the day. When I finally saw him close up I could see there was something wrong, the man was twitchy and seemed as though perhaps he needed help, I could see that he shouldn't really be alone and that he for whatsoever reason was vulnerable. As I attempted to engage the man in conversation it became apparent that he was mentally quite unwell and he was showing signs of paranoia. I headed inside and spoke to my duty manager, but he was extremely busy on the bar. After discussing the situation with him he told me that we should inform the police and they will come out to him and check on him, I made the call. I explained to the operator that the gentleman was absolutely no trouble at all and had not done anything, but that the things he had told me were disturbing. He believed he was on the run and that men were looking for him, he told me that he was a member of a very famous banking family and that people were after him for the secrets that he knew. I figured this was extremely unlikely and that the man needed help. I asked him if I could call anyone for him to come and sit with him maybe but he told me there was no one and that all the rest of his family were dead. I told this to the police operator and said that my call was not to have the man arrested but to see if the police could track down his family as he clearly needed help. The police arrived quickly despite it not being an emergency and agreed with my assessment after speaking to him themselves for a few minutes. They called a paramedic who confirmed the gentleman did indeed seem to be suffering a mental health episode. The weather was scorching hot and I wondered if his family was looking for him. The police told me they felt it was important to detain him under the mental health act due to some of the things he had told them. One of the officers bent down and spoke to the man and after a lot of persuasion the man agreed to go with the officers, however, as they walked him towards the police van he suddenly took a swing at one of them, and as the officer dodged his punch the other one wrestled the man to the ground. I felt indescribably guilty at having the man detained, but I also knew that it was for the best and that if he was a member of my family I would have wanted someone to do the same. He had travelled on foot along multiple dangerous roads to get to us and was extremely paranoid, If I had eventually let him leave he could have gone anywhere and got into real danger, particularly as he had revealed that he was, in his mind at least on the run and could not return home to where he had come from. I was still young and it was the first time I had ever in my life made a tough decision like this, my eyes filled with tears as the man was now on the floor handcuffed and then lifted into the van shouting. The original officer I had dealt with and the one that had spent all the time on the floor crouched down trying to persuade the man to go with them in the first place, walked slowly back towards me. I think he could see the tears in my eyes and he said "I'm sorry you had to see that, he became distressed and we had no choice but to handcuff him". I knew the officer was right and I told him I understood, I asked the officer, my voice still trembling with my tears if he would promise me that he will be looked after and not just thrown in some cell and treated like a criminal. The officer promised me that he would be looked after and get the help he needed and that's why they had detained him. I was still trying not to cry and the officer tapped my shoulder in a tough but comforting way and said to me "you've done the right thing you know, he will be ok,
and if you had let him leave her worse things could have happened to him", with that he nodded curtly and turned around before walking away. I got myself together and went back inside to face the remaining hour of my shift.
That night the temperature soared even higher, and as I lay awake in my bed replaying the day over and over again, I wondered if the man was cool enough, if he had water or if his family knew where he was and that he was safe. I cried again while picturing him alone and confused, probably even scared in a prison cell somewhere, and wondered if I really had done the right thing.
Things I learned from these experiences:
Whether you are a superstitious person or not you will eventually make up your own "logic" to explain why bad days happen.
I will NEVER be a summer person, but I can survive the waves of thousands of travellers by picturing my own holiday once summer is over.
Sometimes you have to make tough decisions in life to protect people and that's okay because deep down you must believe you've done the right thing.
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