the blue-eyed maid

Finding a job in London when you are an international student is not for the faint of heart. Even my modest quest for a part-time service job took almost 2 months and lead to several dead ends.  I talked to this one girl at a copy shop who said that for her position, they went through 89 applications. Wow.
This past Thursday I made a round with my CVs (like a resume but longer), papering pubs and retail shops with my American credentials. That very afternoon I was offered a 'try-out' at a pub called The Blue-Eyed Maid. For bartenders, try-outs are basically working 3 hours or so for no pay so that the manager can decide if you've got what it takes.
Friday was my first official shift (10 hours!) and gave me a crash-course in English pub-ology.
The Blue-Eyed Maid is a charming old pub with a hodgepodge of mismatched comfy chairs and wooden tables, ornate wallpaper dotted with (inexplicably) photos of Bruce Lee. Its clientele - a mix of salty regulars, groups of young 'mates', couples, a splattering of professionals, etc. What is unique to the pub or typical I am unqualified to say, but it boasts a manual dumbwaiter which is still used (!!!) to send food orders down to the bar from the kitchen upstairs. The menu offers traditional English fare alongside Indian curry dishes (this is typical) and despite having a limited cocktail menu, no one orders cocktails. The place doesn't even HAVE sour mix. I found myself itching to mix something, staring plaintively at the 'spirit' bottles all night. What offended my American bartender sensibilities the most was their recipe for a 'Margarita', which included GIN instead of tequila and sounded disgusting.
Clearly my mixology skills are going to rust over here. Guess I've got to get used to being a pub wench. And the low wages + non-tipping culture of London as well. Actually, not being motivated by tips takes a lot of pressure off a bartender to preform. The relationship with the customer is more relaxed, more friendly somehow. Expectations are low on both sides of the bar!
Oh, and sports? That's exactly the same across the pond. You'd better have that channel on the right football game on Sunday. (and it better be football!)
BTW - for those of you that don't follow football (soccer) religiously - today I watched a game for like an hour before EITHER TEAM scored a point. Yeah. I'd almost rather watch American football.