When I talk about work it always deals with one of two extremes: extremely boring or extremely stressful. Yesterday was by far the MOST boring day at work ever. I was on concession stand register, and I kid you not, I rang up a total of seven people over the three-hour public session. Thankfully, the lobby of the rink is equipped with several large, flat screen TVs, so I was able to watch the UK game. In fact, the entire staff was sitting in the lobby watching the game because it was so pitifully boring. I started the morning off at 12:06 with a call from my supervisor while I was pulling into The Edge parking lot. She told me I had to go pick up a cake at the Rolling Pin for a birthday party. That was an adventure because I had no idea where the Rolling Pin was. I finally found it and picked up the Jonas Brothers cake and went back to the rink. I delivered it and spent the next thirty minutes helping a grandma set up for her granddaughter's birthday party. Another party canceled, so we got to eat their cake. It was delicious and the highlight of my day.

This week was awful. I worked Tuesday and it was a nightmare. Wednesday was better, but still not fun. Tuesday was awful because we lacked teachers, but gained about forty new students. There were three instructors on staff averaging fifteen students per class and four classes per half hour. You do the math. We had to combine classes of similar levels which should never be done. I get enough complaints when I have a class of ten and I can't give each individual child 110% of my attention, and the number of complaints went through the roof when I had a Beginner/Pre-Alpha class of twenty-two at 4:30. I had a little talk with the person in charge of the ice arena and said something HAS to be done about this. Either she needs to hire new instructors or put a cap on classes. She argued that she doesn't want to turn any student away, but she fails to address the fact that more and more parents are pulling their kids out of classes because of inefficient teaching. I'll fess up and say that teaching is below par, but how good can it be when you have one seventeen-year-old versus twenty eight-year-olds?! Either way, customers will be lost, but she needs to look at the big picture. Should we turn kids away and have our program become more exclusive? Or should we accept everyone, but risk the bad reputation for being an inefficient skating school? Something needs to be done. If not they can count on being short one more teacher next session.

I did not work this weekend so I don't have much to say about work. I did work Tuesday and Wednesday though. We started a new session of figure skating lessons at The Edge this week. Usually I hate lessons and dread having to spend three or four hours there, but this week was awesome. On Tuesdays I teach three Pre-Alpha classes. This week there was some sort of Amish family at the rink. They kind of look like the Duggars from Eighteen Kids and Counting, or whatever that show is called. There's this girl I work with, Rachael, and we call her Duggar because she's able to pop out pretzels and breadsticks in the concession stand at the same rate the Duggars are popping out kids. When we saw their huge family of fourteen walk into the rink, we all told Duggar her long lost family has come to retrieve her. Anyways, this family is adorable. I have three of the younger boys in one of my Pre-Alpha classes. One of their names is Wesley and he is my new favorite. He is the cutest six-year-old I've ever seen. All the brothers are incredibly smart and funny too. Every time one of their classmates is lagging behind when we're doing swizzles or falls down, one of them will go and help them get up. It's adorable. After their class they stayed out on the ice and talked with me and I ended up sitting down with their whole family and talking to them for about thirty minutes. The rest of the staff was cleaning windows and sweeping, so I felt a little bad, but I'm being paid to teach figure skating lessons (at $2.00 more pay than usual) not to clean. There are staff there on lesson nights that are paid minimum wage to clean and I'm not one of them. So, this family. I met all their brothers and sisters and their parents and they are all as sweet as can be. I'm so excited for this week to see them again. Although I think they might not be there because I vaguely recall them saying they were about to leave for a "trip out West."