by Scott Hayden

Created on: October 27, 2008   Last Updated: May 11, 2012

The worst job I've ever had was at the Highland Heritage Inn in Tyndrum, Scotland. It was a miniscule town in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do, unless your idea of a night out was hanging around the gas station with one of those mini marts attached to it. I arrived here in March 2004 and not surprisingly this area of central Scotland was still bitterly cold.

My job was not what I had expected. I asked to be assigned to the dining room but instead they put me in the kitchen. At 6:30 in the morning on my first day I helped serve breakfast and wash dishes, and there were quite a lot to scrub and clean. The head chef, Albert, told me to wash and rinse those pans on which they cooked back bacon. He filled one of the sinks with scalding hot water. Even with those yellow dish gloves on I still burned my hands. After that I attacked the pots and pans in the same fashion, but I had to move quickly because before 11:00 I had to peel and slice at least three big bags of spuds. As I found out later the kitchen porters had to wash all the cutlery and crockery, and prepare all the food for the evening meal. We were constantly urged to speed things up. With time so strictly regimented it was like being in the army.

This hotel catered to older groups of tourists. The majority of them came from cities in northern England like Liverpool and Newcastle. Buses would collect them down there and then deliver them to Tyndrum. What I was never told until the last minute was that we would have to offload their suitcases from the coach and lug them to their rooms. A new set of guests arrived every Monday afternoon, and there we were, standing in the lobby waiting for that bus to roll around the corner. We were kitchen workers, why did we have to carry oversized suitcases? Isn't that what porters are for? The Inn had multiple floors, so each time a bag was delivered we had to go all the way back down to the lobby. Up and down, up and down.......

I developed a painful case of tendonitis in my right hand after a couple of weeks. The suitcases were heavy, and bigger than some of the guests. My hand hurt so bad I couldn't move my fingers, so I had to switch to my left. It didn't heal until well after I left Scotland.

In the evening the guests returned from their scenic tours of the surrounding countryside. It's no wonder they were not around during the day, because there was nothing to see or do. Dinner was an accelerated version of breakfast. At least two-hundred people dined

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