Bloody Line of Work

There’s a natural stigma around a skating rink that everyone has fun, even those that can’t skate or end up hurt for one reason or another. This stigma is mostly true.

There is also another stigma surrounding management to such establishments, that said people managing the building can be evil, vile individuals who prioritize money and self-interest far before any and all else. This stigma was 100 percent true. I worked a skating rink, and the night I quit was one of the worst nights of my life.

I wouldn’t work at a skating rink if I didn’t have to. Skating rinks are meant to be enjoyed and loved and I wanted those feelings kept intact. Management was going to be a slight issue, and I knew that early on when the general manager of the rink I had applied to told me that he hired me because I was ‘prettier‘ than the other girl trying for a position. I know much about red flags and inappropriate gestures, but the pay was good and so I continued.

Two weeks went by and my happy feelings of such a uniquely interesting place died down to a grave. Without warning I became the sole employee dedicated to clean up after others, this included trash out by the benches but also in the bathrooms as well. The music stopped alluring me, the practice of skating only reminded me of my labor and nothing more, and the manager that hired me almost always failed to show up and help out.

However, he was there the night I quit.

That night, February 3rd, I go to clock in and as I’m doing so, he, Scott, comes over to me and tells me that ‘someone’ has either stolen or done something to the First Aid Kit and that he can’t find it. Knowing that we have two complete First Aid Kits on the premises at all times, I go to the drawer I know that we keep the second. It is also gone. I had been out of work for a week due to vacation with my family and had no idea where it could be. Scott and I called other employees trying to make sure we had something readily available for guests, but nothing. No one had any idea where they could of gone, nor who would even move them around.

We looked all over, no kits. I panicked. We needed those kits to open, not just because it was most probably the law but because people fall and get hurt all the time out on the rink and need some form of assistance that First Aid Kits could offer. As I kept searching, Scott said:

“Forget it, it’s about time to open. I’ll look later or I can find someone that has one and have them bring it down for us.”

I believed him and began readying the register. The people came in quick that day.

That night we were swamped. The place was busier than it had ever been since I had started working, for once they had me up front and it was a continuous drag getting people into the building. Halfway through the scheduled time for the night skate event, they switched me and had me, you guessed it, clean up something out by the rink. Only, they didn’t tell me what it was I was supposed to be cleaning up.

See, when certain situations that need cleaned up aren’t due to injury, they tell me something needs cleaned up. If something needed to be cleaned up due to an injury, they’d let me know. It had happened twice since I began working, and they had let me know both times beforehand what exactly was going on.

This time was different.

I get out there and sprawled out on the rink is a girl that had fallen on her face while skating and had more than likely broken her nose, a decent sized trail of blood on the rink following her nostrils.

I had no idea this was the situation because they did not tell me. No other employee wanted anything to do with her support, and she bled anyway. And then I remembered:

Did we even have a First Aid Kit available?

I ran up to the front and called to Scott. Brittany, the other manager, answered.

“Scott went home!” She told me over the noise. “What do you need?”

“There’s a girl that’s got a really bad nosebleed out on the rink, do you know if we have a First Aid Kit or rags or something to help clean up?”

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said, “Scott told me he went looking but couldn’t find any. We don’t have any.”

I turned mad and impatient rather fast.

“How am I supposed to clean up her blood then?”

“Get paper towels from the bathroom and clean it up,” she said. “And get it done fast, we can’t have that out on the rink.”

“The girl looked hurt beyond just her nose bleed, do we have anything else?”

“No. I just told you no. Go clean up the blood. Christ.”

I had no choice. I had to do what I was told. I got the paper towel and ran my way over. The girl had suffered a injury to her arm but was otherwise okay, thank goodness. Scott got lucky.

The blood came up quick and I was able to ease the situation by giving the poor girl a paper towel herself as a way of helping with her nose bleed.

When she got up, I saw her face. She was crying. She felt embarrassed and had been left out on the floor in a position she could not get out of with little help from any members of staff, including me. She probably hated me, she probably wanted to go home, and I know she did because immediately after I helped her out, she left. She had come in alone.

That face. You can’t make up a face like that.

“You don’t care about the well-being of these people,” I told Brittany after the girl left. “I quit. Fuck you and fuck Scott. I can’t take this anymore. And get those fucking First Aid Kits in. I hope you have fun cleaning up blood the next time it needs done.”

That face. Those tears. And I still have never been back to that rink.