We began the season nine strong! Two Aussies, two Welsh, one Grecian and four English. We were an eclectic bunch but by the end of the five months the Kick Ski team would be dwindled down to only seven members. With I being the lone Aussie amongst six other English! Needless to say I have been spending a lot of time with the English and I have to apologise for my ‘Aussie with a hint of added English accent!!’ which my best friend pointed out to me as we spoke on the phone. Much to my horror. You will all have to beat it out of me when I eventually come home!
So as you can see, it’s fairly obvious to see that the Kick Ski team certainly went through some changes over the five months. There were times during the season that we all felt as if there was some sort of curse that had been put on anyone wearing a kick ski polo shirt! As it was, only 3 of the employees made it all the way to end of the season and completed their contracts. And I am proud to say that I was one of them! There were times when we joked that it was like being on Big Brother……”and this week in the Big Brother house, tensions have been high, Tori has left the house leaving her boyfriend Phil behind, with the much anticipated Matt entering the house, livening things up!” It was just mad.
Our company director and owner, Darren from Lincoln in the UK began recruiting back in August 2008. I was the first employed and from then on he added Phil and Tori, a couple living in Lancaster, Sophie a horse mad West Sussex girl, Brad and Fern, a couple from Wales and Paul our Chef and a fellow Aussie. Wendy our chalet manager had already worked for Kick Ski the previous year and was returning for yet another sterling season.
It didn’t take long for the first blow to come. The first housemate to take the hit was, as I have previously written, our chef from Franrick Lodge. Paul exited the Kick Ski ranks on day eight of his five month contract. Unfortunately for Paul his cooking left much to be desired and he just didn’t fit the Kick Ski mould……Enter Kim as chef with Phil and Tori left as the remaining chalet hosts for Franrick Lodge!
The dreaded curse reared its head again on the 5th of January, my Birthday, when Brad our chalet and ski host from our other chalet, La Maitreya broke his ankle on “Le Tunnel” a deadly black run, so named because you have to enter an underground tunnel that cuts through the mountain and spits you out onto a steep mogul field the other side. Fortunately we were able to keep Brad on, he was able to have his ankle operated on in France and avoided being sent back to the UK. It was touch and go for a while, as Fern our chef in La Maitreya had decided to also leave if Brad had to be sent back to the UK for treatment. This was of course mostly out of our control and in the hands of the insurance company. Again tensions in the house were high, as we didn’t know if we would again find ourselves down another chef and two further members. We couldn’t afford to loose anymore staff. Not only were we a chalet host down in Franrick Lodge but we were also now down a chalet host in La Maitreya, due to Brad being out of action with his broken ankle, leaving just Sophie and Fern to run the chalet on their own. This was just what we needed after the manic period of Christmas and New Year weeks. We still hadn’t even felt like we had found our feet yet or begun to settle in and already life in resort was shaping up to be a minefield of disasters, one after the other.
I should probably point out at this stage that as a chalet host your required to be able to drive guests to and from the airport, be able to ski host guests three days a week on the slopes, clean rooms efficiently and help serve during breakfast and dinner services, helping the chef in anyway that is needed. It’s a big job and unfortunately not all the employed chalet hosts fitted all of these criteria. Tori unfortunately didn’t have a drivers licence and couldn’t ski host, which meant she was left to clean the chalet constantly, Brad was now obviously out of action which left Sophie to drive, clean, serve and ski host guests in our other chalet. A massive task for my gutsy, petite, 5 foot roommate. Thus we were all finding things pretty tough. I was still finding my feet within the kitchen and we were all still desperately trying to adjust to the changes happening around us and adapt and cope as best we could.
The blows were coming in quick and thick at this point as Tori decided to leave the Kick Ski Big Brother House on the 10th of January; only five days after Brad had broken his ankle. Unfortunately Tori had found the whole experience very tough and as she was spending most of her time cleaning, which she had not anticipated, she was not a happy camper, thus deciding to leave. This obviously again, made us edgy, as there was the potential that we would also loose Phil, her boyfriend as well. But Phil luckily decided to stay on and became the star chalet host within Franrick Lodge.
Enter the newest member of the team to the house. Matt joined us only a few days before Tori left. Matt, a ski mad Englishman, had just been fired from a team working in Italy (although he forgot to mention the ‘fired bit’ during his interview process) and thus joined our team, just at a time when we all needed some new blood to come and liven things up a bit. We were all in need of a break, totally exhausted and worn out emotionally and physically.
Loosing Tori was obviously a massive blow for us, especially Phil. But we soldiered on and eventually found a rhythm which seemed to work for a while. January was a relatively quiet month on the slopes and there were weeks when La Maitreya wasn’t booked with any guests at all, so we were able to go on a roster system and share the work load and savour some much needed time off. It was utter luxury to have a night off. Fern and I were obviously the luckiest as the two of us could share the cooking duties and all of a sudden I got very used to being able to relax in the evenings and explore the resort during times when I would usually be working in the kitchen.
January went by with us all being able to recuperate and finally find our feet. We skied almost everyday and partied just as much! It seemed that just as the work load decreased we upped the anti in terms of skiing and partying! January turned into a great month, but then came February….
February is notoriously busy on the slopes as it coincides with English and French school holidays and of course the best snow falls. We were back to working really long hard weeks again with both chalets at capacity. To get us through the busy period Darren employed our next newest member of the team; Jack, from Manchester. Another Englishman! Jack came into our lives and fitted into the team perfectly. He didn’t need telling what to do, he just did it. He was our resident comedian all of a sudden. He made us laugh with his many hilarious accent impersonations and jokes. He serenaded us with his guitar skills and made us all try and keep up with his drinking habits, which we all failed at miserably! I guess it’s alright for those of us who are 6 foot giants!!
So there I was, Chef with my three bitches! Phil, Matt and Jack. We all had a great time working together in Franrick Lodge. Dinner services landed up being nights filled with jokes being pulled at one another, tea towel whipping competitions, moments of choreography of silly dances that we would later taken into the swallow bar, and just the usual banter and sing-a-longs to songs which became favourites of the season. By the end of the night we were all tired from laughing so much. It came across too, as the guests always made comment about how well we all seemed to get along and how happy we were all the time. The chalet now had a great vibe and the season finally felt like it should.
And just as we had peaked and really begun to enjoy the season, the next blow came. Darren announced that redundancies would be happening in March due to poor bookings for the end of the season. It had been a tough season in terms of bookings, with the global economic crisis affecting the ski resorts and tour operators really hard. So we went from having too little staff at the beginning of the season, to eventually recovering with Matt and Jack joining the team, to then being told that we needed to reduce the numbers again. Yet more change and this time it could be any of us leaving. For most of the remaining weeks of the season, only one chalet was booked with guests. So the possibility of only needing one chef was quite high. I was seriously worried that it might be me leaving as it would make sense to get rid of a chef’s wage with only one chef needed. I was literally shaking in my boots hoping that my season wasn’t over. I was sure that if one chef had to go, it would be me, as I was sure that Darren wouldn’t make the other chef, Fern redundant. Surely not, as she was one of the original chefs employed and I was just the new recruit, pretending to be a chef!
And so redundancy procedures began. We were each interviewed at random and taken through a series of criteria which was supposed to determine our ability and contributions within the team. Criteria such as work ethic, team spirit, skills base, flexibility etc. To my absolute surprise I was praised during my interview and was apparently excelling at my job within the Alps. It came with even greater surprise that Fern, the other chef and her boyfriend, Brad were the ones to be made redundant.
So there we were, with 6 weeks left of the season to go, I was the sole remaining chef, left to take care of two kitchens and all of the food stocks. Even though Fern and I had worked closely together, each of our kitchens were our own domains. It was a huge task to try and maintain two kitchens and to keep a tab of all the stock that was in each store room. With only 6 weeks left I also had to start getting creative in the kitchen trying to use up all of the stock which had accumulated in the store rooms.
On top of these new responsibilities I was also required to train Sophie as the next in line chef. For the final busy two weeks of the season both chalets were booked to capacity for one last time. So she had to be ready to be able to cater for at least 20 people in a matter of four weeks and I had to get her there! In weeks when Franrick Lodge was empty I had to move locations and work out of La Maitreya’s kitchen, with Sophie shadowing me all the time, learning everything that I was doing. I had to teach her all of my recipes and show her how to find the rhythm of orchestrating a 6 course evening service smoothly as she would be doing it herself soon enough. Sophie was a natural cook thankfully and excelled at it. She certainly had hidden talents lurking under the surface and it was great to see her blossom in her new found role for the final two weeks of the season.
And so as the end of the season rolled in and the final guests finally drove off, those of us left standing by the side of the road, waving goodbye to the guests all took a massive breath of air and exhaled with a sigh of relief that could have been heard from the opposite side of Alpe D’Heuz. We had ridden the many unexpected ups and downs of the season and were grateful to have survived the changes and made it to the end. Phil, Sophie and I, the only original members of the Kick Ski team who had made the pilgrimage to Vaujany back in December had weathered the storm and survived the curse!
And some of us had even flourished in it. Sophie, my roommate and now fellow chef and I, had both begun the season as chalet hosts but would both be leaving with new found career paths. And with Phil and I now ready to take on the responsibility of running our own chalet, all three of us were hooked. We had become hardcore seasonaires who couldn’t wait for the winter to hurray up and return for yet more fun in the Alps! We must be mad!!
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