Working in Ibiza

Spending the summer working in Ibiza was my dream coming true. After falling in love with the island after a girl’s holiday two years ago, and a five-month summer ahead of me before my final year as a student, I couldn’t wait to get out there. However, after quickly booking my flight two weeks in advance and naively expecting to find a great job straight away, my first week out there wasn’t exactly what I had planned…

Day one-

The four of us arrive at the hostel and the receptionist tells us we’ve already paid, ok great… but its 11am and we can’t get into our room until 2pm. We go to the pool to wait and are greeted by a group of hammered Geordies and scouse lads, one of whom turns out to be one of the local Ket dealers.
They offer us some of their 60cent beer from the local Eroski supermarket (which we soon discover to be our local food haven), and finally, after spending just over an hour chatting to our new neighbours, and discovering that the 24 year-old Geordie, ‘Deano’, has a millionaire father who funds his jobless, drunken Ibiza lifestyle, we get into our room, which very unexpectedly…is actually quite nice. Except one problem…we booked a room for four people and have three beds! After having to move furniture around so that the cleaners can fit the spare mattress onto an area on the floor we decide we need to go job hunting.
We head out, armed with our CV’s- complete with a photo taken off our Facebook profile, and start asking in the bars in San Antonio’s famous West End. We hand out a few CV’s and get offered a trial doing PR for Coyotes bar the next night. Great…a job on our first day!
We head to Eroski to buy some dinner and end up with a pack of pasta, some pasta sauce (which turns out to be tomato soup) and a 40cent baguette. Dinner for four for under five Euros…bargain!

Day 2-

After having just a yoghurt for breakfast, we head out to do more job hunting. After chatting to a few more job seekers we find out one of the bars is holding interviews for ticket sellers for a daytime clubbing event in a derelict zoo…who’s not going to want to do that?!
We head up the road and see about 80 people sitting outside the bar waiting to be seen, the girls complete with a full face of makeup, and dressed for a night out. About an hour later, we finally get called over to the table, covered in CV’s, application forms and cigarettes. I get told about the event (which to be fair sounds amazing), asked about two questions, and get sent on my way.
Over an hour waiting in the heat for less than five minutes…great. I’ve already ruled out that one, and begin to realise the only job we’re likely to get is doing PR for bars, which I really didn’t want to do.
We walk up the road to a bar, which advertises all the job vacancies and apartments to rent in San Antonio and find an apartment cheap enough for us to afford. Three of us go to see the apartment (as it was a three bed place but we were sneaking in four), and it turned out to be perfect. With an affordable deposit and cheap monthly rent (split between four of course) we couldn’t believe how easy it was.
After starting work at Coyotes Bar that night and realising that PR is hard work when the only people on the island are workers, we decide to look around to see if we can get a better commission deal. We speak to ‘Mr Toff’ and start working for his bar, quitting Coyotes in under an hour. Then, after standing around until four in the morning and meeting some extremely drunk people, I realise I’ve only earnt eight Euros in five hours! However, while I was there I met another PR who needed somewhere to stay so we agree she can have our spare bed- five of us splitting rent for a three bed place = less than 200euros each a month…bargain.

Day 3-

As we’re all getting ready for work our electricity gets cut off while George is in the shower. We go down to reception and get told they’ve done it because we haven’t paid. Ok, so first of all we get told we’ve already paid, and then when they realise we haven’t- they just cut off our electricity!
We start work and realise that working for Mr Toff, and the grumpy bar man, seems more work than it’s worth. No one is going to want to drink there if you’ve got the most expensive deal in the West End!

Day 4-

After moving into our apartment, and sneaking two extra people through past reception, we head down to the beach for the first time since we’d been there. During the day we receive a text on the Spanish number we all shared to say that we have the job we had the interview for on our second day. Only problem being…who has the job? We then reluctantly got ready to head down to Mr Toffs. After getting a few people into the bar, we decide to sit and have a chat to a few, which apparently isn’t allowed in Mr Toffs, so we decide to go and get drunk. We meet a few lads who feel sorry for us whinging about work and drinking wine from a carton, so offer to buy us a few drinks. We accept, ask for a job at another bar and decide to quit Mr Toffs. After a few free beers, a night at Eden and money for a free KFC (we really were charity), we head home for a few hours sleep before more job interviews.

Day 7-

After functioning for a couple of days with barely any sleep, food, or money, we walked down to meet ‘JJ’ who would let us know if we all had the job, or as we’d been dreading…just one of us. We sat down and waited for him to check the names of those that should be there. After hearing about ten names read out I heard…Amy Seabrook? Phew…I had the job, but what about the others? Then, one after another their names were read out. We were so happy; all four of us had the job! I couldn’t believe it, two jobs in our first week. I finally felt like our summer in the sun had begun, and even though it was going to be hard work, we knew we could do it because, simply, you just have to be there.