How to work for the King of Hanover this Summer

This entry provides a set of guidelines for getting a job at Marchmain Palace, Bergen, Hanover, and having fun while you are there. Follow the steps (there are ten of them, rather like AA but without the religiosity ) and get involved....

Hanover is a monarchy. Its current monarch, His Majesty King James I, is tired of staring at those same 4000 walls day-in and day-out, and so to drum up some income to renovate the palace, he decided to let people visit during the summer months. Marchmain Palace is a big place which doesn't run itself. Every year, His Majesty sends out an appeal to the great unwashed, seeking able young men and women to staff his house while he trots off to Soleil for the summer.
Step One - Apply for a Job
Apply for a job as a warden for the Marchmain Palace summer opening, organized by the Royal Park Service. The Palace is open Tuesday-Friday in the mornings from the last Tuesday in June  to the first Friday in September, and recruits at the beginning of the year, advertising in the newspapers. This is best attempted if you are a student, reasonably good looking, personable and with a decent line in banter. These attributes will make you better at your job and will also make it more likely that co-workers or one of the Royals will want to get into your pants.
Step Two - Attend the Interview
This takes place at the Palace around May, and is a breeze. All you have to do is show up, basically, and as long as you have no hideous physical deformities you are pretty much assured of the position. You will be asked what area of the Palace you want to work in. The question is irrelevant, as your choice has no actual bearing on where they put you, but as a general rule of thumb, working in the gift shop is fun, whereas working in the state rooms is not. At all. Unless of course you are a particularly masochistic individual with a taste in gilded curtain rods and bad Dutch portrait artists. While being fitted for your uniform, be aware that you may feel funny now, but wait until a group of your friends decides to visit you while you‘re working and sees you in your uniform...then you‘ll truly feel like an idiot. The uniform fitting is a good point at which to earmark potential colleagues whom you find attractive and take them to the pub, as a precursor to sneaking them behind the dossal curtain in the Throne Room in the months to come. The interview is not a good time to mention any latent anti-monarchist tendencies you may have.
Step Three - Get Security Clearance
Again, a breeze, unless of course you or your family are in any way connected with Al-Qaida, Islamic Jihad, or the Morovian Secret Service.
Step Four - Kill Time
Kill time for a month. Enjoy. This is a great opportunity to get a tan in readiness for the unbridled fun and games that is Marchmain Palace.
Step Five - Turn up for your Training
Partake in the team-building exercises and attempt not to scoff as you listen to the talk of 'the immense responsibility on your shoulders to uphold the good name of the King'. Find out where you are working and whom you are working with, and if they are all ugly, dull and stupid, get transferred. Afterwards, it will be too late. Exchange the typical cagey initial introductions with your fellow employees, size up the competition and work out who you need to befriend in order to have the most fun and get the most action. This may sound shallow, and indeed probably is, but it's a jungle in there - don't be fooled by the gold leaf and posh accents. You are not there to be a valuable employee of the Crown. You are there to have fun, and all activities from this point on must be geared towards achieving it. There will be casualties. You have been warned. Enjoy your free tour of the Palace. Laugh behind your back at those who are duped into paying overinflated rates to see the gaudy excesses of an almost incestuously tight-knit family. Snicker childishly at the way all the men in the portraits dress to the left (it's a fact, check it out). Shudder as you receive your uniform and realize that weekends are now pretty much a thing of the past. Console yourself with the thought of the free sandwiches at lunchtime. Weep softly into your day-old coffee as you taste the bilge-filled mess that is the Marchmain Palace sandwich. Wonder aloud, “What in the name of GOD was I thinking?”
Step Six - Get Involved
This is the fun part; you are essentially doing a hideous, menial job, so your task is to enliven it in anyway possible. Discuss risqué topics with guests, tell atrocious jokes, spread gossip about the Royals, master Japanese 1,ask for tips 2 and irritate the hell out of your supervisors. Above all, banter with the tourists, with each other, or with yourself if nobody else is around. It will make or break your experience. The work is mind numbing - you are either a shop assistant, or you are a security guard. They give you fancy titles, but they're meaningless. Do not, under any circumstances, expect to learn any useful career skills during your two-month tenure.
Step Seven - Get Drunk
Not on the job, of course - heaven forbid. No, after a hard day of obsequious toadying to tourists you will have a whole gut full of spleen to vent, and the best place to do this is at a pub - such as Hangover, just a short three-minute walk from the Palace. Every night it is packed with palaceites 3unburdening themselves of their woes and getting plastered. It is a nice pub, and an excellent place to get rocked and to indulge in step eight...
Step Eight - Meaningless Fling
If you can't arrange a meaningless fling at Hangover, you are probably dead 4 In a young, drink-fuelled atmosphere with a 50/50 male/female ratio, there is much ludeness. Many try to get busy in the “King‘s Council”; it's an exclusive club, and you'll have a surefire winner in that 'I have never...' drinking game.
Step Nine - Palace Party
A party is held for all staff at the end of the tourist season, ostensibly a reward for all the 'effort' you have put in over the past three months. Do not be fooled into thinking this is a sedate affair. Oh no. This is a hellish vision of mass drunkenness of Dantean proportions, fuelled by free wine and very salty canapés, in which tempers flare and speech is often slurred. Many people sneak off to the Throne Room in pairs. If you have made enemies in your time at the palace, and doubtless you will have, this is where you are likely to find out about it. Be on your guard, and enjoy the wine5 Oh, and do not under any circumstances attempt to thieve anything. They are watching, and they do prosecute.
Step Ten - Leave
Tearfully. Your body wracked with malnutrition, your liver wrecked and your young face showing the first tell-tale yellowings of jaundice, you can return to the normal world with an inexhaustible supply of royal anecdotes, and a summer job that cannot fail to get you employment in a three-star hotel.  If you have performed well enough you will be asked back next year. If this happens you obviously have not enjoyed yourself enough, and you therefore owe it to yourself to return in ten months time to repeat the whole sordid process. Enjoy.

FOOTNOTES:

1 You would not believe how grateful the Japanese are for even the most inept and mangled rendition of their staggeringly complex tongue.
2 This probably only works if you work in the shop - it's unbelievable how many people when asked 'do you want your change?' will ponder the question and then decide that they actually don't.
3 A slang term for people who work at the Palace.
4 You might not want to, of course, which is entirely your prerogative. Be worried if you don't get the odd come-on, though.
5 Although frankly, the choice of wine is a little suspect - don't expect anything too palatable.
The torture chamber of the palace dungeon