Well, I am an official “Chilihead.” After five days of training, I have passed by exams, and completed the equivalent of 3 shifts on the floor. My first official shift, where I get to keep my tips, is this Thursday. I’ll do dinner shifts Thursday, Friday and Saturday of this week.
In all honesty, the exams were pretty rigorous and although I passed, there is a tremendous amount of information I need to get more comfortable with to be effective. The menu is more extensive then most people realize. That, and each item has specific things about how it’s prepared, what it comes with, how it’s presented, how long it takes. There’s a lot to know, and I’ll admit that although this is the third restaurant I’ve worked in my career, it is by far the most extensive menu and highest learning curve. The people on staff at my place in general are hard-working, fun, helpful, and smart. My new coworkers include a professional surfer, a med school grad, some students, some career servers, and a bunch of people I’ve not yet had the chance to talk with extensively. Thus far, I’ve been having a good time, and everyone is positive and friendly, and helpful. I’ve not had the “ick-another new guy…” attitude that can happen in any job, but I’ve seen before in several of my past positions. I interviewed with a number of other restaurants before I got this position, and can honestly say that I found most of the managers at the other places unpleasant and inflexible. Their attitude was essentially, ‘It’s great that you take care of your kids,” but if you’re not available 24/7 then we can’t use you.” That is of course their prerogative, as it’s their business, but it was irritating. My new bosses are very cool, and from my perspective, have the approach of it being more important that you can do the work and bring something unique to the restaurant. So, they get my services, and the other places can wallow in their soon to be dwindling sales. They had their chance.
As I write this, I’m listening to 610 AM: WIP in Philadelphia, online of course. It’s late there, but it really is a nice change of pace from listening to the local sports talk here in Hawaii, as I’m really not finding much interest in the local college basketball. Apparently no one else is either, as the entire sports page in the Honolulu Advertiser is devoted to the local high school basketball championships.
The current topic is, “Oh my God” moments in Philly sports-bad ones…no one had yet mentioned the big one in my opinion, the horrendous ending to the 1993 World series where Joe Carter hit a walk-off home run to send the Phillies home. So, I called, and got on the air and talked with the guy about a number of things, including living here in Hawaii. My point for the Phils after talking about ‘93, was that I don’t think the organization ever recovered, and that maybe if they spent more time building a winner than ribbing Kyle Kendrick, we might have a shot at winning.
But probably not. It was fun to listen and get on the air.
Hawaii continues to be a beautiful place to live. Having some work outside the house will be good for us all I think, and thus far, it’s been fun, but as I said, the training was no joke. They asked a lot and expect a lot. The tests were more rote memorization than I have done since Honors Chem in 11th grade. And, as I recall, I wasn’t a real whiz at it then. But, we pulled it out, and the real work will start on Thursday.
Perhaps next time, we can discuss the strategies for upselling! Stay tuned.
Oh, and we will be coming back to NJ for just under two weeks in May. Stay tuned on that as well. I’m looking forward to it.
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