Orientation

Orientation was held in the end of January at a hotel conference room, the same hotel where I had my fitting.  There were probably at least 100 girls that showed up which was crazy because there was more than one orientation time.  This was the first time I thought okay this is it; this place is finally going to open soon!  First it was supposed to be open in Nov, then Dec, and now it’s January so hopefully Feb it would open? 

There were tables set up in a big conference room with coffee, cookies, and fruit.  I met a girl named Kayla at my table who was very cute and nice and we talked for awhile.  She was 18 and went to the state school majoring in forestry or something unique like that.  She seemed like a nice girl but not overly done up or talkative like some of the other girls. Most of the other girls were pretty, some really done up with the makeup while others more casual looking like they were going to the beach.   I noticed a lot of blondes.

For the orientation they actually had someone from an outsourced corporate company going over all the paperwork to make sure it was filled out correctly.  It seems crazy and expensive to hire someone specifically for this but I guess with a restaurant opening you have so many new staff members that it’s probably more efficient this way.  After doing all the paperwork we watched a video on sexual harassment. 

Theresa talked a lot about future training at the restaurant which still did not have a specific date. She made a point to tell us to look around because they weren’t going to keep everyone.  I thought that was kind of a weird thing to say.  I think her point was to keep us on our toes and made sure we were on par at work.  Yeah some girls aren’t going to make it either because they aren’t a good server (many people actually lie on their application if they have no server experience. During an opening a manager isn’t going to bother to call 100 people’s references.) or they don’t take the job seriously, or they just don’t think the place is right for them. However usually when a restaurant opens they do over hire people yet servers tend to weed themselves out rather than a manager telling people they might not make it. To specifically tell everyone to look around seemed overly dramatic and made me feel like I was on America’s Next Top Model where everyone else was our competition that we had to beat. 

At the end of the orientation then were told to be ready for that weekend for information on the training dates.