A day of training

Today Mark and I drove to the warehouse/office of Holiday Hills Christmas Trees for a day of training. Today’s training was supposed to be just for first time lot operators, but there was a couple there who did this last year. They came to support a couple of new recruits they brought in. They were able to add some ideas from their experience, so it was a good thing to have them there.

We all stood around and got to know each other for a while, and then the men sat in training in the warehouse and we women went for training in the office. The men are going to be working with the trees and the customers and employees. The women are going to be doing most of the cashiering and paperwork. The owners are Daryll and Elaine Smith from Salem, OR. Elaine trained us women, but a couple long-time employees trained the guys.

Half way through the day Elaine took us women all out to lunch at Appleby’s. A guy named Bob took the guys out to lunch at a Mexican restaurant using Daryll’s card. It was so nice. I had asked for a strawberry and lemonade drink that didn’t get free refills, but I finished it before my meal came. When the waiter saw that I was out, he asked if I wanted to buy another or have my glass refilled with something that was refillable. Elaine heard and said, “I’m buying. Go ahead and get another of what you had!” Mark says the guys got the same kind of treatment.

We had expected the training to last through at least part of tomorrow, but both the men and the women got as far as we could for this weekend by late afternoon, and that was with the women taking a two hour lunch hour! We left around 4:30.

It was still light out and Mark suggested we drive to Kerrville to see where our lot will be. It’s about an hours drive from San Antonio. On the way Mark and I compared notes from today. The training was pretty overwhelming for us. Mark is nervous about having to manage employees and I’m nervous about all the buttons on the cash register. Maybe we’ll get a little better idea what we’re doing when we come back for training next weekend.

Everyone was telling me today how cute Kerrville is and how much I’m going to like it. We got to the area where our lot will be and it wasn’t particularly cute. There are over 22,000 people in Kerrville, so it’s quite a bit larger than most of the towns we’ve worked in as Workampers. We drove for some time through Kerrville before we came to a two block are that could be called “cute”. Even though it was past sunset by the time we got there, I managed to take some pictures.