First Day of OJT

OJT. On the Job Training.

I started at 8:15 this morning. This meant I would have caught the 7am bus. Except that when I woke up at 6am and got dressed, I realized that not only was my belt waaay too big, but they gave me the wrong belt buckle. Unfortunately, DAK is built in a terrible way (which is ironic because you'd think the later the park was built, the smarter they'd build it) because the costuming building isn't within walking distance of the park. I didn't have enough time to take the bus there, and then ride back to DAK before my shift started. So I had to drive.

Once at work, I found my trainer. He spent about five minutes training me, and then we realized that there were issues with the training schedules. Twenty minutes, a bunch of phone calls, and a lot of confusion later, we set it up so I was training with someone else. Which kind of stunk because I was then stuck with another trainee instead of getting individual attention. However, it was still a lot of fun, and I liked the girl I was training with.

We saw down at a table and my trainer started pulling out papers. "Here's the list of codes." "Here's another list of different codes." "Here's a map of the park." "Here's a map of Africa." "Memorize this." "Here's the trail map." "Here's the spiel." "Memorize that." Here's a list of safety rules." "Here's another list of codes." "Here's a bag of goodies. Yep, there's sun block and chap stick in there." "Memorize this." "This paper goes over The Basics again." "Have another list of codes." "make sure you memorize this."

After about three minutes I had a stack of papers in front of me. Just a little overwhelming. Then he pulled out another binder of papers. "Here. Read and learn pages 51-73." We ended up going through page 91. Yikes!

There were a lot of fun things we did too, though. We checked out the trucks, walked around Africa, learned about the trail, and rode the trail several times. I felt bad for some of the guests because there's a lot of trainees right now and we have to drive through the loading zone. So we drive up to the loading zone as if we're going to load, and then just leave. Empty trucked.

And then, at the end of the day, we actually got to drive the trucks! Those things are ENORMOUS! When I told people I was nervous they kept telling me "Don't worry. It's easy. They train you well." I think they talked it down so much that it freaked me out even more.

I pulled out of the spot. There's a yellow Mickey head on the ground you have to drive over to make sure the audio works. You have to drive over it just right, though, or nothing happens. I got it on my second try! It was so exciting when I heard the music start! So funny. We drove in circles backstage for a while, and then went on the track. Because of time, I didn't get to drive on much of the track. But it's kind of a good thing because I have yet to have been on the safari when there was an animal in the rode, but in the (ridiculously short) amount of trail I drove there were THREE animals blocking me. My trainer was joking that I must attract them or something. Fortunately none of them stayed long enough for me to report it, but still. Crazy!

The other good thing is I didn't go up on the curb once! However, I'm fairly certain I'm going to go up on the curb at some point because I've even hit the curb before in my car so it's bound to happen on the truck.

What amazed me most about the trucks, though, is their level of safety. I can't go into detail, but our safety standards are SIGNIFICANTLY higher than those set at the Rescue Squad I used to work at. That's a big deal. It literally did blow my mind as to the amount of safety measures we take. Unbelievable. And even more unbelievable that things still go wrong. But fortunately, there's also huge safety measures taken for things if they do go wrong, so there's like no chance of anyone with half a brain to get hurt on this ride. And those trucks are in tip top maintenance shape.

With that said, however, the ride actually did go down today! While we were at lunch we saw the trucks heading back into the parking lot. I probably shouldn't post why, but it wasn't a huge deal, and we were back up and running shortly after. The trainers we were with said the ride very rarely goes down like that. Like, maybe five times a year. If that much. But we saw it today! Maybe that means it'll be a long time before there's another problem. Then again, what are the chances that would happen my first day!?

Anyway, this got extremely long, but it was such a totally amazing day! I nearly cried out of happiness for my job and my life in general. So stinking much fun! I can't believe I'm going to be doing this daily!!! I can't even wait!