Cavalier Eternel

All we can do is all we've ever done.

Overland Park, KS
Tamarac Square Denver
Sioux Falls, SD
Eden Prairie, MN
Bozeman, MT
Clearwater, FL
Okemas, MI
Wilmington, NC
Topeka, KS

I worked in each of these cities for about a month in a two year period.  All expense paid trip with room, board and per diem afforded by a moderate sized full service local restaurant chain that has about 60 or so units in over 20 states.  When it started I felt like I was on an extremely lame version of MTV's the Real World. Go meet some relative stranger and try to get along because you're gonna live together.  Some past manager of mine made a phone call and in no time I had a plane ticket, a check for $189 and instructions to be a certain terminal in DIA on a Saturday morning at 8 am where I would meet some other people who worked for the same chain as me but at different cities across the Front Range.  People a lot like me from Greeley, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Omaha.  And board a plane to Kansas City, Kansas. I believe this was in late January.
I'm not sure how to describe what this experience was like.  Sure it was a city I had never been to before and I was scheduled to work 60 hours in the first week.  Probably more but they were trying to take it easy on me since it was my first trip.  So, it wasn't like I was going to have a whole lot of time nor motivation to go and see anything in this city except the trip between the restaurant and the extended stay hotel.  And  absolutely no offense to the fine people of Kansas City but I believe I saw everything there was see with parts of my one day off a week, larger parts of which were spent in one or several bars.  If I were pressed to remember exactly what I saw I might come up with: Boulevard Brewery and riverboat gambling on the Missouri River.
Under such circumstance we got to know the people around us very well, very quickly.  We all had cunningly similar characteristics for the most part.  We were a team of, at the least 8 and at the most 12, trainers from across the country who all had a specialized position of training within the restaurant.  Those positions in the Back of the House were: pizza, bulk prep, dough and 1 to 2 trainers on the front line.  In the Front of the House there was: bar, host, usually 2 server trainers with maybe a supervisor, training manager and the management staff of that location, which was 3-5 more people.  Typically, the trainers would have 2 weeks before finish setting up the space and train a brand new staff of 50 - 100 and 2 weeks after grand opening to work alongside staff.  In nine openings I was the pizza trainer nine times.  Some openings were busier than others.  Some trips we stayed an extra week or worked upward of 80 hours in week.  Each city was so very different than the other, but we were still doing the same job no matter the city.   The training team was always slightly different than the next.  With every opening there were more new people who were just like me but from different places.  Never very far away places. But still even more familiar because we were usually pretty close to each other.  We would become great friends very quickly.  If we weren't working or drinking together we might have been sleeping next to each other.  One time in bunk beds.  These were versions of me from: Nebraska, Kansas, Idaho, Oregon, Arizona.  We would go through some serious service hell together. We would inevitably become involved in each others' lives.  The trips were longer enough for us all to really get involved with the construction of this monster that we had to make stand, walk and run away as we stand in the dust.  The last week of each opening was usually pretty dusty.
Then we would go home.
We said we would keep touch but we almost never did.
Only a couple times did I see another trainer not on the road.  Borrowing product from each other, maybe filling in for a cross town store during their company party.
I could always remember stepping through the front door of my apartment upon returning home from an opening.  My heart would well up with anticipation and would quickly deflate as I opened the door and realize how much more clean was the hotel room.
  I felt like I was part of a restaurant  A-Team.  Except that we weren't fighting for any type of justice and the plan we hatched took about month to carry out.
We were all restaurant purists who got to lay our eager fingers on a blank canvas.
Nine different cities.
Countless different people who were just like me.
I hope to record as many of  the actual events as I can recall.
Names may or may not be changed.