And the fun begins...

Since Saturday I am an official Server of Hard Rock Cafe in SF and that means that my tips will be pretty much my whole salary. I was looking forward to it since last year when I was a foodrunner because being a server has its advantages- I am on my own and mainly- it only depends on myself how much money I make during the shift.
It is pretty difficult to start because we ussualy have 5-6 tables to take care of. It means I have to think about which table needs what in this particular moment all the time and I can´t forget about any of the steps of service. But it only takes time and practice- a lot of practice!

 It is also very interesting to talk to the people- there comes people from all over the world and it is interesting to hear out their stories how they got here, what do they do etc. The next thing that I found out is that they are truly interested in my story too- they are always surprised that I am from Slovakia (if they even know where it is...) and they find this whole "Work-and-Travel" thing very brave to do. I also had few customers who were surprised that I am not a local because of my English- which is always very very good to hear :) Some are very nice, some of them are not... but I always try to make my best...it is only up to them how they like it :)

Today Juri has his last day of training which means he has to pass a test as well to be a regular Retail Sales Assistent, but it won´t change much in his salary because he is paid by hour and not getting any tips.
Paja is still working in Bubba Gump Shrimps and on the top of that he is making some money with playing his ukulele in the metro station. He is pretty good! (once he made 30bucks in an hour!)

The next thing that happend- we are staying in this hotel for good- we were supposed to move in a house pretty far away from job, but it didn´t work out (I hate hate hate hunting for accomodation in SF!!!) Few minutes after we found out that we went to Ross and bought a "double electric burner", pot and a pan- so we can finally cook some real food here! We were SO excited about that! :)))

Hope you are doing great our dearest friends! :)

Final test- done! :)

Today it was my last day of training what means that from now on I am an official Server of Hard Rock Cafe. It took me 6 days to finish so I didn´t need any extra days which is good for my walet = I am gonna get tips sooner :)
The last day of training was pretty okay, my final trainer was Alex (my favourite) so it went pretty smooth. I made only few small mistakes that were easy to fix. After the last shift I had to pass the final test and lucky for me- it was the only day when our manager Cat wasn´t in charge of testing. Don´t get me wrong, she is awesome, but when speaking about testing people she is very very strict. My final test was with Mike so it went pretty good and smooth, I knew pretty much everything :)

I am kinda excited to be a server on my own finaly! We´ll see later how it goes :)

Juri is still on training and he has to get up at 6am ussualy, but hopefully that will change after the training shifts.

Our secret mission has been disclosed

I don´t know if I told you already, but we live already in third hotel in San Francisco. The first one- Hotel Moritz where we stayed for two nights, than Hotel GateWay Inn where we stayed three nights and then Hotel Krupa where we are now and it´s been already one week! Today I paid for another one week so this will be the longest time we ever stayed anywhere.

There was only this problem... we´ve got a room for two and it´s three of us and obviously none of our landlords knew that in the room for two live actually three people. It was not a big deal in Moritz or GateWay where we stayed only for few nights...but when you´re staying somewhere for more that 5 nights it is pretty obvious that sooner or later the landlord will find out and it only depends on him/her what happens next. And since our landlord is cool indian lady she only smiled at us and let us live there for another week :) Yupi!!! P.S It looks like we found another place to live from June 25th but.. we´ll see...

What´s new?
Well...I still have my training at work I already passed 4 days but another two will be the hardest ones. I have to know all items on our menu and of course drinks and what are they made of which is not that easy as it may seem. My trainers have been pretty cool so far (Brendon, Xtina, Andrea and Alex) so I start to love to work in HRC again :)
It´s Juri´s Orientation day today finally so he can have his training too. It will be a little shorter than mine tho.
Paja is working hard and making good money so he can spend it on expensive accessories to his ukulele.

That is pretty much it for now, I hope you are having an amazing summer! XOXO

Days of Training

Since I know from the last year that in Hard Rock "what you don´t ask for you don´t get" I sent an email immidiately after I got my working schedule- My first day of training was supposed to be on Friday 20th! That would mean that I would have to "survive" with no salary for two maybe three weeks and that is just not that easy in SF as it may seem.
So I sent the email to my manager Cat, told her about my situation, and since I work for Hard Rock Cafe where they care for they employees (true story!) she changed my schedule immidiately and now I work on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, (Wednesday and Thursday are my days off) then Friday, Saturday (which will be my last day of training) and on Sunday it will be my first day as a real server :) It is a long proces but believe me there is so much to know so 6 days of training are just enough to provide Kick-Ass service :))

My first day a little hectic because it was Saturday so there was plenty of  people and my trainer Brandon was a little weird but it was okay I would say. My second day was WAY better- my trainer was Alex (he is from Russia) and he was a darling! He was talking to me all the time, explaining everything I needed to know he even got me some tips we made eventho I am not supposed to have any during my Training. :) The time flies so fast with him.
My third day will be also with Alex so I am really excited about it :)

Also...after every day of training I have to pass a test from manager so he would know that I am learning properly and I am ready for next day. It is not that scary as it may sound, it is more easy to learn something when you are in contact with that all day long :)

We´re about to go to park now, to have piq-nique so I´ll write you later :)

Hunters...

San Francisco is amazing! The only thing that is not so amazing is the weather (fyi- we went to sunny California and the temperature is 50% lower than in Slovakia :D wtf really! )

On Tuesday we finally went to Hard Rock Cafe to do some paperwork... honestly I haven´t sign so many papers in last year than I have today :D It was kinda crazy and the lady in charge didn´t really know what to do, but after 2 hours we did it and so we became valid employees of HRC-SF :)
On Thursday it is the Orientation Day- that means that we´re gonna spend whole day in Hard Rock watching videos about the history of HRC and other not so interesting videos, we´re gonna get our uniforms and other stuff and what is the best part- we will be paid for this whole day of doing nothing! (and maybe even get a free food after)

Today it´s our day off so we have to take care of few things. Juri have to go to the Social Security Office to get his SSN so he can start working asap. We have to go there early in the morning because later it looks like someone gives free stuff there or in the communist times when people were waiting for oranges :)
Then we plan to go to the beach also but our priority is looking for an accomodation because we still have to live in expensive hotels. Finding a place to stay in SF is ridiculously difficult, everything is either taken, too expensive or just uninhabitable. We´ve sent heaps of emails but only few responded back and on the top of that- two woman tried to gyp us with their basic strategy: "I have an amazing house where you can stay fot the whole summer, I don´t have time to show you guys the place or meet you unfortunally but you can sign the lease agreement that I´ll send you via email and pay me in advance 1000 dollars so I won´t give the place to anybody else." Yup, just like that. So you can see it is really not easy to find anything solid.

Btw JetLag is working only for Juri- he is completely out of his mind from time to time and tired as hell... I´m sticking to my routine- sleep from midnight till 4-5am and I am tired only from the lack of (real) food and the SFs hills (but I´ll do it for my peachy butt haha).

I hope you have beautiful time back in Slovakia, enjoy the weather! We miss you! XO

Here we come California :)

We´re finally here- in San Francisco, California. :)

The journey was hardcore- we started in Prague at about 9am on Sunday, our flight was at 11.55am from Václav Havel´s Airport where there was the first problem- they didn´t like my longboard deck as a carry-on. I was told that I have to pay 70dollars (which is pretty much the same amount of money that I bought it for a year ago) so they can send it with all the other luggages. Fortunatelly the only possibility for me was to pay it with my credit card so at last it was free because their system would only take cash. Lucky as hell :)

From Prague we went to London which was pretty short flight but the worst was yet to come. The flight from London to Dallas was a disaster! It lasted nearly 10 hours!!! After 4 hours we couldn´t take it any longer so we decided to get drunk. For free, of course. So everytime the steward asked us if we would like anything else to drink, our answer was "Yeah, I´ll have white wine and orange juice, please" Fortunatelly he asked us like this couple times so eventho the cups was pretty small, we got drunk pretty fast.

In Dallas we had to pass through the (crazy) control and claim that we don´t have any food, animals and other stuff that could possibly harm America (I have no idea in what way but...well they´re Americans) There comes the second problem- I forgot about an apple in my back-pack so when I took my suitcase and was on my way out of the airport one of the security guys with a dog stopped me becasue his dog started to jump on me and licking my leg. Then he barked oddly and the guy was like "My dog just told me that you have fruits or meat in your luggage". Well the problem was clear since I am a vegetarian. the problem was the forgotten apple and believe it or not, because of this little sweet apple from Slovakia I had to go through another special control and get rid of it. 

In Dallas our flight was delayed for another 45 minutes which in our tired minds felt like eternity.
It was super exhausting- no wonder- we were traveling 24hours!!!

In SF we took a cab and went to Union Square where Pája already waited for us. I saw him after two and half year and I was very happy to see him again. He took us to our hotel (which looks pretty vintage just like at Weasley´s haha) and after few hours of talking, smoking and drinking we went to sleep tired as fuck.

Tomorrow we have to find another place to stay because we have to check out of this hotel on Tuesday so I guess the whole day we´re going to spend with looking for an accomodation.

Keep your fingers crossed for us :)