In Which Cinderannie Starts a New Job

Note to self: Never promise another post “tomorrow.” It’s not a good idea.



Anyway, the time has come for a post of some bits and pieces and anecdotes and descriptions from the Liberty Tree Tavern. They'll be a bit disorganized, but at least I’ll start with training.


How enjoyable your training is depends almost entirely on your trainer. My first time with custodial-specific training, was, as you may recall, dreadful, because I had a not-very-magical instructor whose personality did not complement mine. Then the next two days, I had a fairly good trainer, who if not extremely magical at least made training interesting.
For my first day of Liberty Tree training, I had a wonderful trainer. His name was William, and he is the best person I have ever met at staying in character. I and three other girls were training together, and we were all in our costumes. A note on costumes would, I think, be, good, so you can picture us. The girls’ costume is a top and skirt (but it looks like a dress) that’s a slate blue with floral trim, an apron, and a bonnet sort of hat. I’ll post a picture if I can get one. The guys costume is slate blue knickers and a white long-sleeved shirt with a navy blue vest over it. The knickers are supposed to button at the cuff, but the costume makers seriously underestimated the muscularity of our guys’ calves, so… very few of the cuff buttons get buttoned.
Anyway, William gave us the grand tour of Liberty Square. A lot of it was very familiar to me (“the attractions in Liberty Square are the Haunted Mansion, the Hall of Presidents, and the Liberty Belle steamboat”…) given how often I’d walked around in the area both as a custodial and on days off, but it was so much fun to trail around in our costumes! I felt like I really belonged there. Once a guest asked if he could take our picture. We agreed, of course, and I felt like a celebrity.
William warned us not to cross over into Frontierland.
“We don’t go over there,” he explained. “That’s too wild for us – they’ve got gunfights and cowboys and I don’t know what all else. We’ve got enough to worry about with our own war going on over here.” He’s the first person I’ve known who could say things like that without ever breaking – you know, doing the half-smile or wink, and without using an “I’m telling a story” voice. He said it like he was explaining not to cross the yellow line on a ride, or something like that – like he was perfectly serious about the whole thing. I loved it. This continued for the rest of the day, including when he was showing us where to get the pixie dust to put on people’s tables if someone had a birthday – “delivered to us by Tinkerbelle herself,” he declared. Putting pixie dust on the birthday tables is one of my favorite things – although I have a sneaking suspicion that the handwritten sign that recently appeared above the pixie dust reading “please do not grab too much pixie dust” was directed at me…
The second day of training was not quite as exciting. Ashley was our trainer. Although she was not as in-character, I’m still glad we had her for the second day, because William had a tendency to skip over details, and we needed someone a little more practical to fill in the gaps.
There are five different jobs that we do as seaters. (“Seater” is our overall heading, distinguishing us from “servers.”) I’m going to describe them all for you so that you know what I’m talking about later when I say that I did such-and-such.
Seating. This means that when a slip of paper with a family on it prints out at the podium, we take it and the menus they need, summon the family, and take them to their table. We used to call “Hear ye, hear ye! Let it be known that we are now seating the _____ family of the colony/territory of __________!” I thought that this was fun. However, we have a pager system now, so we just punch in the number of the pager and the family comes to us. Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work. Sometimes the number is wrong or the pager isn’t working or whatever, and then if they don’t come we call. We also get a high chair or booster seat if the paper says they need one.
Table-setting. This means wiping off the table, sweeping the floor under it if it needs it, and setting the silverware and napkins (and at dinner, salad plates). We used to have to stack all the dishes on the table onto a tray for the server to take away. We didn’t have to carry the tray unless we wanted to. But there were some people from Tony’s restaurant over at Liberty for a while because Tony’s was closed for refurbishment. And at the rest of the restaurants seaters don’t have to bus tables. So the Tony’s people went back and told their people, “At Liberty Tree we had to bus tables!” And those people said, “Hey, they shouldn’t have to bus tables! The other seaters don’t have to bus tables. They aren’t getting busser pay. You can’t make them bus tables.” So we don’t have to bus tables any more, and the servers have to do it themselves. They have mostly taken it very well, although on one of the first days of it I did hear one of them singing, “I’ve seen better days…” But when it gets really busy we still bus them for them. And even when it’s not busy I do Patty’s tables, because she’s the nicest server ever and she used to bus her own tables when she didn’t have to. But the ones who never did their own and who would leave the trays for ages hoping we’d carry them for them… Kim the assigner (she figures out where to put which guests) declares I am not allowed to bus their tables because they need to learn to do it themselves. Another side note about table-setting: whenever I am wiping a round table I feel like I’m back home as a child wiping our dining room table for supper because it is the same color of wood and it was round back when there weren’t such a lot of us and we didn't put all the leaves in.
Folding napkins. Umm… it’s pretty self-explanatory. Fold it in half, fold the two sides into the middle, fold it in half again. Either in the GT office (which is crowded and claustrophobic) or in the Diamond Horseshoe (which is large, beautiful, and pleasant). I wouldn’t want to fold napkins every day, but it makes a very nice break if I’m feeling tired or want to pursue my own thoughts. Also it’s fun to be in the Diamond Horseshoe because periodically various interesting people come by, like the Frontierland street musicians. I think I have forever endeared myself to one of them because I knew that his instrument was a sousaphone, and listened with great interest to him explaining the different finishes of brass instruments. And sometimes the piano player who’s usually at Casey’s corner comes in and plays the piano that’s onstage to practice. When we’re table setting we fold napkins for the first hour (because no tables need setting yet) and when we get all girls and sit around the same table it feels like a quilting bee.
Fourth, set-ups. This means taking the folded napkins and putting a knife, big fork, and little fork on each one. (I am amused by the fact that while technically I suppose they are dinner forks and salad forks, I have never heard anyone refer to them that way. Even the managers call them big forks and little forks.) Then you stack them up and put them on the shelves according to how many – two, four, six, and eight, because those are the table sizes. Then when a table setter needs them, they just come take the stack of however many they need instead of having to count them. Oh, and I had better tell you that instead of “table for four” or “table for six,” we call it a “four-top” or a “six-top.” That’s also used to designate the stacks of napkins and silverware (aka “set-ups”), as in “I’m going to clean table 302, could you grab me a six-top?” Set-ups is another rather dull job, but it also makes a nice break because you can think about whatever you want to.
Last, stocking. This means bringing glasses, coffee mugs, trays, and ice to the drink stations on each side of the restaurant as they are needed, and taking the trash out of the drink stations when it gets full. It is hard work because the things are rather heavy, but it makes the time go by quickly. Some people hate it but I don’t mind it. Actually, it’s kind of fun. Especially like yesterday when Tam the server was impressed with how hard I was working and asked me if I wanted to work in his bakery someday when he starts it. I said, “Sure.” That seemed like the right sort of answer since of course I wouldn’t really promise to take a job sometime in the indeterminate future in an unknown location, but I liked the idea of it. Sort of like my mom and her friend saying they were going to run away to Tahiti. Stocking yesterday was actually very dull. For some reason nobody wanted to eat at Liberty Tree for lunch. Half the restaurant was empty, and we were all standing around bored. Although it was nice because I got to chat with some of the servers, and normally we’re all running around like crazy and can’t do that. Then when it was dinner time, we had a million people because it was raining outside and everyone wanted to come in and eat. We set towels out on the desk because everyone was coming in soaking wet…

Dinner at Liberty Tree is a character dinner, with Goofy, Minnie, Pluto, and Chip and Dale. I love them; they make life interesting… the first day I was table setting, I had put the silverware out on a table and was about to set out the plates, when Goofy came up and indicated to me that I ought to set the plates by standing in one place and frisbeeing them into their respective positions! I told him that I couldn’t do that, I would surely break the plates. “I could do it,” he said. I just shook my head and laughed. (And of course, he didn’t really say, “I could do it” out loud. But the characters say what they mean so well that when I think about it afterward, I can’t remember what motions they used, only what they communicated to me. So throughout my tales, I will say what the characters “said” as I understood it, quotation marks and all, rather than attempting to recall the motions they used to convey it. It’s easier.) And they are always teasing and goofing around, especially if we aren’t very busy or it’s toward the end of the night. Then Goofy will be balancing a tray on his nose, or putting one knee on a chair and sliding across the floor, pushing with the other foot as though it was a scooter, and Chip and Dale and Goofy will all be pulling each other’s aprons off, so the character attendants have to fix them… Patrick the character captain shakes his finger at them and scolds them, reminding me of a grumpy grandfather of several rambunctions children, who shakes his head and orders them to behave and pretends to be cranky but really loves them all.

I expect that’s enough for tonight. At least now you have a picture of what I’m doing these days. I’m working long hours, but enjoying it. And my coworkers are great too. Oh and Tiff (my roommate)’s friends Kari and Dory have arrived from Washington state to start their college programs, and we’re hitting it off just marvelously, especially Kari and I who spent all of today together and had a grand time. Most fun I’ve ever had running errands, I think. Oh and I bought my mother’s birthday presents today :-) It was the last day of the 40% holiday discount so of course I spent way too much money. I’m think I’m a bit of a spendthrift.
(Of course after thinking that I had to look up spendthrift on dictionary.com to see if that was true. Most of the definitions talked about spending money “wastefully,” “recklessly,” or “foolishly.” I don’t think I do that. But there was one definition that I think fits, from the Kennerman English Multilingual Dictionary. “A person who spends his money freely and carelessly.” That’s it exactly. I tend to spend money freely and carelessly. But then I make my own food cheaply (I can make a whole pot of hearty nutritious vegetable soup for a little over $5!) and don’t spend lots of money eating out to make up for it. But this is the last shopping spree type trip, because I don’t have the discount excuse anymore. From now on all purchases are thought about carefully and pondered for a few weeks before I decide if I really want it badly enough to spend the money on it. Okay, enough of me rambling about being a spendthrift…)
Oh and I have a library card now! At some point I’ll have to tell that story…

Love to all, and good night.