One of my fellow interns in Channel Distribution, Louise, has been amusing us endlessly. Yesterday, we had a lengthy discussion about Bingo. Louise had no idea what Bingo was. She had also never heard of a lazy river. When asked if she had ever been to a farm, her response was that she had visited the Bronx Zoo. My other fellow intern from Indiana did not approve of that answer. We also discovered that she couldn't identify Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, or Sammy Davis Jr. We tried to get her to sing the U.S. Nat'l Anthem... with a little prompting, she was able to do it.
Thankfully, Louise is a great sport about us teasing her. We have a lot of fun in our down time at work. Thank goodness, because some of the work is boring. There are some exciting things to look forward to at work though. Ask me for details.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Work has begun...
So I have finally started my first training shifts in my hope department. I will be working in Channel Distribution/Reservations. Basically, we set the room rates for the hotel by predicting how many rooms we think we can sell in order get the highest revenue possible. It's pretty cool. There are three other interns in the department with me, and we all get along pretty well.
To start off, they are training us in reservations. They placed us with a reservations supervisor, who is a UNLV student, and happens to be younger than all of us. For the first four hours of training, we went through and read the training manual out loud, each taking turns reading a paragraph. It was unbelievably boring. Later, we finally got started working in Stratus, the property management system the MGM uses. Just like the Marriott system I used last year, it is way out of date (DOS-based program). I guess I've been spoiled using Windows so much... Anyway, I guess I'm now an expert making reservations at MGM Grand. Or something like that. We get to take a room tour today, which is pretty cool... hopefully we'll get to see the SkyLofts, which are these two-story lofts at the top of the hotel, which are basically not sold to the public, but kept for invited guests of the casino. A friend of mine is also trying to finagle us a tour of the Mansion, which contains 29 exclusive villas that run over $10,000 per night.
We had our New Hire Orientation yesterday. Basically, they went over a lot of the same stuff they did last week. Once again, we are experts. The nice thing was that they had us do a scavenger hunt around the casino (I think they said it's 4 football fields long? huge.) which was cool. As prizes, they gave everybody 2 free tickets to Crazy Horse Paris, a topless/artistic show they have at MGM Grand. I knew I'd be getting free tickets to something, so I had planned to take either Aunt Bobbi or Aunt Cathy with me and just flip a coin or something. Luckily, at the end of the day, they also gave us two free tickets to KA, the Cirque du Soleil show we have at MGM. Now Aunt Bobbi and Aunt Cathy can both go---it will be interesting to see who chooses to go to the topless one. I also bought tickets the other night to go see Boston and Styx in June. They're celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Thomas and Mack Center at UNLV, so all the tickets were $25--I'm pumped.
Not much else to tell, at the moment. The weather has been beautiful. I've been taking the dog for walks a lot. Now every time I come home, he jumps all over me wanting to go outside. Yesterday, I refused to take him because I don't want him to think he can just get what he wants whenever he begs for it. We'll see how well that works. The dog has it pretty good, though.... the other day he got a nice portion of our New York Strip steak (I was hoping for a second serving, but what can you do....). Anyway, it's been fun playing with him. He's very loyal.
That's all, for now. Weekend is coming up... hopefully some good stuff will happen. A friend from Cornell will be in town, so I should get to go out a bit.
To start off, they are training us in reservations. They placed us with a reservations supervisor, who is a UNLV student, and happens to be younger than all of us. For the first four hours of training, we went through and read the training manual out loud, each taking turns reading a paragraph. It was unbelievably boring. Later, we finally got started working in Stratus, the property management system the MGM uses. Just like the Marriott system I used last year, it is way out of date (DOS-based program). I guess I've been spoiled using Windows so much... Anyway, I guess I'm now an expert making reservations at MGM Grand. Or something like that. We get to take a room tour today, which is pretty cool... hopefully we'll get to see the SkyLofts, which are these two-story lofts at the top of the hotel, which are basically not sold to the public, but kept for invited guests of the casino. A friend of mine is also trying to finagle us a tour of the Mansion, which contains 29 exclusive villas that run over $10,000 per night.
We had our New Hire Orientation yesterday. Basically, they went over a lot of the same stuff they did last week. Once again, we are experts. The nice thing was that they had us do a scavenger hunt around the casino (I think they said it's 4 football fields long? huge.) which was cool. As prizes, they gave everybody 2 free tickets to Crazy Horse Paris, a topless/artistic show they have at MGM Grand. I knew I'd be getting free tickets to something, so I had planned to take either Aunt Bobbi or Aunt Cathy with me and just flip a coin or something. Luckily, at the end of the day, they also gave us two free tickets to KA, the Cirque du Soleil show we have at MGM. Now Aunt Bobbi and Aunt Cathy can both go---it will be interesting to see who chooses to go to the topless one. I also bought tickets the other night to go see Boston and Styx in June. They're celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Thomas and Mack Center at UNLV, so all the tickets were $25--I'm pumped.
Not much else to tell, at the moment. The weather has been beautiful. I've been taking the dog for walks a lot. Now every time I come home, he jumps all over me wanting to go outside. Yesterday, I refused to take him because I don't want him to think he can just get what he wants whenever he begs for it. We'll see how well that works. The dog has it pretty good, though.... the other day he got a nice portion of our New York Strip steak (I was hoping for a second serving, but what can you do....). Anyway, it's been fun playing with him. He's very loyal.
That's all, for now. Weekend is coming up... hopefully some good stuff will happen. A friend from Cornell will be in town, so I should get to go out a bit.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Welcome to my Blog
By popular demand, I have decided to create a blog to chronicle all my exciting experiences this summer. More specifically, my wonderful cousins out in Texas are curious to hear what life is like living with the relatives here in Las Vegas. Therefore, they have requested a blog, and I am more than happy to oblige.
So... where to begin? I arrived here last Sunday late at night from Florida. I had been down there for two days for a Bar Mitzvah, and I was very excited for my arrival here in Las Vegas. The flight came in right on time, and Aunt Miggie and Kenny came down to the airport to pick me up. Aunt Miggie was thankful that Kenny was with her, otherwise she would probably still be trying to find her way around the airport as we speak. Anyway, on the way home, Aunt Miggie blatantly ran a red light at a left turn arrow. We made a lot of fun of her for it, but she was thankful that no cops were around to witness the mistake.
Ironically, I also had occasion to have an incident occur regarding a left turn arrow. On my way home from my second day of work, I was leaving the hotel, making a left turn onto a major road. The light is short, so I pushed it a little bit to make it through. Fortunately, I made it past the light as it was still yellow. Unfortunately, the Metro police officer (on a motorcycle, nonetheless!) nearby disagreed with my assessment of the color of the light. He assigned me a ticket of $300 and yelled at me for not having a Nevada license while driving a Nevada vehicle. Hopefully, he won't show up at Justice court when I go next week.
Other than that, things are going very smoothly. I am enjoying living with the relatives, despite the fact that things tend to be a little louder here. These people eat dinner at home every night (crazy!), which I have been enjoying immensely. Uncle Joe and Aunt Miggie's dog, Scottie, adores me. I think Aunt Miggie is jealous about it, but she doesn't say anything. I have enjoyed spending time with all of them, though. We had a nice outing yesterday to a casino and to do some shopping. We went to one store, a Costco-like place, because Uncle Joe was out of beer. While we were waiting on line to check out, Aunt Miggie noticed that her orthopedic surgeon was on line just in front of us. He had a side of beef in his cart (New York Strip), a case of Perrier water, and some other high end BBQ items. He said he was preparing for Memorial Day, and asked if we were prepared as well. Aunt Miggie pointed out the three 30-packs of Budweiser in our cart and said that we were more than prepared.
No more stories, for now. Aunt Bobbi and Aunt Cathy are living together, so I'm sure something amusing will come of that in the very near future. Perhaps even at dinner tonight. See you later!
So... where to begin? I arrived here last Sunday late at night from Florida. I had been down there for two days for a Bar Mitzvah, and I was very excited for my arrival here in Las Vegas. The flight came in right on time, and Aunt Miggie and Kenny came down to the airport to pick me up. Aunt Miggie was thankful that Kenny was with her, otherwise she would probably still be trying to find her way around the airport as we speak. Anyway, on the way home, Aunt Miggie blatantly ran a red light at a left turn arrow. We made a lot of fun of her for it, but she was thankful that no cops were around to witness the mistake.
Ironically, I also had occasion to have an incident occur regarding a left turn arrow. On my way home from my second day of work, I was leaving the hotel, making a left turn onto a major road. The light is short, so I pushed it a little bit to make it through. Fortunately, I made it past the light as it was still yellow. Unfortunately, the Metro police officer (on a motorcycle, nonetheless!) nearby disagreed with my assessment of the color of the light. He assigned me a ticket of $300 and yelled at me for not having a Nevada license while driving a Nevada vehicle. Hopefully, he won't show up at Justice court when I go next week.
Other than that, things are going very smoothly. I am enjoying living with the relatives, despite the fact that things tend to be a little louder here. These people eat dinner at home every night (crazy!), which I have been enjoying immensely. Uncle Joe and Aunt Miggie's dog, Scottie, adores me. I think Aunt Miggie is jealous about it, but she doesn't say anything. I have enjoyed spending time with all of them, though. We had a nice outing yesterday to a casino and to do some shopping. We went to one store, a Costco-like place, because Uncle Joe was out of beer. While we were waiting on line to check out, Aunt Miggie noticed that her orthopedic surgeon was on line just in front of us. He had a side of beef in his cart (New York Strip), a case of Perrier water, and some other high end BBQ items. He said he was preparing for Memorial Day, and asked if we were prepared as well. Aunt Miggie pointed out the three 30-packs of Budweiser in our cart and said that we were more than prepared.
No more stories, for now. Aunt Bobbi and Aunt Cathy are living together, so I'm sure something amusing will come of that in the very near future. Perhaps even at dinner tonight. See you later!
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