Five Hours of Training and You're a Chauffeur

Day 1 as a chauffeur is all about training. Would you believe there are over a hundred Power Point cells for training. Thank goodness the real estate exam was easier. (Just kidding)

Some rules are obvious, such as, no smoking in the car. Now I have never smoked so that is no big deal. But, would you believe we are not to offer our hand for hand shake to greet our client? The reasoning: There is an increasing concern about the spreading of germs and we are to never put our clients in an embarrassing position of refusing or not wanting to shake our hand.

Dress attire. Now that was an interesting exercise we went through. Our email and phone communications made a big deal of bringing our black suit and white shirt (they provide the tie as part of the standard uniform.) Many of the people got the message to wear their suit. I couldn't believe how many different suits there could be that are black. The inspection consisted of making sure the suit was solid black. No pin stripes or patterns of any type were permitted. But that was it. I'm looking around the room and some of these suits look like they have been slept in for days. Maybe they're the professional chauffeurs. White is not always white either. There is gray white as in worn out. But, those were the exception for sure. There were hundreds of drivers and I would say 95% or more looked great.

There was one major snafu for the day. There were four sperate training classes for the day and I was in session 3. After an afternoon of training, they discover, suddenly , that there are not enough cars to assign to every driver. On the surface that would seem solvable and it is. But not until the next day. Well, they instructed us to be dropped off because there was not enough parking for our personal cars and we would be getting a car anyway. So now there are probably 50 people without transportation home and the day is over. I got a car! As I was leaving, quickly I might add, staff was on the phone making shuttle arrangements for the shorted drivers.

Day 2, today as I write this, is a little confusing. We are supposed to be ready for airport shuttle runs, but there was conflicting information as to whether we will actually be dispatched today. So, I will let you know. Remember, you can follow me on Twitter @RickFrissell