Back in training college – End of probation

Hello again!

As every company, Emirates also has probation period, which is 6 months long – 2 months of training and the rest 4 months is flying. We all had to complete a so called portfolio which had different tasks to do. First of all, we had to collect feedback from our cabin supervisors and also from our other colleagues. Sometimes it was not easy, as not everyone likes writing these king of stuff for others. I even had a cabin supervisor who’s reaction was the following: “fuck”.
Seriously, this is what he said when I asked him to complete the form for me. It was not even a short light, he would have had plenty of time to do it for me.  He told me he would do it another time for me but I had never asked him again. Even when I had a question (about anything) I asked the other economy crew. Once he even asked me “are you shy to ask?”. Obviously I was not shy and I said no. End of the story. In my imagination I said: “No I am not shy, but I prefer asking questions from those who don’t mind helping me”. Never mind.

Despite of the feedback and tasks, we had to do many self reflections, webinars and workshops. Lots of things to do and honestly no one really liked it. I still wanted to do a very good portfolio, I ordered travelling related stickers from e-bay and I even bought a printer for myself. The service assessment is 2 days plus one more day duty free training. The fourth day of this whole story is the graduation itself. The pick up was 6:30 am every morning, so the timing really took me back to the good old days. On the first day I met all the people with the same DOJ (date of joining) who are living in my building, it was good to see them after a while. To be honest I am not in touch with them since we’d finished the training, they have their own friends, I have mines. However sometimes I feel a little bit sorry about these non existing friendships, because they all are still meeting each others and I don’t know why they couldn’t make place for me. Whatever, as I said I have my own friends and even a boyfriend, so I am not lonely here :).

My batch during lunch break

The beginning of this 4 days was a bit tough. Me and my 3 other batch mates didn’t have a group, nor a schedule, they simply didn’t put us into any classes. It was a bit funny, I don’t know how was it possible to forget about people. The first session had already started when they scheduled me to a group, where I had no batch mates at all. At least there were some people from my service training batch, so it was not bad at all. At the beginning we had to present our “personal story”which should be a special customer related story happened to us on board. Since my first month of flying, it was pretty obvious for me which one I am gonna use in my portfolio; I even mentioned in my previous post, that I had a very good experience on the flight from Sydney to Bangkok in February.  Me and my friend Toni made the flight unforgettable for 3 young people; we treated them with drinks, chocolate, gifts, they had the chance to get photo posing in the cabin crew hat and also in the captain’s hat. We even exchanged our Facebook details. My story doesn’t end here, one of them traveled all way to London and I managed to find out the exact date and the flight number, so I wrote to the purser who was going to operate that particular flight. I asked him to look after my new friend and to make his flight as memorable as the Bangkok one was. The purser answered me that they would do whatever they can. My friend wrote me after his flight that it was a very great one, he got lots of drinks and he figured out that an e-mail was sent :).  Anyway, this story is a very special one for me, a very good memory and to be honest it was one the best one among the other stories which was presented. The others didn’t have many interesting stories; they managed to get new Skyward members, they hold a baby for 2 minutes for a mother, etc.

We met our cool and missed SEP trainers (my jacket is huge!)

We had different sessions, and to be honest I don’t even remember them. At the end of the day we had to talk with one of the trainers about our portfolio. I got many questions but all went great. We had the computer based assessment on the next day and a horrible thing happened to me. I woke up for my cell phone ringing and I already knew something was wrong; it was already light outside! I quickly picked up my phone and it was my trainer asking if I was going to the college or not. Guess what, I overslept! I started panicking, I almost burst into tears while I was talking to my trainer, but she was super cool. She told me to calm down, don’t worry, I can repeat the exam at the afternoon. I have never got ready within such a short time. I quickly got out of bed, put on my uniform, made a bun and applied some make up. I didn’t eat breakfast, didn’t even brush my teeth. I jumped into a taxi in front of my building and we were in the college only in 10 minutes. When I went to the computer zone, the exam wasn’t finished yet, so I sat down and completed it in 20 minutes. It was pretty hard, with many tricky questions, I was worried I wouldn’t make it, but I got 85% eventually. I asked my trainer what consequences I had to expect due to my oversleeping and she said she had to inform my manager. After two weeks of this whole thing I got a letter from the manager, saying don’t call sick, be ready for all the duties etc. The funny thing is that it was not even from my manager. In my service assessment group I was the only one who had another probation manager, all the others had the same one. I even clarified with my trainers more than once, but they still informed the wrong manager.

The third day was about how to sell duty free products on board. To be honest, this is something I really don’t wanna do. I’ve already forgot everything, how to use the machine and so on. I am afraid to handle money on board, specially if it is about big amounts. If you loose it or if someone steals it, you are the one who has to pay back the money. Too much responsibility, I really hope I never have to do it, or at least later.

That’s all for now, I am gonna write about the graduation in my next post :). Have a good day everyone!

IMPORTANT NOTE: MY POSTS ARE MY PERSONAL VIEWS. THEY DO NOT REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF MY COMPANY.

Dorottya