Thursday, April 4, 2013

The story of how Alida and her car came to live with us

Once upon a time there was a cute girl named Alida. She met my son while they were both attending CWU. When he came to Utah after finishing college she came too. Now this was a very bold move for both of them, neither of them had jobs or had lived here before. Alida had a semester of school to finish which she did and then did an internship for Kim to make up one more credit class and then she too was done with college. They both have degrees!

 Now this cute girl who came to live with us wanted a job. She applied for a job at Delta Airlines. She was going home to WA for her birthday and had a job interview the same day she flew out. She is so wonderful that they called her the next day in WA and offered her the job and she had to fly back that weekend, way before she had planned so she could start training.

Starting work at Delta was very exciting for this girl named Alida but she knew it would be a lot of training and passing tests. It is a very rigorous training program and the tests must be passed at 80% or better.
 5 weeks of training in a classroom setting and then more training on the job.

 Alida came to us without a car. She was going to fly to WA a week after she started the job and get her car and drive it here. Then her wonderful dad offered just to ship her car to her. 
 What a great plan.
 It was actually cheaper to ship the car to our door than to fly to WA get the car and drive it here
 But, what would she do for the first week without transportation?
 She quietly studied bus schedules and  Trax schedules to figure out what time she would have to leave to make it to work on the first day and never a complaint crossed her lips!
 The weekend before she was to start I quietly said to Kim, "We can't let her spend that much time commuting plus the time she has to put in training. What can we do?" We decided to rent a car for her.
This is her on her first day of work.  Note out the back window it is still so very dark outside.

I bought her a lunch bag, a travel mug plus not pictured a soup container and a salad container for her lunches.  She was so grateful. 
As this story continues, we find Alida driving in her WA car to work and loving it. She loves having her own familiar car and it has get up and go, something the rental car did not.
She is surprised by how fast the commuters drive here and she is getting to know her fellow new hires at work. They are getting to know each other and then she does something that I admire. She arranges a carpool with some other people who are getting on the freeway before her in Provo and Orem. Now she meets them at a Park and Ride in American Fork. As a side note......the first time she drives to the Park and Ride in American Fork she can't see where to enter it and so she called my Logan who tells her exactly how to get in there. 
Now she only drives once a week and is saving so much on gas plus they can use the carpool lane.
Coming up on April 12, Alida will graduate from the training class and move into the next phase of training which is at the ticket counter and she will have her shift be from 3:30 to 12:00. She is very grateful to have the carpool settled as driving home at midnight worried her.
 Pretty soon she will be using her flying perks more and more but so far she has flown to WA for the weekend to surprise her sister for her birthday and she surprised her mom too.
 (Her dad was in on it, she needed a ride from the airport!)
The story ends with a happy ever after. Alida is a hard worker with great customer service skills. She makes her lunch the night before, sets everything out and gets up and out early. 
 She can't be late during this time of training not even one time or she will be let go. 
 Talk about pressure.
 She has passed every test with flying colors and only has one more to take.