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Writer's pictureJessie Carl

Peanut Prep!

Updated: Jul 3

Shello everyone! Today marks 1 whole week since I started training, or "Peanut Prep" as they call it here at Hormel! Bear with me as I try to recount the nuttiness that went down. I decided to break up the week into 2 posts because SO MUCH has happened and I ended up writing for over 2 hours. This post will cover everything from Sunday, June 2 to Wednesday, June 12th.


Meeting Ryan

Imagine you are about to spend a year working with someone who you have never met in person. Essentially, this process is kind of like "Married at First Sight". We didn't know each other at all and suddenly every day, meal, working, and sometimes non-working hour is spent together. We stay in the same hotels every night, ride every single mile together, AND WE START AS PERFECT STRANGERS. So, you can imagine how nerve-wracking it was for me to be sitting in the Minneapolis airport waiting to meet my first partner - who we now affectionately call Honey Roasted Ryan.

Luckily for the both of us, we started to get along right away - and safely made it to Rochester, MN where we would meet our manager and Class 9 Penutter, Teagan, and the Class 10 Peanutters - Tree Nut Tania, Macadamia Mulrooney, and Cashew Katie. We had a super great night hanging out, playing spoons, and cuddling with Teagan's dog, Blue.

You can check out the post they made about it here.




Meeting Katie

Katie's flight was supposed to arrive the night before, but she experienced so many delays that we didn't get to meet her until the next morning.

Katie and I had facetimed for hours before this though, so seeing her in person felt completely natural! This was our first time all being together in person - Maca-Katie-a, Honey Roasted Ryan, and Peanut Butter & Jessie. Then we headed off to Hormel Foods' corporate office, and Peanut Prep began.



Monday - Training Day 1

When we got in, we were greeted by a bunch of staff. We got our coporate cards, computers, and ALL THE PEANUT CLOTHES! We have to wear Planter's branded shirts when we are driving, working events, doing content, and speaking with media outlets, so they decked us out with tshirts, polos, Carhartt sweatshirts, fanny-packs, baseball caps, bucket hats, even peanut hair clips.


We then went out to dinner with Class Ten and got to know each other better - and of course picked their brains for advice.


Tuesday - "Hazing" from Class 10

Tuesday was the day of meetings. Not much to report - just tons of watching a presentation screen! We learned a lot though - all important stuff to help us on our journey. Like this: Mr. Peanuts full name is Bartholomew Richard Fitzgerald-Smythe.

Once our work day was over, Class 10 "kidnapped us" (ie: made us close our eyes while they drove us) and took us to the SPAM Museum (also owned by Hormel).

IT'S HUGE!

Just kidding. It's only 1 story with 5 rooms but it is packed with SPAM fun facts, history, memoribilia, and of course a SPAM factory game (which I absolutely lost). As a vegetarian, I did not try the Spamples, but if you eat meat they do pass them out for anyone!

Part 2 of our "hazing" included a trip to Tania's hotel room where they showed us pictures of from thier year and we had to guess the scenario they were in. And finally, we were "forced" to get tattoos to prove our dedication to Hormel.

(Which Ryan HATED due to his irrational fear of the feeling of stickers.)








Wednesday - Meetings and Gambling

More meetings, more Peanut wisdom to be imparted. Since we travel 7 days a week and stay in a hotel every single night, we are an expense reporting nightmare. You can only imagine how the financial team feels about us. So we got to learn about the wonders of Interplx! However, most of us were just thinking about how we still hadn't seen the NUTmobile in person and we were starting to get ansty.

Mason also introduced us to the wonders of 0.5 photography and this one was my favorite from Wednesday.

That night, Class 10 Katie's parents came into town and we played pool and pull-tabs at Torge's (the bar inside our hotel in Austin). I'm terrible at pool but Ryan was encouraging enough lol. And, after what must have been 400 pull tabs, Katie's mom DID win.



Next post will be all about the second half of our week! If you want to get email notifications when my blogs go out, you can sign up to be a member here. (This also allows you to comment on my posts!)


Cashew Later!


-PB&Jessie





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