Pamela Nolan is on her way to being at the helm of a catering establishment. Her eyes are bright, her manner suggests energetic efficiency - and she's on her way. This woman is focused on what she wants.
In the meantime, she's learning all she can. And she has a long-term goal.
"I want Mr MacCann's job," she says, laughing at the audacity of a waitress in the Merrion Hotel aiming for the top job of general manager. She's just finished her shift, serving in one of the hotel's dining areas, called Morningtons Brasserie. She's still wearing her long white apron over a wine shirt and black pants. She's bright-eyed and bubbly. "I want to own something or manage something like this."
At school she was advised not to train to work in the kitchen. "Because I'd drive all the chefs mad - they work in silence," she says, laughing. She decided to focus on the other aspects of life in the hotel and catering industry. She's loving every minute of it. The early mornings, the pressure, the hours on her feet. "No, I'm not tired," she says, beaming with energy and vitality.
While she was still at school, Nolan started working during the holidays in a little guesthouse in Co Wicklow, which was near her home-town of Baltinglass. She started out as a pot-washer and began to love the job, working her way up to waiting and bar-work. "I just love meeting people. I'm chatty. I enjoyed meeting the people." What she loves most of all is "when it's really busy and getting it done and getting it right. All along I just loved it because the adrenalin is going."
She studied subjects including home economics, biology, maths, accounting and business organisation, which are all particularly helpful for a career in catering and business, she says. After her Leaving Cert in Scoil Chonglais in 1998, she left to study hospitality skills at Waterford Institute of Technology. Here she started off on the basics, learning how to stack the caddies that are used for restocking the bedrooms properly, while in the restaurant they were taught about clearing tables.
"You have to want to do this," she says. "It's a tough course but it's really good." The 30 students on the course were taught the correct way to operate the systems used in a restaurant, hotel or guesthouse - from making beds to working in a kitchen.
"We cover everything. In first year we cover the basics. We start off with systems - the way service runs, how you set up your restaurant or your bar, then accommodation service - stripping, cleaning and then putting the clean stuff back.
"I've learned my basic food service. I've learned on the service side which I felt I needed before I started on the management side." As well as working in the Merrion Hotel, she's currently studying for a diploma in management at DIT Cathal Brugha. She expects to graduate in June 2003.
"I'm glad that I did the hospitality skills course. It's given me a great understanding of how all the different services and operations run. It helped me to understand it at that level before we even began to think about doing it at a supervisory or management level."
In Waterford, they learned how to do the work "efficiently and do the job properly". As part of the course, she worked in a number of hotels to gain experience. She worked in Rathsallagh House in Co Wicklow, the Brandon Hotel in Tralee for two months and Dromoland Castle in Co Clare. She also worked in Dooley's Hotel on the Quay in Waterford city. Last year she won the CERT Dine and Wine 2000 award with fellow student Nicola Curran. They spent two weeks working in the Orrery in London, a Michelin two-star restaurant, as part of their prize. "I was so nervous before I did that competition. I was so much more confident after it. What just blew me away was that they wanted us to stay on."
She's learned "from scratch how to clean your table properly, how to clean the plate properly and how to stack it properly and how to walk your way around the table without intruding on the guests." She is now a management trainee in the Merrion Hotel.
"I don't feel I'm going to be over-trained," she counters. "I'm only 20 years old and I've achieved a lot for my age but there are a lot of areas that I need to learn. It's all hands-on. That's the best way to learn. You learn from your mistakes."
