Getting a Job as a Foreigner

My wife took this one of my on a sunny day in front of my new work place – Egon Byporten.

After waiting eight months before getting the visa, I was more than eager to start working.  I thought finding a job as a server in Oslo would be a snap of my fingers.  I have over three years of serving experience in California and the city presents several American style restaurants that almost exclusively hire english speakers.  I thought TGI Fridays would be the most perfect fit for me because of how they proudly flaunt their American style, but after 3 weeks I heard nothing back from all 4 of them.  I began to get a little discouraged when the Hard Rock Cafe emailed me back with a regretful “unable to pursue employment possibilities at this time” email.  The discouragement only set in further as nearly all other restaurants were adamant that they only hired employees of Scandinavian tongue.  But like everything else in life, when your original plans don’t work out, you begin to go down roads that weren’t an option before.

I was down in the heart of the city doing something other than job hunting when I saw an “Egon” restaurant, just like one I was rejected by the day before, but bigger.  I just had an impulse – something that often gets me into very unique situations – to go in a ask to speak to a manager.  But the impulse was “I wonder how this will go if I try to speak Norwegian?”  Ten minutes later I had a job as a server at the largest grossing restaurant in all of Scandinavia.  

I talked to the right person at the right time in the right language.  I remember saying “Jeg heter Matthew.  Jeg er 23 år gammel og kommer fra America.  Jeg søker på jobb som servitør.”   Basically, my name, age, where I was from and that I was looking for a serving job.  

The guy cut me off and asked in English “how long have you been here?”

“Eight months.” I said slightly insecurely.  Knowing that my Norwegian was probably the sound of chewing stones.

“...and you speak THAT much Norwegian?”  he exclaimed with a surprised tone in his voice.  “Let me get the boss who hires people?”

And I thank God that my manager Ali was working that day.  He instantly liked me, nearly loved me.  We clicked with our customer service personalities.  And even though I could only understand about half of what he was saying, he went on and on about how he thought I had the ‘key to Egon’ with my smile and excitement towards people.  

My job isn’t so much of a waiter job that I am used to.  The very popular Norwegian Egon restaurant has a unique ‘all order at the bar’ concept.  That changes the game for the waiter a lot.  I feel like I am more of a busboy, rather than a waiter sometimes.  My job is to maintain order in my section at all times.  That means clearing and cleaning all dirty tables, chairs, floors, asking guests how the food is and if there is anything I can get them and fixing anything else that can go wrong.  

It is harder work than I am used to in the restaurant business due to the 9 hour shifts and much much busier location.  I also don’t make nearly as many tips like I was used to in California, but I still appreciate the job so much.  For my level of Norwegian speaking, it was a perfect start.  I am forced to speak to customers in Norwegian, but not so much to the point of overloading.  If I had to take full orders from them like I did in California, but in Norwegian, it just wouldn’t work, at least not with my level of speaking when I started two and a half months ago.  I get to control how much I want to speak Norwegian by going around and choosing which tables I want to talk to and which questions I want to ask (even though I am supposed to as every table how they are doing and how the it tastes). 

Just after 3 weeks of working, my Norwegian grew so much.  It is still growing too.  I can have a conversation now...as long as the person speaks slightly slower than usual conversation speed.  But even so, there are still so many words and ways of saying things that I don’t know yet that I am constantly asking people to repeat themselves.  My newest task with the language is pronunciation.  I am starting to listen intently to how and where to put the pressure and stress in each word.  It doesn’t sound like much, but I think it’s a very important element between sounding like an absolute foreigner or a person perceived to have a brain – which is a goal that I WILL conquer one day.

On that culturally out-of-key foreigner note, I’m definitely not the only black sheep working at the restaurant.  I’m the only American, we have many people from Central Europe and many many people from Nextdoor Sweden.  In fact, sometimes I feel that I’m working in Sweden rather than Norway.  A little background info is that because Norway is so rich from oil and has such a good economy, it’s very popular for young swedish people to move here and make twice as much as they are used to.  The result – probably 75% of my coworkers are Swedish.  Now I am learning a few Swedish words here and there, but in the beginning, not knowing who was Swedish and who was Norwegian and definitely not hearing the difference between the two when they spoke, made for a bit of a comical memory for me.  The first few days when the Swedish words hit my ears it was like they just bounced off without any recognition at all.  I began to get frustrated and discouraged thinking that my Norwegian must be better than this.   It’s relieving to know now that apparently even Norwegians have a bit of a hard time understanding them sometimes.

So that’s it for now.  I know this was a long wait for a blog, but the 12 hours a week of Norwegian course, about 40 hours a week of Egon and 168 hours a week of husbandry has kept my fingers away from the keyboard.  (btw I didn’t know ‘husbandry’ was a word until my computer didn’t spell check it)

Here is what the restaurant looks like from the outside.  It is located right in the heart of the downtown city.  It is the first thing you see when you arrive from the airport train – which is why we get so much business.