Buenos Aires, Argentina—Argentina’s tourism industry is booming, but the country’s tour operators have a new challenge: They have to train for the job.
The job is tough, grueling, and requires specialized skills.
The country’s top tour operators will teach you how to manage crowds and the logistics of a large international tour.
They will also tell you how you can get paid for the work you do.
If you’re a business owner, you might even get a chance to join the ranks of the elite.
But that is a far cry from the day I first met them.
I had just left a prestigious New York City restaurant and was getting ready for my flight back to Argentina, when I noticed an unusual visitor, an elderly man in his 70s who had come to the restaurant to celebrate his birthday.
He looked tired, but was smiling.
He was wearing a blue shirt and a green hat, his hair was messy, and his face was grim.
I introduced myself to the man.
“I’m a tour operator,” he said.
“And I want to say thanks to you.”
The tour operator had been traveling to Argentina for the last three months and had taken the job because he was tired of waiting in line for hours to buy a table at a restaurant that was closed.
The problem with restaurants, the tour operator explained, was that you can only eat for 30 minutes and then the food gets cold.
And that is how most tourists ended up spending their money.
The restaurant, which was closed, was one of the many tourist hotspots around Buenos Aires.
The man had asked the tour operators if they could train him to help him open the restaurant, but they said no.
I asked if the owner was willing to train me to become an operator.
He said, “Yes, of course.”
We drove to the village of Pico de las Casas, a couple of hours away from Buenos Aires airport.
There were only two other people there.
We asked if they had trained the tour group for the restaurant.
No one had.
There was no sign of any training in the village.
So, we walked into the kitchen and sat down.
There were no instructions.
We were in a classroom.
The only instructions were for the group to sit around the table, take notes, and report back in 30 minutes.
But that was all.
The group sat around the kitchen table for an hour and a half, eating their meals, and then left.
The man who had asked to train the group had no idea where the rest of the group was going, so he didn’t even know what the rest was about.
We walked back to the hotel and met the tour company.
They told us that it was a mistake to train them, that they were too busy trying to do their jobs, and that they didn’t want to be involved.
I explained to them that I had a different idea.
I wanted to take the job, and they wanted to train people for it.
The day of the training was sunny and warm, and we left the restaurant and drove to a hotel that had a parking lot with a big parking lot for cars and buses.
It was raining, so the hotel was filled with people.
It took us three hours to drive from the hotel to the bus stop.
I asked the hotel’s receptionist what we were supposed to do.
“We have to call the driver,” she said.
We sat in the bus for an entire hour.
Then we drove back to our hotel and returned to the kitchen to make our pitch.
“This is a big job,” I said.
The receptionist smiled, nodded, and said, ‘No, we don’t want you.’
But I kept saying, “No, no, no.
We have to make you happy.”
The hotel manager, who had been waiting outside the hotel, told me to call back in 10 minutes.
We waited another 15 minutes and a receptionist called me back.
I got on the phone and talked to the driver, who said, no problem.
We talked for another 10 minutes and the driver called back.
“No problem, I’m waiting,” he told me.
I hung up.
After I finished calling back, the driver came outside and told me that he was not going to drive us any more.
He told me, “You know, I didn’t know that you were an operator.”
I told him, “I never was an operator, but you were.”
He didn’t understand.
He took my bag, put it on the dashboard of the car, and went to his hotel room.
I went to the reception desk and called the hotel manager.
I said, I don’t know how this is going to go.
I told her, “If we’re going to be a tourist, we need to be able to do something.”
I asked her to tell the hotel management that I was calling back and she said, Oh, I guess so. She gave
