There are server trainers and bartender trainers and host trainers and trainers for what Chili's calls the "Heart of the House" (a.k.a. the kitchen). But really, each of these super-trainers can train pretty much anyone in every aspect of Chili's’ culture and practice. For fifteen-ish new restaurant openings a year, they (a version of this particular group) assemble for two weeks at a time to prep new staff for action. They are talented and knowledgeable when it comes to the work, and they are skilled teachers as well. But more than anything, they are simply the most passionate, the peerlessly faithful. Though this particular group has been plucked from a dozen different restaurants, they are of the same cloth, high attendants to a shared orthodoxy. In this regard, they are like soldiers or missionaries. They are the true believers. Their church, in this case, just happens to be a restaurant chain that accessorizes generously with oversize plastic peppers.

"What is the only dumb question?!" a super-trainer shouts.

"A question not asked!"

"What's number one??" another volleys.

"Have fun!"

"WHAT'S NUMBER ONE??!!"

"HAVE FUN!!"

The trainees split into two groups: Molten and Cheesecake. Cheesecakes head to the "Meet, Greet, and Seat" session at the host stand. Sara, a 28-year-old super-trainer from the Chili's in Morgantown, West Virginia, starts role-playing as a consummate Chili's host. "How are y'all doin?!" she says in the sort of drawl that comes with hair big from heating tools. She drops out of character immediately: "Is that a thing here? I was doing a thing—but do they say that here?"

This seminar, like the others, assembles for the new team members a quiver of easily received arrows of advice. Like: "Don't make a nickname up for their child." And: "Never say, 'Just one?' " And: "Hit them with a line on the way out the door: 'What was so good that you had to take it home?' " Sara says, sounding like Joan from Mad Men. She teaches them to always point with their open palms, never their fingers. She encourages them to let guests sit in closed zones if they, for example, want to be near the window to watch their motorcycles during Bike Week. It is important to think like an individual, to be creative, while still endeavoring for the team. "Chili's will let you be yourself," she says, "while still under this beautiful blanket."

Sara is a magnet for new team members. She is highly personable and veteranly knowledgeable. It is clear that her heart is closer to the Grinch's at the end of the book than at the beginning. With the friends she's made here (look around!) and the opportunities for new and amazing experiences (not everyone gets to be a super-trainer), there is a lot to make a person feel good about her work. Even with the food, there's just this pink innocence and ecstasy Sara expresses sometimes—as she does during the seminar "Mommy, Where Do Baby Backs Come From?": "There's a lot of stuff you may have eaten somewhere else, but because it's coming from here, it's going to taste a little bit different, that much better," she says. "Pretty much anywhere I go, I eat Chili's. When I travel, no matter where I am, I still eat Chili's. There are other options out there, but it's home, and I know the food is gonna be good."

Another person in the seminar puts a finer point on it: "I don't like seafood and I don't eat fish, but I love Chili's salmon."

Sara is widely representative of the sort of person who winds up a super-trainer, dogmatic and contagious in faith. She is also an outlier in her own right: Her trajectory is pitched a little steeper. This is not her first stop at Chili's and it won't be, if things go as she hopes, the end either. She found Chili's exactly when, she realizes in retrospect, she needed it most. After graduating from high school, she wanted to save up for college, but was petrified to work in the food industry. "People at trainer orientations don't believe me, but I was actually a very shy person," she says. A Chili's had just opened in her hometown, north of Baltimore, and though she applied to be a host they hired her as a server. Shy Sara was beside herself—she didn't think she could handle the extroversion required. But after a month-and-a-half, she'd bought into the program wholesale.