Puerto Rico evacuees get hiring focus
More hiring in Orlando is being aimed at Puerto Rico evacuees, especially when a company is trying to hire hundreds of people fast.
Drive Shack, a golfing attraction with restaurant and meeting space, is seeking a variety of positions, mostly in the customerservice category. As thousands of Puerto Ricans come to Central Florida after Hurricane Maria, the company is appealing to those new residents while hiring 400 people.
Drive Shack is not the first organization in the area to appeal to Puerto Ricans who need jobs; Osceola County and the Central Florida Hotel & Lodging Association, among others, have appealed to that demographic when advertising job events.
Drive Shack has a series of job fairs lined up on most days in December, at Guidewell Innovation Center in Lake Nona, 6555 Sanger Road.
Positions at Drive Shack include golf-related jobs, such as drivers for the Ballzoni machine that picks up balls or golf “rangers” that enforce the attraction’s rules, and other positions such as kitchen supervisors and facility technicians.
Drive Shack, 7675 Lake Nona Blvd., plans a January opening for its 66,000-square-foot, threestory facility in Lake Nona.
People can obtain tickets for the job fairs on Drive Shack’s Facebook page, @DriveShackOrlando, under the events list. The job fairs start at 9 a.m., from Dec. 4 through Dec. 22, and Dec. 26 through Dec. 30.
It will be the first location for the New York City-based company, which also plans to build in Raleigh, N.C.; Richmond, Va.; West Palm Beach and Phoenix.
Coincidentally, Drive Shack will also be the second major golf attraction opening in Orlando recently, after Topgolf in the International Drive tourism area. Topgolf had a job fair in August as it hired 500 for its facility.
The facility, which cost at least $20 million to build, has 90 golf bays on three stories, with a pro shop and bar.
Here’s some of the duties listed in the Ballzoni driver job description, just in case you were wondering:
■ Drive the ball picker around the outfield to retrieve golf balls that are hit into the outfield.
■ Manage the golf balls for cleaning and distribution to the dispensers in each of the hitting bays.
■ Maintain cleanliness of ball picker and report any problems with the vehicle.
■ Have a positive attitude and interact (wave) with guests.
Siemens lawsuit
A former employee of Siemens in Orlando has dropped a lawsuit where she accused the company of failing to take action about her repeated complaints that an exboyfriend stalked and threatened her at work.
The suit was dropped via a stipulation that said all parties
would pay their own court costs. If there was a settlement, the court record doesn’t reflect one.
The suit was filed by HR employee Lauren Hargraves, about alleged harassment by her former coworker at the company, Bradley Anderson. Anderson was not named in the lawsuit, as he had left Siemens.
The company fought the lawsuit in court, denying the claims and also alleging that Hargraves didn’t use all of the appropriate company process to complain.
Attorneys disciplined
Two Orlando attorneys have lost their licenses in the latest round of discipline given out by the Florida Supreme Court, in unrelated cases: Michael Kevin Rathel and Victor Felix Rodriguez.
Rathel was disbarred Nov. 1. He was found in contempt for failing to comply with the terms of previous suspensions in 2017, and failing to notify his clients that he was suspended.
Victor Felix Rodriguez, formerly of Benenati Law Firm, agreed to have his license revoked Oct. 26. According to court records and a news release from the Florida Bar, Felix Rodriguez altered checks that were paid to his firm in several cases, and then spent that money.