Chapter 13
The Butlers
One thing that set our resort apart from other brands is that we have butlers. Really, really, for real, butlers. Most people who were first time visitors weren't sure how to use their butler and people who had used them at other locations were super critical of their service.
Nigel was originally from Great Britain and served in HRM army to some capacity. He also had met the Queen on several occasions (usually when they handed out their Christmas gifts) and really fit the "butler" stereotype. Plus it was fun to hear his accent. Nigel, however, was quite the scoundrel around most of the employees. We knew he was married, with kids, yet he flirted relentlessly with pretty much any female employee that he encountered. He was nice though and we had some lovely conversations about good ol' England. I think that because I've never been there and since we don't have royalty it fascinates me to know end to talk about things that probably seem so ordinary to him. Moving on. A group of ladies came for a girl's weekend and stayed in a suite, which meant they were entitled to the butler service. Normally this meant that their butler would bring them coffee/tea in the morning, assist in unpacking and organizing their suitcases, and various small tasks. While there the lady who was hosting the weekend asked if he would come and read them a bedtime story. Sure enough, he went into their room and read them all a chapter of Harry Potter. He also had been requested (by a different lady on a different occasion) to fluff her pillows. You never say "no" at The Resort, so he had to go fluff her pillows before she could go to bed.
There were two other butlers, Ernest who I have discussed before (remember Mr. French?), and Mike. Mike was super cool but you could tell he didn't love being a butler. He used to help out in banquets if they were slow in the butler department. Most guests (and most employees) didn't really understand what a butler did. You could tell it annoyed Mike since he got called to do things that were not his job, at all. Once there was a business group staying at the hotel and in between meetings, several days in a row, Mike got called up to go change the sheets of a male guest who had been "entertaining" one of his co-workers on their breaks. He had to speak with Housekeeping on the protocol of handling these particular sheets because it was her time of the month. Disgusting, I know. And not his job. Eventually Mike left and I can't blame him!
We'll look back and laugh at ourselves
Showing posts with label Back of the House. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Back of the House. Show all posts
Friday, August 23, 2013
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
BotH: Chapter 12
Chapter 12
The Chefs
The chefs at The Resort were simultaneously the best and worst people to work with. On the one hand they were friendly to me since I wasn't their subordinate and I was nice to them, but on the other hand most of them had huge egos and thought they were always right, even when they weren't. The Resort had a weird hierarchy for the chefs, so it seemed like there were always power struggles amongst them. At the top was the Food and Beverage Manager (not a chef...at all) and he was over things like food cost, events, supply chain...the boring stuff. Next was the Executive Chef, Phil, who was technically in charge of all of the other chefs. Then there was the head restaurant chef (side note: the restaurant was not technically run by The Resort, it was run by the brand of restaurant that it was-- like how the food court is in the mall but each restaurant is run by itself, not the mall as a whole but the mall still has some say in what happens...it was confusing), the sous chef, the head banquet chef and his assistant, the head pastry chef and his assistant, then there were all levels of chefs in the restaurant. They all had numbers (like chef I or II) based on seniority/experience so it was also confusing to know who to talk to about what.
In the first couple of months I mostly worked around Tony the head banquet chef and Phil the executive chef. Phil was full of all kinds of random information that he felt the need to always divulge. Sometimes it was interesting, like how the pigs in Italy are fed certain foods (like wine and nuts) before they're made into prosciutto/pancetta, and sometimes it was not, like how he showed his sons his scars from his vasectomy. For real he told me all about that in addition to how his wife cheated on him but they decided to stay together for the kids and how she pretty much sounded like she was in the marriage for the money. One time I saw him go ape crazy on a mouse in the kitchen--obviously necessary, but instead of disposing of it himself he left it there and called stewarding to come clean it up. I don't think I mentioned stewarding before, they were at the beck and call of the chefs, managers, and servers to do things like dishes, polishing large silver pieces, moving flatware and silverware, cleaning up broken glass, transporting trays of glasses from point A to B...lots of hard labor, basically. Anyway, back to Phil. I liked him and didn't have any beef with him, but apparently he threw a lot of people under the bus to save his own butt. And one last thing about him, his favorite thing to eat was ramen and beer...I guess you just never know sometimes.
Tony was from New York (I mentioned him in the royal wedding) and so most people were afraid of him because they thought he was "mean." Don't get me wrong, I saw him get into a lot of arguments with my manager (she was also from New York) but he never was mean to me. He thought I was joking when I told him that I worked with my mom...most people didn't believe me actually. He also teased (but not in a mean way) that I was Mormon. It's funny how people who know something generic about you tend to bring up all they know on the subject, which ends up being a whole lot of nothing. Like if I had ten husbands...silly stuff like that. Anyway, we got along really well and he would teach me how to make things when they were slow. I did an amazing hollandaise sauce for a holiday brunch (on my first try, if I might add) that he taught me to make. He also helped me plan my birthday dinner that another chef was catering for me. Him and his assistant, who were friends, were always bickering with each other and I remember him (the assistant) saying that he was sure that Tony was wrong so he was going to make it his way and not listen to him. He got sick of being over worked so he left a few months before me and went to go work at The Montage and he is managing his own restaurant over there now.
Orin is my favorite. We're still friends and he owns an amazing pastry shop in Draper. He originally came in as a pastry chef, and after our head pastry chef/chocolatier left becasue she thought everyone in charge was idiots (too true) he became in charge. The annoying thing is that they wouldn't give him the title of "head" pastry chef. Him and Phil didn't get along very well. Anyway, whenever we were slow or had time in between events I would go hang out with Orin. He had pastries that he would share with me, or let me try out new things that he was making. He also gave me TONS of baking advice and shared a lot of fun stories with me about his pastry upbringing and his family growing up in...Norway (?). It annoyed him to no end that instead of allowing him to make things from scratch, Phil ordered premade croissants, muffins, and bagels which contributed to the huge "food cost" debate that seemed never ending. I got to the point where when I was pregnant I did not want to work up in Private Dining anymore and Orin wanted me to come work with him but Phil said no. Then I went on maternity leave. Then I quit...but I digress. We actually both quit at almost the same time. Orin had to drive over the mountain from South Salt Lake and during the snow season you never knew how long it could take. He got stuck in an accident that shutdown the freeway so he was a sitting duck for two hours on his way to Park City. He called to let Phil know about the accident and Phil told him to not even bother coming in. That was the end. Orin is such a nice guy and he owns his own pastry shop now, but he was the scape goat up there and it was ridiculous.
The Chefs
The chefs at The Resort were simultaneously the best and worst people to work with. On the one hand they were friendly to me since I wasn't their subordinate and I was nice to them, but on the other hand most of them had huge egos and thought they were always right, even when they weren't. The Resort had a weird hierarchy for the chefs, so it seemed like there were always power struggles amongst them. At the top was the Food and Beverage Manager (not a chef...at all) and he was over things like food cost, events, supply chain...the boring stuff. Next was the Executive Chef, Phil, who was technically in charge of all of the other chefs. Then there was the head restaurant chef (side note: the restaurant was not technically run by The Resort, it was run by the brand of restaurant that it was-- like how the food court is in the mall but each restaurant is run by itself, not the mall as a whole but the mall still has some say in what happens...it was confusing), the sous chef, the head banquet chef and his assistant, the head pastry chef and his assistant, then there were all levels of chefs in the restaurant. They all had numbers (like chef I or II) based on seniority/experience so it was also confusing to know who to talk to about what.
In the first couple of months I mostly worked around Tony the head banquet chef and Phil the executive chef. Phil was full of all kinds of random information that he felt the need to always divulge. Sometimes it was interesting, like how the pigs in Italy are fed certain foods (like wine and nuts) before they're made into prosciutto/pancetta, and sometimes it was not, like how he showed his sons his scars from his vasectomy. For real he told me all about that in addition to how his wife cheated on him but they decided to stay together for the kids and how she pretty much sounded like she was in the marriage for the money. One time I saw him go ape crazy on a mouse in the kitchen--obviously necessary, but instead of disposing of it himself he left it there and called stewarding to come clean it up. I don't think I mentioned stewarding before, they were at the beck and call of the chefs, managers, and servers to do things like dishes, polishing large silver pieces, moving flatware and silverware, cleaning up broken glass, transporting trays of glasses from point A to B...lots of hard labor, basically. Anyway, back to Phil. I liked him and didn't have any beef with him, but apparently he threw a lot of people under the bus to save his own butt. And one last thing about him, his favorite thing to eat was ramen and beer...I guess you just never know sometimes.
Tony was from New York (I mentioned him in the royal wedding) and so most people were afraid of him because they thought he was "mean." Don't get me wrong, I saw him get into a lot of arguments with my manager (she was also from New York) but he never was mean to me. He thought I was joking when I told him that I worked with my mom...most people didn't believe me actually. He also teased (but not in a mean way) that I was Mormon. It's funny how people who know something generic about you tend to bring up all they know on the subject, which ends up being a whole lot of nothing. Like if I had ten husbands...silly stuff like that. Anyway, we got along really well and he would teach me how to make things when they were slow. I did an amazing hollandaise sauce for a holiday brunch (on my first try, if I might add) that he taught me to make. He also helped me plan my birthday dinner that another chef was catering for me. Him and his assistant, who were friends, were always bickering with each other and I remember him (the assistant) saying that he was sure that Tony was wrong so he was going to make it his way and not listen to him. He got sick of being over worked so he left a few months before me and went to go work at The Montage and he is managing his own restaurant over there now.
Orin is my favorite. We're still friends and he owns an amazing pastry shop in Draper. He originally came in as a pastry chef, and after our head pastry chef/chocolatier left becasue she thought everyone in charge was idiots (too true) he became in charge. The annoying thing is that they wouldn't give him the title of "head" pastry chef. Him and Phil didn't get along very well. Anyway, whenever we were slow or had time in between events I would go hang out with Orin. He had pastries that he would share with me, or let me try out new things that he was making. He also gave me TONS of baking advice and shared a lot of fun stories with me about his pastry upbringing and his family growing up in...Norway (?). It annoyed him to no end that instead of allowing him to make things from scratch, Phil ordered premade croissants, muffins, and bagels which contributed to the huge "food cost" debate that seemed never ending. I got to the point where when I was pregnant I did not want to work up in Private Dining anymore and Orin wanted me to come work with him but Phil said no. Then I went on maternity leave. Then I quit...but I digress. We actually both quit at almost the same time. Orin had to drive over the mountain from South Salt Lake and during the snow season you never knew how long it could take. He got stuck in an accident that shutdown the freeway so he was a sitting duck for two hours on his way to Park City. He called to let Phil know about the accident and Phil told him to not even bother coming in. That was the end. Orin is such a nice guy and he owns his own pastry shop now, but he was the scape goat up there and it was ridiculous.
I mentioned that chefs had egos and could be hard to work with. One time when I was working in Private Dining I went to the line to pick up my order and it was wrong. I told the sous chef who sat there and argued with me and i told him over and over again to read the ticket again because I was missing a dish. This was the first time that I literally yelled at a chef and then once he read the ticket he saw he was wrong and walked off to fix the order. The head restaurant chef was the most egotistical chefs I had ever met. Phil and I discussed how much we both disliked Bobby Flay and I never had the heart to tell him I disliked his restaurant more than I disliked Bobby Flay and that is saying something. Almost all the chefs swore like sailors which annoyed me, but was bad for The Resort when they had guests touring the kitchen and came around the corner hearing a string of profanity. The restaurant's kitchen was not my favorite place.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
BotH: Chapter 11
Chapter 11
10 kinds of crazy
The Resort offered great packages for companies as an incentive to get them to stay, dine, and play with us. We had a group come in, the Smith-Colby Group, and they took up around 50 room and had every meal and snack with us as well as booked up all of our conference rooms for a few days. It was the most hectic week of my life there and a lot of planning went into making it easier on the employees to handle.
The Smith-Colby Group had breakfast, lunch, and dinner banquets everyday in between which they had meetings and in between the meetings were "snack" stations throughout the hotel. As a banquet team most of us worked splits (5am-9am and 5pm-9pm) to handle the load. This meant that I was waking up at 3:45 am so that I'd leave my house by 4:15 and would catch the 4:45 shuttle to the hotel. This particular week I lived off of 5-hr energy drinks and Powerade. After my shift (which usually ended late) I would go home, sleep, then wake up and repeat the same morning schedule in the afternoon all over again. All week. Rough. Imagine an entire team running this schedule. Things got crazy fast. This also didn't include the extra shift we picked up to help private dining with their portion of the load (which was the coffee stations/snacks in between meetings) throughout the day. They had to synchronize delivering coffee and snacks twice a day to about 20 rooms at a time with just a few servers and two elevators. Yeah, things got interesting there. Luckily they were really well organized and most of the things went well on their end. We (banquet members and butlers) sat and packaged snacks (all custom made, too) for each room, everyday, as well as helping them with their regular service. They also paid for drinks and packaged (non-custom) snacks per item, so that was challenging to bill. All the servers had to drop off, refill, and count missing items in about a five minute time span in each room they visited each time. Luckily I wasn't one of those servers, I was a prep and bill person for the week. If that sounds hectic, you should have seen banquets. That's where the "real" fun began.
By the middle of the week we were really worn out and things were tense. One meal in particular I was assigned to be a greeter. Little did I know that the servers were getting their butts handed to them since all of the guests came to breakfast (?) at once. This is the one and only time that I got on Candace's bad side (and trust me, you knew if you were). About three-quarters of the way through the meal my manager asked me to go join the rest of the servers, so I did. In the back of the house Candace reamed me for not helping sooner. She didn't know that I was assigned to stand as a greeter per the client's request, and was furious because she thought I was doing nothing while they were all running to catch up with the rush -- end of the story was that I ended up sitting in the ballroom once guests were gone crying since it wasn't my fault the meal went poorly. I tried to transfer to private dining for the day to help them and they said I had to have my manager approve it. Then I looked like an idiot crying in front of my manager asking to switch someone for the day. I was broken. I ended up still going back to finish the day in banquets, and things were a little awkward between Candace and I for a couple days, but things ended up being fine. I think the thing that was even worse than that encounter was my manager at one of the dinners. We had completely set up the ballroom for dinner, which takes quite a while when you have to polish every piece of silverware and every glass, plus folding all the napkins. My manager walked in just as we were finishing and decided she didn't like the napkin fold (which she originally chose) and she made us unfold all of them and do a different one fifteen minutes prior to guests arriving. I was furious. The one really nice thing from the week was that the meeting planner was so impressed with how the core servers did that she gave us a card with lots o' cash in it :)
10 kinds of crazy
The Resort offered great packages for companies as an incentive to get them to stay, dine, and play with us. We had a group come in, the Smith-Colby Group, and they took up around 50 room and had every meal and snack with us as well as booked up all of our conference rooms for a few days. It was the most hectic week of my life there and a lot of planning went into making it easier on the employees to handle.
The Smith-Colby Group had breakfast, lunch, and dinner banquets everyday in between which they had meetings and in between the meetings were "snack" stations throughout the hotel. As a banquet team most of us worked splits (5am-9am and 5pm-9pm) to handle the load. This meant that I was waking up at 3:45 am so that I'd leave my house by 4:15 and would catch the 4:45 shuttle to the hotel. This particular week I lived off of 5-hr energy drinks and Powerade. After my shift (which usually ended late) I would go home, sleep, then wake up and repeat the same morning schedule in the afternoon all over again. All week. Rough. Imagine an entire team running this schedule. Things got crazy fast. This also didn't include the extra shift we picked up to help private dining with their portion of the load (which was the coffee stations/snacks in between meetings) throughout the day. They had to synchronize delivering coffee and snacks twice a day to about 20 rooms at a time with just a few servers and two elevators. Yeah, things got interesting there. Luckily they were really well organized and most of the things went well on their end. We (banquet members and butlers) sat and packaged snacks (all custom made, too) for each room, everyday, as well as helping them with their regular service. They also paid for drinks and packaged (non-custom) snacks per item, so that was challenging to bill. All the servers had to drop off, refill, and count missing items in about a five minute time span in each room they visited each time. Luckily I wasn't one of those servers, I was a prep and bill person for the week. If that sounds hectic, you should have seen banquets. That's where the "real" fun began.
By the middle of the week we were really worn out and things were tense. One meal in particular I was assigned to be a greeter. Little did I know that the servers were getting their butts handed to them since all of the guests came to breakfast (?) at once. This is the one and only time that I got on Candace's bad side (and trust me, you knew if you were). About three-quarters of the way through the meal my manager asked me to go join the rest of the servers, so I did. In the back of the house Candace reamed me for not helping sooner. She didn't know that I was assigned to stand as a greeter per the client's request, and was furious because she thought I was doing nothing while they were all running to catch up with the rush -- end of the story was that I ended up sitting in the ballroom once guests were gone crying since it wasn't my fault the meal went poorly. I tried to transfer to private dining for the day to help them and they said I had to have my manager approve it. Then I looked like an idiot crying in front of my manager asking to switch someone for the day. I was broken. I ended up still going back to finish the day in banquets, and things were a little awkward between Candace and I for a couple days, but things ended up being fine. I think the thing that was even worse than that encounter was my manager at one of the dinners. We had completely set up the ballroom for dinner, which takes quite a while when you have to polish every piece of silverware and every glass, plus folding all the napkins. My manager walked in just as we were finishing and decided she didn't like the napkin fold (which she originally chose) and she made us unfold all of them and do a different one fifteen minutes prior to guests arriving. I was furious. The one really nice thing from the week was that the meeting planner was so impressed with how the core servers did that she gave us a card with lots o' cash in it :)
Monday, July 8, 2013
BotH: Chapter 10
Wow, 10 already.
Chapter 10
The Residents, Part deux
I recently wrote about some of our residents, but I did not mention that it was only residents that could stay in a residential suite. Friends and families of an owner could come and stay there also. This is a great benefit to the owner to get more use out of their condo/suite if they aren't there often, but it also caused small amounts of chaos trying live up to their (the friends) expectations.
One morning I was in Private Dining working as an order taker. This means that I sat in a chair taking orders all morning over the phone. Once I got used to the phone etiquette and AAA/Forbes standards, it was a pretty easy job. Now, here is where things get hairy; I got a call around 10:30 am from a man who was staying in a residential suite (that his friend owned, not him) and he wanted chocolate croissants with his breakfast. Usually that would be an easy order to fill, however since it was a particularly busy weekend and breakfast service ended at 10, we were out of chocolate croissants. I offered him regular croissants and he would not have it. I sat there on the phone with him, him yelling at me nearly the entire time, for about fifteen minutes. The outrage. He couldn't believe that we would be out of croissants and it was such a horrible thing, and we were ridiculous and he wanted to speak with the General Manager (he called him by name, apparently they had met...once) and he wanted his food for free and so on. He had a point, I won't deny that, but lets get real. It was after breakfast hours and it was a busy weekend. We actually were able to find some mini chocolate croissants that were left over from a banquet that morning, so we sent those up, but this guy was the worst. The thing is that this seemed to happen a lot. What was listed on the menu was not always available, but you can't change out 200 menus on a daily basis. I would say that about eighty-percent of the time we did not have all of the flavors of yogurt listed on the menu.
There was another family that stayed with us often in the a residential suite. His family was super nice; his wife was a doctor, he had twin girls and one of them was a tennis prodigy, and then they had another little boy (who looked like a girl...he had long hair). They were in town often during the first summer I was there and every time you went to their room they gave you twenty bucks. I had brought them up some hot chocolate and once I was up there they wanted extra marshmallows, so I ran down and got more. Twenty bucks the first trip and twenty bucks the second trip. I served them so much that I knew where everyone sat at each meal and who ordered what. They also were sick of renting cars so they just willy-nilley went down and bought two Escalades and had them parked in the underground parking at The Resort. No big deal.
Remember Mr. French from chapter 4? He stayed in the residence as well. He would play really weird power games with us...for example one night a server delivered his meal and left the check for Mr. French to sign. We didn't always have them sign it in person/right away if they didn't motion to do so. Later when the server picked up his dishes he noticed that he still hadn't signed the check, but he charged it anyway (that was our policy). Mr. French was in an uproar about it (remember how he's a billionaire?!) and called the General Manager, Mr. Great, and told him that since he didn't sign the check he would not pay for the meal. Of course, Mr. Great comped the meal that was over $100. And that was $100 just for one person. Another night I delivered drinks to his family as they sat out on the terrace by the fire pit. Our policy, according to AAA/Forbes was to open and present a drink to the guest in front of them. So, I did just that. I think his wife had wine so I gave her the plastic wine glass (so tacky but no glass was allowed outside). Then I walked over to him, opened his Fiji water and set it in front of him with the cup beside it. Picture perfect, I was proud since I was so nervous. Nope. He reprimanded me for not bringing him Evian (which we didn't have) and then said he wouldn't drink the water because some was missing from the bottle. I had literally opened it right in front of him and he would not take it. Then I brought his kids apple cider. The wife asked, "where are the cinnamon sticks?" I understand the thought process there, but we didn't give cinnamon sticks out with apple cider so I didn't bring any and they hadn't requested it prior to my delivery. So, I ran back to the kitchen, got a new water bottle, cinnamon sticks, and was then told to speak to their security guard/man servant. He paid in exact change, no tips. And they had the poor man being bossed around by walkie-talkie while he watched over/chased around their kids. I hope they paid him well...
Chapter 10
The Residents, Part deux
I recently wrote about some of our residents, but I did not mention that it was only residents that could stay in a residential suite. Friends and families of an owner could come and stay there also. This is a great benefit to the owner to get more use out of their condo/suite if they aren't there often, but it also caused small amounts of chaos trying live up to their (the friends) expectations.
One morning I was in Private Dining working as an order taker. This means that I sat in a chair taking orders all morning over the phone. Once I got used to the phone etiquette and AAA/Forbes standards, it was a pretty easy job. Now, here is where things get hairy; I got a call around 10:30 am from a man who was staying in a residential suite (that his friend owned, not him) and he wanted chocolate croissants with his breakfast. Usually that would be an easy order to fill, however since it was a particularly busy weekend and breakfast service ended at 10, we were out of chocolate croissants. I offered him regular croissants and he would not have it. I sat there on the phone with him, him yelling at me nearly the entire time, for about fifteen minutes. The outrage. He couldn't believe that we would be out of croissants and it was such a horrible thing, and we were ridiculous and he wanted to speak with the General Manager (he called him by name, apparently they had met...once) and he wanted his food for free and so on. He had a point, I won't deny that, but lets get real. It was after breakfast hours and it was a busy weekend. We actually were able to find some mini chocolate croissants that were left over from a banquet that morning, so we sent those up, but this guy was the worst. The thing is that this seemed to happen a lot. What was listed on the menu was not always available, but you can't change out 200 menus on a daily basis. I would say that about eighty-percent of the time we did not have all of the flavors of yogurt listed on the menu.
There was another family that stayed with us often in the a residential suite. His family was super nice; his wife was a doctor, he had twin girls and one of them was a tennis prodigy, and then they had another little boy (who looked like a girl...he had long hair). They were in town often during the first summer I was there and every time you went to their room they gave you twenty bucks. I had brought them up some hot chocolate and once I was up there they wanted extra marshmallows, so I ran down and got more. Twenty bucks the first trip and twenty bucks the second trip. I served them so much that I knew where everyone sat at each meal and who ordered what. They also were sick of renting cars so they just willy-nilley went down and bought two Escalades and had them parked in the underground parking at The Resort. No big deal.
Remember Mr. French from chapter 4? He stayed in the residence as well. He would play really weird power games with us...for example one night a server delivered his meal and left the check for Mr. French to sign. We didn't always have them sign it in person/right away if they didn't motion to do so. Later when the server picked up his dishes he noticed that he still hadn't signed the check, but he charged it anyway (that was our policy). Mr. French was in an uproar about it (remember how he's a billionaire?!) and called the General Manager, Mr. Great, and told him that since he didn't sign the check he would not pay for the meal. Of course, Mr. Great comped the meal that was over $100. And that was $100 just for one person. Another night I delivered drinks to his family as they sat out on the terrace by the fire pit. Our policy, according to AAA/Forbes was to open and present a drink to the guest in front of them. So, I did just that. I think his wife had wine so I gave her the plastic wine glass (so tacky but no glass was allowed outside). Then I walked over to him, opened his Fiji water and set it in front of him with the cup beside it. Picture perfect, I was proud since I was so nervous. Nope. He reprimanded me for not bringing him Evian (which we didn't have) and then said he wouldn't drink the water because some was missing from the bottle. I had literally opened it right in front of him and he would not take it. Then I brought his kids apple cider. The wife asked, "where are the cinnamon sticks?" I understand the thought process there, but we didn't give cinnamon sticks out with apple cider so I didn't bring any and they hadn't requested it prior to my delivery. So, I ran back to the kitchen, got a new water bottle, cinnamon sticks, and was then told to speak to their security guard/man servant. He paid in exact change, no tips. And they had the poor man being bossed around by walkie-talkie while he watched over/chased around their kids. I hope they paid him well...
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
BotH: Chapter 9
I promise I will do residents part 2, but this popped up and I wanted to write about it first :)
Chapter 9
Employee Shenanigans
You would think that The Resort would be very particular in the employees that they hired. But what it comes down to is that if they passed the drug test, they were hired. We had a lady named Susie that was hired to be a part of the banquet team. She was hired to support the "core" team (me, my mom, Candace, and Remy) on larger events. I'm telling you know, this lady did not know beans about serving. She was nice as a person, but she was slow and stumbly/mumbly. It was hard to work with her when we were going mach 10 and we could barely get her going, let alone to keep up. In response to watching how she worked my boss said to Candace, "I just don't understand, she wore a suit to the interview." That's right folks, she was hired because she wore a suit to her interview...that solved a lot of questions as to why she was hired. She wasn't the only one.
Unfortunately the inmates ran the prison. Members of the restaurant and bar staff stole alcohol from the bar. One employee brought a duffle bag up to the floor with him and stuffed wine bottles in it. When a guest was done with their meal or if they needed it to be boxed up, it was brought to the back of the house to be taken care of. Time and time again I saw restaurant employees eating off of plates. Oh they didn't finish their fries? Then it's only natural that you should...super gross. When a guest first arrived to dine they were given a basket of bread that was freshly sliced. The servers would slice the bread, then sit there and eat the seeds that had fallen off the top. Also gross. The thing was that we were allowed to eat bread, so I don't know why they felt the need to pick seeds off the cutting board that was used over and over.
The thing about The Resort is that it is open 24/7, which means that it is staffed accordingly. You'd better believe that people were sleeping around with each other. The girl who worked overnight in Private Dining was sleeping with one of the security guards. The thing was that she was married and had kids. Yuck. Our other overnight guy (Van) was completely unreliable. He would show up, watch movies on his laptop, and then do some of his work here and there. We would show up at 6:45 am to get ready for breakfast and he usually hadn't done much to help, leaving us to pick up all the slack. He got fired/re-hired a million times. One time I had a guest call and ask for a side of berries to be added to his order. Alex asked Van to get the side of berries for room 611- meaning he wanted him to get them and add it to the table we were taking to his room. Van got the berries and walked off-- instead of putting it on his delivery table, he delivered just a bowl of berries! A few minutes later I got the angry phone call from the guest in room 611 that only his fruit had arrived and that he didn't want blackberries in it (not previously mentioned). He also slept on the job and would just forward calls to the front desk. This type of thing happened time and time again with Van.
This is my all time favorite story. Steve was a Private Dining Server and he was really good at his job. He was almost always on point and got tipped really well from guests. He and I got along and we carpooled to work a lot since he and his girlfriend shared one car. Anyway, remember how we couldn't be on property if we weren't working? Steve forgot that. He left work through the front entrance (into Park City) and went drinking but didn't remember until later that he had parked on the other side of the mountain and was shuttled to work, so he decided to cut through the hotel to catch the shuttle down to the employee lot. When I got to work the next morning everyone in security was in a roar over the surveillance video of Steve. Housekeeping had arrived that morning and there was poop all over the floor of their office. All over. Apparently Steve had been so drunk that when he was making his way to the shuttle he somehow mistook the Housekeeping office for the bathroom and made a mess everywhere. The video showed him stumbling all over, coming in and out of Housekeeping, and crawling out to the shuttle. I felt bad for him since we were friends, and he got fired that day. He came up and said goodbye to me on his way out and he was crying. I think it was a hangover/oh-crap-what-did-I-do cry more than anything, but still, I was sad to see him leave. The news spread quick about what happened to him and people would say, "You work at The Resort? Did that guy really crap all over?" Yes, we became notorious amongst other Park City resort employees for having that guy.
Chapter 9
Employee Shenanigans
You would think that The Resort would be very particular in the employees that they hired. But what it comes down to is that if they passed the drug test, they were hired. We had a lady named Susie that was hired to be a part of the banquet team. She was hired to support the "core" team (me, my mom, Candace, and Remy) on larger events. I'm telling you know, this lady did not know beans about serving. She was nice as a person, but she was slow and stumbly/mumbly. It was hard to work with her when we were going mach 10 and we could barely get her going, let alone to keep up. In response to watching how she worked my boss said to Candace, "I just don't understand, she wore a suit to the interview." That's right folks, she was hired because she wore a suit to her interview...that solved a lot of questions as to why she was hired. She wasn't the only one.
Unfortunately the inmates ran the prison. Members of the restaurant and bar staff stole alcohol from the bar. One employee brought a duffle bag up to the floor with him and stuffed wine bottles in it. When a guest was done with their meal or if they needed it to be boxed up, it was brought to the back of the house to be taken care of. Time and time again I saw restaurant employees eating off of plates. Oh they didn't finish their fries? Then it's only natural that you should...super gross. When a guest first arrived to dine they were given a basket of bread that was freshly sliced. The servers would slice the bread, then sit there and eat the seeds that had fallen off the top. Also gross. The thing was that we were allowed to eat bread, so I don't know why they felt the need to pick seeds off the cutting board that was used over and over.
The thing about The Resort is that it is open 24/7, which means that it is staffed accordingly. You'd better believe that people were sleeping around with each other. The girl who worked overnight in Private Dining was sleeping with one of the security guards. The thing was that she was married and had kids. Yuck. Our other overnight guy (Van) was completely unreliable. He would show up, watch movies on his laptop, and then do some of his work here and there. We would show up at 6:45 am to get ready for breakfast and he usually hadn't done much to help, leaving us to pick up all the slack. He got fired/re-hired a million times. One time I had a guest call and ask for a side of berries to be added to his order. Alex asked Van to get the side of berries for room 611- meaning he wanted him to get them and add it to the table we were taking to his room. Van got the berries and walked off-- instead of putting it on his delivery table, he delivered just a bowl of berries! A few minutes later I got the angry phone call from the guest in room 611 that only his fruit had arrived and that he didn't want blackberries in it (not previously mentioned). He also slept on the job and would just forward calls to the front desk. This type of thing happened time and time again with Van.
This is my all time favorite story. Steve was a Private Dining Server and he was really good at his job. He was almost always on point and got tipped really well from guests. He and I got along and we carpooled to work a lot since he and his girlfriend shared one car. Anyway, remember how we couldn't be on property if we weren't working? Steve forgot that. He left work through the front entrance (into Park City) and went drinking but didn't remember until later that he had parked on the other side of the mountain and was shuttled to work, so he decided to cut through the hotel to catch the shuttle down to the employee lot. When I got to work the next morning everyone in security was in a roar over the surveillance video of Steve. Housekeeping had arrived that morning and there was poop all over the floor of their office. All over. Apparently Steve had been so drunk that when he was making his way to the shuttle he somehow mistook the Housekeeping office for the bathroom and made a mess everywhere. The video showed him stumbling all over, coming in and out of Housekeeping, and crawling out to the shuttle. I felt bad for him since we were friends, and he got fired that day. He came up and said goodbye to me on his way out and he was crying. I think it was a hangover/oh-crap-what-did-I-do cry more than anything, but still, I was sad to see him leave. The news spread quick about what happened to him and people would say, "You work at The Resort? Did that guy really crap all over?" Yes, we became notorious amongst other Park City resort employees for having that guy.
Monday, June 17, 2013
BotH:Chapter 8
Chapter 8
Residents, part 1
In addition to renting out rooms nightly, our guests had the option of buying a resident or suite. The suites were regular rooms and the residents were custom-built condos on the top few floors of The Resort. This first owner that I am about to discuss is rich and famous-ish so I am not going to give any specific details about who he is... He owned a resident and I interacted with him several times, dreading it each and every time.
When we first learned that Mr. Live would be visiting his residence for the first time, our Food and Beverage manager sent out a memo on how to pronounce his name correctly and would randomly test employees. "It's Live like Hive not live like give." I can understand that if you paid millions of dollars to live somewhere you'd want the staff to pronounce your name correctly, but it was a little annoying. Before I met him for the first time, I heard lots of hearsay about him from the Restaurant Manager who was one of my friends. She told me it was hard to respect a person that came into the restaurant with women other than his wife. I've never seen his wife and I don't know if he was cheating on her, but the manager was pretty convinced that he was.
The first time I delivered a meal to his room I had gotten over being star struck when I met celebrities. I knocked on the door, asked if I could come in and he let me in, but only into the foyer. Forbes/AAA wanted us to setup a guest's food on their actual table, so I had to make a quick adjustment to my routine to figure out what to do with all of his food. I showed him what everything was (we used metal covers to help keep things hot), and as I proceeded to leave gave me a firm handshake (weird) and told me it was nice to meet me. That sounds normal enough, but he did it in a way that made me feel like he thought I had come in as a gushing fan and was so humbled to meet him, when in reality it was laughable that he treated me like that. I didn't gush. I said his name properly and did all of my usual protocol. Anyway, the entire first meeting was awkward and I would always try to get someone else to deliver his food. Carlos told me that I had to serve him. Blah. Another time I went to deliver his breakfast -- $125 for 4 people...they all had filet mignon and eggs-- and do you know how much he tipped me? $1.99. That's right!! Everyone in the department had a good laugh about it. But, in his defense we had a wicked steep auto-gratuity. Unfortunately as servers we had to split the auto-grat between everyone that worked that shift and only write-in tips (or cash) went directly to the server. Anyway, he always seemed to make such a big scene about being around and it got old, quick.
The second guest that owned a suite (not a resident) is/was the co-creator (or CEO?) of a famous medical website. He was really nice and I loved serving him breakfast. He almost always got eggs Benedict. It's funny how you remember what people ordered, especially if they were regulars. Anyway, Mr. Badger was at The Resort Monday through Wednesday, then spent the weekends in New York. Every time you went to his room and delivered his meals, he'd tip $20! My kind of guy. After almost a year of being open we started to offer a grocery service to our guests (such a pain in the butt) and we would always go stock his room before he got there and rotate his beverages throughout the week. He was a fitness buff from what I saw in his room-- fitness magazines, protein powders, etc. It turns out he was a swinger and asked out one of the restaurant managers for a drink. Although other employees had taken him up on the drink offer, this particular manager kindly declined.
It was interesting to see how people in the spotlight treated the people who served them. I really enjoyed working with Mr. Badger whereas Mr. Live was no treat. There was always a buzz about in the back of the house when either was on property.
Residents, part 1
In addition to renting out rooms nightly, our guests had the option of buying a resident or suite. The suites were regular rooms and the residents were custom-built condos on the top few floors of The Resort. This first owner that I am about to discuss is rich and famous-ish so I am not going to give any specific details about who he is... He owned a resident and I interacted with him several times, dreading it each and every time.
When we first learned that Mr. Live would be visiting his residence for the first time, our Food and Beverage manager sent out a memo on how to pronounce his name correctly and would randomly test employees. "It's Live like Hive not live like give." I can understand that if you paid millions of dollars to live somewhere you'd want the staff to pronounce your name correctly, but it was a little annoying. Before I met him for the first time, I heard lots of hearsay about him from the Restaurant Manager who was one of my friends. She told me it was hard to respect a person that came into the restaurant with women other than his wife. I've never seen his wife and I don't know if he was cheating on her, but the manager was pretty convinced that he was.
The first time I delivered a meal to his room I had gotten over being star struck when I met celebrities. I knocked on the door, asked if I could come in and he let me in, but only into the foyer. Forbes/AAA wanted us to setup a guest's food on their actual table, so I had to make a quick adjustment to my routine to figure out what to do with all of his food. I showed him what everything was (we used metal covers to help keep things hot), and as I proceeded to leave gave me a firm handshake (weird) and told me it was nice to meet me. That sounds normal enough, but he did it in a way that made me feel like he thought I had come in as a gushing fan and was so humbled to meet him, when in reality it was laughable that he treated me like that. I didn't gush. I said his name properly and did all of my usual protocol. Anyway, the entire first meeting was awkward and I would always try to get someone else to deliver his food. Carlos told me that I had to serve him. Blah. Another time I went to deliver his breakfast -- $125 for 4 people...they all had filet mignon and eggs-- and do you know how much he tipped me? $1.99. That's right!! Everyone in the department had a good laugh about it. But, in his defense we had a wicked steep auto-gratuity. Unfortunately as servers we had to split the auto-grat between everyone that worked that shift and only write-in tips (or cash) went directly to the server. Anyway, he always seemed to make such a big scene about being around and it got old, quick.
The second guest that owned a suite (not a resident) is/was the co-creator (or CEO?) of a famous medical website. He was really nice and I loved serving him breakfast. He almost always got eggs Benedict. It's funny how you remember what people ordered, especially if they were regulars. Anyway, Mr. Badger was at The Resort Monday through Wednesday, then spent the weekends in New York. Every time you went to his room and delivered his meals, he'd tip $20! My kind of guy. After almost a year of being open we started to offer a grocery service to our guests (such a pain in the butt) and we would always go stock his room before he got there and rotate his beverages throughout the week. He was a fitness buff from what I saw in his room-- fitness magazines, protein powders, etc. It turns out he was a swinger and asked out one of the restaurant managers for a drink. Although other employees had taken him up on the drink offer, this particular manager kindly declined.
It was interesting to see how people in the spotlight treated the people who served them. I really enjoyed working with Mr. Badger whereas Mr. Live was no treat. There was always a buzz about in the back of the house when either was on property.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
BotH: Chapter 7
Lucky 7!
Chapter 7
Alcohol?
As I previously mentioned, I am an alcohol idiot. In terms of serving alcohol I had only served it for about 4 months prior to working at The Resort. It may surprise some that I grew up (kinda) around alcohol(ics) my entire life. My dad drinks and so does his side of the family so I know very basically what names of alcohols are. Little did I know that I knew nothing compared to people in the service world.
During our first two weeks of training we had a 2-hour class with The Resort's sommelier (wine genius). Talk about information overload. It was literally his job to know every single bottle of wine in The Resort and how much it costs, what to pair with it, and how to recommend it. I would say that ninety-percent of the information went over my head. The first time I ever opened a bottle of wine was about 2 hours before an event. My manager knew that I knew nothing about alcohol, least of all how to open wine, so she gave all of the wine idiots the task of opening all the bottles. It really was good practice to do it over and over again and I thought that the experience helped me to know how to serve wine better. She also taught us how to pour wine. In our resort you had to hold the bottle with one hand, present the label facing out to the guest, and then pour the right amount. With our other hand we had a cloth napkin draped over our forearm to use to wipe the wine bottle with if we had any drips. Luckily I never spilled wine on anyone.
For Banquets we had bartenders so realistically all I had to do was know what we were serving and take orders. Sounds easy, right? You would think so. Then there came me. I remember one of our first events I had someone ask me for a beer. He asked for something that I tried to memorize but I kept repeating, "sorry, what was that?" I ran to the bartender and tried to mumble back what I thought the guy had said. I think I said "stellar tois" and the bartender gave me a your-an-idiot laugh as he handed me a Stella Artois. I had never heard of that brand of beer before that day. Like I said, I had only had a few months of alcohol experience before working there. We had a small event that was me and our bartender, Ryan. He had to step away from the bar for a minute which left me alone with about thirty guests. Naturally I started to get drink orders that I would have to fill. Luckily for me Ryan had set a good mood, being loosy goosy and interactive with the guests, so that when I went to get a drink and botched pouring it they were able to be fun/understanding about it. The guest said to me as I poured a bottle of beer into a pilsner, "if that beer had much more head it could walk around with us!" If you don't know what that means, beer foams when you pour it which is why it has to be poured at a sharp angle. I had only used taps before and wasn't sure how pour the beer into a glass without spilling. Ryan casually walked up after that and grabbed another beer, dumped it straight upside-down into the glass, and made a joke. He made a lot of tips that night...he even shared with me, even though I was a klutz at the bar. Then we ate all the leftover oysters and seafood. Delish. By the way, when Ryan and I worked at events together we were unstoppable. And not so much at our service, but you couldn't get us to shut up and stop cracking jokes. He was hilarious and I give him all the credit for that. Plus he was super fascinating, but I digress.
My last alcohol disasters, and I think these two were the worst one. When I worked in Private Dining (room service) if a guest ordered a bottle of wine you had to open it and present it to them in person. You couldn't' open it in advance to save time. Since by this point I had opened hundreds of bottle I felt confident doing this in a guest's room. I had a couple order a bottle of wine. Easy. I got to their room, set their table with their meal, then proceeded to open their wine. But it wouldn't open. At all. I sat there for nearly ten minutes trying to open the bottle but the cork wouldn't budge. I also shredded through about 1/4 inch of its top layer and I thought I was going to die. To make matters worse I could tell they were annoyed both at me and with each other. It was so awkward to hear them bickering as I was trying to hurry and get the heck out of there. I was about two seconds away from leaving and asking them if I could bring wine back or asking if they wanted to open it. After A LOT of encouragement from me I finally got the cork out. So embarrassing. In my defense it really was the hardest bottle to open of all the bottles I've ever opened. The second less intelligent thing I did was open Prosecco (sparkling wine, like champagne but not) in a guest's room. I didn't think ahead that I should open it before I went in the room (she only ordered a glass of it) and then it hit me that duh- sparkling wine has a tendency to spill out of the bottle if it isn't opened right (I was trained to open it without spilling, not easy though). Luckily for me I didn't spill wine all over her room when I popped the cork, but it was definitely a dumb thing to do.
As a pat on my back, I am proud to say that I know how to saber a champagne bottle. I was trained, they let me practice with real champagne (so we waste another bottle...no biggie), and I did it as part of the evening ceremony at The Resort for about 15 guests. The one time I did it publicly I did mess up a little, but eventually I got it --I was so nervous doing it for guests that I forgot about placing the seam on the bottle at the right place. Luckily my manager was there to help.
Chapter 7
Alcohol?
As I previously mentioned, I am an alcohol idiot. In terms of serving alcohol I had only served it for about 4 months prior to working at The Resort. It may surprise some that I grew up (kinda) around alcohol(ics) my entire life. My dad drinks and so does his side of the family so I know very basically what names of alcohols are. Little did I know that I knew nothing compared to people in the service world.
During our first two weeks of training we had a 2-hour class with The Resort's sommelier (wine genius). Talk about information overload. It was literally his job to know every single bottle of wine in The Resort and how much it costs, what to pair with it, and how to recommend it. I would say that ninety-percent of the information went over my head. The first time I ever opened a bottle of wine was about 2 hours before an event. My manager knew that I knew nothing about alcohol, least of all how to open wine, so she gave all of the wine idiots the task of opening all the bottles. It really was good practice to do it over and over again and I thought that the experience helped me to know how to serve wine better. She also taught us how to pour wine. In our resort you had to hold the bottle with one hand, present the label facing out to the guest, and then pour the right amount. With our other hand we had a cloth napkin draped over our forearm to use to wipe the wine bottle with if we had any drips. Luckily I never spilled wine on anyone.
For Banquets we had bartenders so realistically all I had to do was know what we were serving and take orders. Sounds easy, right? You would think so. Then there came me. I remember one of our first events I had someone ask me for a beer. He asked for something that I tried to memorize but I kept repeating, "sorry, what was that?" I ran to the bartender and tried to mumble back what I thought the guy had said. I think I said "stellar tois" and the bartender gave me a your-an-idiot laugh as he handed me a Stella Artois. I had never heard of that brand of beer before that day. Like I said, I had only had a few months of alcohol experience before working there. We had a small event that was me and our bartender, Ryan. He had to step away from the bar for a minute which left me alone with about thirty guests. Naturally I started to get drink orders that I would have to fill. Luckily for me Ryan had set a good mood, being loosy goosy and interactive with the guests, so that when I went to get a drink and botched pouring it they were able to be fun/understanding about it. The guest said to me as I poured a bottle of beer into a pilsner, "if that beer had much more head it could walk around with us!" If you don't know what that means, beer foams when you pour it which is why it has to be poured at a sharp angle. I had only used taps before and wasn't sure how pour the beer into a glass without spilling. Ryan casually walked up after that and grabbed another beer, dumped it straight upside-down into the glass, and made a joke. He made a lot of tips that night...he even shared with me, even though I was a klutz at the bar. Then we ate all the leftover oysters and seafood. Delish. By the way, when Ryan and I worked at events together we were unstoppable. And not so much at our service, but you couldn't get us to shut up and stop cracking jokes. He was hilarious and I give him all the credit for that. Plus he was super fascinating, but I digress.
My last alcohol disasters, and I think these two were the worst one. When I worked in Private Dining (room service) if a guest ordered a bottle of wine you had to open it and present it to them in person. You couldn't' open it in advance to save time. Since by this point I had opened hundreds of bottle I felt confident doing this in a guest's room. I had a couple order a bottle of wine. Easy. I got to their room, set their table with their meal, then proceeded to open their wine. But it wouldn't open. At all. I sat there for nearly ten minutes trying to open the bottle but the cork wouldn't budge. I also shredded through about 1/4 inch of its top layer and I thought I was going to die. To make matters worse I could tell they were annoyed both at me and with each other. It was so awkward to hear them bickering as I was trying to hurry and get the heck out of there. I was about two seconds away from leaving and asking them if I could bring wine back or asking if they wanted to open it. After A LOT of encouragement from me I finally got the cork out. So embarrassing. In my defense it really was the hardest bottle to open of all the bottles I've ever opened. The second less intelligent thing I did was open Prosecco (sparkling wine, like champagne but not) in a guest's room. I didn't think ahead that I should open it before I went in the room (she only ordered a glass of it) and then it hit me that duh- sparkling wine has a tendency to spill out of the bottle if it isn't opened right (I was trained to open it without spilling, not easy though). Luckily for me I didn't spill wine all over her room when I popped the cork, but it was definitely a dumb thing to do.
As a pat on my back, I am proud to say that I know how to saber a champagne bottle. I was trained, they let me practice with real champagne (so we waste another bottle...no biggie), and I did it as part of the evening ceremony at The Resort for about 15 guests. The one time I did it publicly I did mess up a little, but eventually I got it --I was so nervous doing it for guests that I forgot about placing the seam on the bottle at the right place. Luckily my manager was there to help.
Monday, June 3, 2013
BotH: Chapter 6
Chapter 6
The Royal Wedding
This was one of the weddings that I was most involved with. The bride, Ms. Princess, was a very rich lady. Her father is an owner of a nationwide restaurant/bar chain and they have tons of money. Her parents are divorced, which made for an awkward menu tasting. The wife and daughter have both had lots of work done, and I was surprised to see that the mother looked like she just came from gardening--not done up, no make up, sloppy clothes, etc. Ms. Princess on the other hand came looking like a super model. She had the snottiest attitude and most spoiled demeanor of anyone that I ever came across while working there. Her fiance Mr. Prince was a little pretentious, but you could tell by the way he acted that she was in charge of that relationship. Everyone at a tasting got a complimentary beverage and I remember him asking for something that wasn't initially offered to him and at the time I had no idea what he was talking about. I think he ordered prosecco or something like that and I tried to mumble back to our bartender what he ordered (I'm an alcohol idiot, but more on that later).
For the tasting our Banquet Chef, Tony, actually did it in the restaurant (which was not common) so I had to stand "guard" outside the doors of the chef's private table and act as the liaison between the guests and chef. I remember listening in to what they thought of the food, and for the salad course she seemed mostly pleased and swapped some toppings, but other than that there were no complaints. The main course tasting was where it all went downhill. I brought them in their halibut and steak and this is what I heard. "I've had a lot of halibut in my life and this is literally the worst halibut I have ever had. Like, it's disgusting and it's the worst ever." I could tell that the Catering Manager was speechless because she wasn't sure how to react to the criticism and after the tasting she asked me to get Tony. Since Tony and I were friends I gave him the heads up that she hated the fish (he was furious) before he went in to meet with them. Without being rude while talking to them, he became slightly defensive (a New Yorker defensive? No...) in trying to understand what exactly was wrong with the halibut. I don't remember what she said was wrong with it, but they ended up figuring out a solution. Once we were in the back of the house Tony went off. Realistically whatever her complaint was was something bizarre, I remember thinking it was petty. She was the only one at the table that complained about the fish.
Then there was the wedding cake fiasco. She came in with a drawing she did herself of what she wanted her cake to look like. She was not an artist and gave very vague ideas about what she wanted it to look like. Our poor pastry chef was left with a scribbling to go off of for her enormous cake. Ms. Princess wanted her cake to look like Italian Stucco so Orin did the best job he could. Phil, our Executive Chef (he was in charge of all the chefs and dining in The Resort), showed up just before the wedding to the Pastry Kitchen, saw the cake, criticized Orin, and decided to re-decorate it himself. As nice as Phil was (at least to me), he was no pastry chef and he went to town on that cake to "fix" it, just to make it worse. The weird thing about all of this is that I didn't serve the wedding. I was annoyed to miss it, but I injured myself that week at another event and per doctor's orders I had to sit-out banquets for a while.
The Royal Wedding
This was one of the weddings that I was most involved with. The bride, Ms. Princess, was a very rich lady. Her father is an owner of a nationwide restaurant/bar chain and they have tons of money. Her parents are divorced, which made for an awkward menu tasting. The wife and daughter have both had lots of work done, and I was surprised to see that the mother looked like she just came from gardening--not done up, no make up, sloppy clothes, etc. Ms. Princess on the other hand came looking like a super model. She had the snottiest attitude and most spoiled demeanor of anyone that I ever came across while working there. Her fiance Mr. Prince was a little pretentious, but you could tell by the way he acted that she was in charge of that relationship. Everyone at a tasting got a complimentary beverage and I remember him asking for something that wasn't initially offered to him and at the time I had no idea what he was talking about. I think he ordered prosecco or something like that and I tried to mumble back to our bartender what he ordered (I'm an alcohol idiot, but more on that later).
For the tasting our Banquet Chef, Tony, actually did it in the restaurant (which was not common) so I had to stand "guard" outside the doors of the chef's private table and act as the liaison between the guests and chef. I remember listening in to what they thought of the food, and for the salad course she seemed mostly pleased and swapped some toppings, but other than that there were no complaints. The main course tasting was where it all went downhill. I brought them in their halibut and steak and this is what I heard. "I've had a lot of halibut in my life and this is literally the worst halibut I have ever had. Like, it's disgusting and it's the worst ever." I could tell that the Catering Manager was speechless because she wasn't sure how to react to the criticism and after the tasting she asked me to get Tony. Since Tony and I were friends I gave him the heads up that she hated the fish (he was furious) before he went in to meet with them. Without being rude while talking to them, he became slightly defensive (a New Yorker defensive? No...) in trying to understand what exactly was wrong with the halibut. I don't remember what she said was wrong with it, but they ended up figuring out a solution. Once we were in the back of the house Tony went off. Realistically whatever her complaint was was something bizarre, I remember thinking it was petty. She was the only one at the table that complained about the fish.
Then there was the wedding cake fiasco. She came in with a drawing she did herself of what she wanted her cake to look like. She was not an artist and gave very vague ideas about what she wanted it to look like. Our poor pastry chef was left with a scribbling to go off of for her enormous cake. Ms. Princess wanted her cake to look like Italian Stucco so Orin did the best job he could. Phil, our Executive Chef (he was in charge of all the chefs and dining in The Resort), showed up just before the wedding to the Pastry Kitchen, saw the cake, criticized Orin, and decided to re-decorate it himself. As nice as Phil was (at least to me), he was no pastry chef and he went to town on that cake to "fix" it, just to make it worse. The weird thing about all of this is that I didn't serve the wedding. I was annoyed to miss it, but I injured myself that week at another event and per doctor's orders I had to sit-out banquets for a while.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
BotH: Chapter 5
As I was driving up the Provo Canyon this last weekend I saw a ton of "so-and-so wedding" signs and it sparked the wedding chapters in my mind. I'm going to do it in two chapters because the Royal Wedding needs its own.
Chapter 5
The first summer that I worked at The Resort we did several weddings. Guests paid a lot of money for their family and friends to stay the night, location reservations, catering, decorations etc...so you'd think that everything would be flawless. Think again. The Catering Manager, the Banquet Manager, the Executive Chef, the Banquet Chef, and the Pastry Chef had never sat down to discuss what options are and are not feasible for a wedding. And somehow their subordinates never coordinated either, thus creating wedding panic all the time.
After the bride and groom cut the first piece of cake, my Banquet Captain, Barney, somehow became in charge of the man who cut cake. I'm telling you right now that if I was the bride and I saw how he massacred my cake, I would have freaked out. And even though part of it was his fault, some of the blame also needs to be assigned to the managers that didn't stop crazy brides from making ridiculous cakes. The Catering Manager would sit down with the bride and groom before the wedding and have a tasting. I was the server assigned to the tastings so I saw a lot of this unfold. For a cake tasting our Pastry Chef would make each person a platter of 4-5 cake samples and 4-5 frostings that they each could mix and match to decide on flavors. Though it wasn't offered, at some point brides started requesting fresh fruit in their cakes...it doesn't seem like a ridiculous request, but when you have a cake that has a lot of thin layers and you're trying to cut through chunks of fruit with a cake knife it tears your cake apart. Then the Banquet Manager or Catering Manager would freak out and yell at the Pasty Chef. Guess who's fault it wasn't? Yeah, the Pastry Chef. The Catering/Event team never said no to requests, so when it came to the practical application of table setting, placement, service, food, etc. there was always problems. And somehow they were always surprised...what do you mean we can't fit a 400 in a 200 person-capacity ballroom? Duh idiots.
One problem was serving large weddings plated dinners. Guests at the weddings saw a huge ballroom where dinner would be served. Us servers, in the back of the house, saw a huge kitchen that we had to carry hot-as plates with our bare hands (yeah, we didn't get gloves for the longest time) from one end to the other. The team was divided into usually 3 or 4 servers per section, depending on the size of the table being served. I was on the team that had to run to the opposite end of the kitchen and enter the ballroom through the doors furthest from the prep area. Yes I burned my hands, but what was even worse was that I remember spilling sauce off the plates all over my stomach because we were in such a rush with such hot plates. I felt so bad serving the dinner looking all junky. The other problem with large weddings was keeping the drunk guests under control. Usually weddings had open bars, which was nice for us servers because we got gratuity off of all the drinks served-- the more they drank, the more we made. Since it was at a hotel where wedding guests either had or could get a room, you didn't have to cut them off unless you knew they weren't staying or became belligerent. Somehow misfortune happened to me again and at one wedding I was serving the table with the guests who showed up drunk. As I was trying to serve these two men the salad course, they refused to acknowledge me so I had to remove the napkin and menu from their plate, lay the napkin across their lap, set the menu to the side, and serve them their salads. And if that sounds tricky, I had to do it while I was holding three salad plates. Needless to say I was annoyed. These two particular men were kicked out of the wedding right around the time the main course was served.
There were two things about weddings that I did like. First was the entertainment. We would have mini-dance parties in the back of the house when there was a good DJ. The drunk entertainment was also awesome. At one wedding the bridal party sang a Michael Bublé song and they were terrible! It was hilarious. The second good thing about weddings was the food. If the chefs made too much for a plated dinner (usually didn't happen) or if there was left over food from the buffets we got to chow down afterwards. And the cake...oh the cake! My favorite was the wedding that had the red velvet layered with cheesecake (like the Cheesecake Factory) and it was amazing. I got a stomachache because I ate so much --I didn't eat enough before I went to work and around 11 I was starving so I scarfed it down. And that particular wedding had lamb as the main course, which I don't like so I didn't eat any "real" food.
Weddings were always interesting, both good and bad interesting. The Royal Wedding was probably the most interesting I was involved with, and that is Chapter 6 ;)
Chapter 5
The first summer that I worked at The Resort we did several weddings. Guests paid a lot of money for their family and friends to stay the night, location reservations, catering, decorations etc...so you'd think that everything would be flawless. Think again. The Catering Manager, the Banquet Manager, the Executive Chef, the Banquet Chef, and the Pastry Chef had never sat down to discuss what options are and are not feasible for a wedding. And somehow their subordinates never coordinated either, thus creating wedding panic all the time.
After the bride and groom cut the first piece of cake, my Banquet Captain, Barney, somehow became in charge of the man who cut cake. I'm telling you right now that if I was the bride and I saw how he massacred my cake, I would have freaked out. And even though part of it was his fault, some of the blame also needs to be assigned to the managers that didn't stop crazy brides from making ridiculous cakes. The Catering Manager would sit down with the bride and groom before the wedding and have a tasting. I was the server assigned to the tastings so I saw a lot of this unfold. For a cake tasting our Pastry Chef would make each person a platter of 4-5 cake samples and 4-5 frostings that they each could mix and match to decide on flavors. Though it wasn't offered, at some point brides started requesting fresh fruit in their cakes...it doesn't seem like a ridiculous request, but when you have a cake that has a lot of thin layers and you're trying to cut through chunks of fruit with a cake knife it tears your cake apart. Then the Banquet Manager or Catering Manager would freak out and yell at the Pasty Chef. Guess who's fault it wasn't? Yeah, the Pastry Chef. The Catering/Event team never said no to requests, so when it came to the practical application of table setting, placement, service, food, etc. there was always problems. And somehow they were always surprised...what do you mean we can't fit a 400 in a 200 person-capacity ballroom? Duh idiots.
One problem was serving large weddings plated dinners. Guests at the weddings saw a huge ballroom where dinner would be served. Us servers, in the back of the house, saw a huge kitchen that we had to carry hot-as plates with our bare hands (yeah, we didn't get gloves for the longest time) from one end to the other. The team was divided into usually 3 or 4 servers per section, depending on the size of the table being served. I was on the team that had to run to the opposite end of the kitchen and enter the ballroom through the doors furthest from the prep area. Yes I burned my hands, but what was even worse was that I remember spilling sauce off the plates all over my stomach because we were in such a rush with such hot plates. I felt so bad serving the dinner looking all junky. The other problem with large weddings was keeping the drunk guests under control. Usually weddings had open bars, which was nice for us servers because we got gratuity off of all the drinks served-- the more they drank, the more we made. Since it was at a hotel where wedding guests either had or could get a room, you didn't have to cut them off unless you knew they weren't staying or became belligerent. Somehow misfortune happened to me again and at one wedding I was serving the table with the guests who showed up drunk. As I was trying to serve these two men the salad course, they refused to acknowledge me so I had to remove the napkin and menu from their plate, lay the napkin across their lap, set the menu to the side, and serve them their salads. And if that sounds tricky, I had to do it while I was holding three salad plates. Needless to say I was annoyed. These two particular men were kicked out of the wedding right around the time the main course was served.
There were two things about weddings that I did like. First was the entertainment. We would have mini-dance parties in the back of the house when there was a good DJ. The drunk entertainment was also awesome. At one wedding the bridal party sang a Michael Bublé song and they were terrible! It was hilarious. The second good thing about weddings was the food. If the chefs made too much for a plated dinner (usually didn't happen) or if there was left over food from the buffets we got to chow down afterwards. And the cake...oh the cake! My favorite was the wedding that had the red velvet layered with cheesecake (like the Cheesecake Factory) and it was amazing. I got a stomachache because I ate so much --I didn't eat enough before I went to work and around 11 I was starving so I scarfed it down. And that particular wedding had lamb as the main course, which I don't like so I didn't eat any "real" food.
Weddings were always interesting, both good and bad interesting. The Royal Wedding was probably the most interesting I was involved with, and that is Chapter 6 ;)
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
BotH: chapter 4
Chapter 4
The 6-month Curse
It was the policy at The Resort that you couldn't advance into a new position or department unless you had been at your current one for six months.There were two problems with this. First was when help was needed in certain areas immediately- a lot of positions were vacant because of this policy. This was one of those policies that caused The Resort to get in its own way, especially since they always wanted perfection in its staff. The other downside was that this caused a lot of ladder climbing. Usually getting promoted every six months is quite an achievement, but when your resort is suffering because of lack of good employees, they will move up unqualified people into positions that need to be filled. In order to seem like you were qualified (and unfortunately SO many people weren't) you had to seem like you were a perfect employee whenever the bosses were looking. This whole area of ladder-climbing middle-management would throw people under the bus if it meant they looked better for upper management. No one would ever take the blame, learn their lesson, fix the problem, and move on. The buck was passed all the time. You wouldn't expect some of the people who had years of experience to do this, but it happened daily. The other problem was that these middle managers had their heads so far up their superior's butts that they missed chances to really make a difference and a memorable experience for a guest.
Mr. French was a super rich guest (the one so rich that he wasn't on the internet) that stayed with us a couple of times. He was very demanding and very particular about how he wanted his stay to go. Because he flew in from France he had jet lag so he requested to use the spa after hours when no one was there (like 2 am). Initially his butler, Ernest, said no (in a respectful way) because there were liabilities with no one being there. Mr.French complained to the General Manager, who then allowed him to have unrestricted access to the spa. Mr.French, because he is mister rich and powerful, invited a friend in with him and the two of them trashed the spa. The next day when the Spa Manager got there the fighting began. The General Manager denied responsibility and didn't want to be the one to tell Mr. French that he couldn't have unrestricted access anymore, so he handed the issue down to the Front Desk Manager, Carol. She denied responsibility since it was the Spa's problem, not hers, and passed blame and responsibility of breaking the news to the butler. The butler had nothing to do with Mr. French trashing the spa, yet somehow no one would take the blame, fix the problem, and apologize to the Spa staff. And because everyone was afraid of Mr. French they made the butler tell him that his after-hours spa access was revoked.
Carlos was a nice guy, but he was a taker. Some people are givers and some, like him, were takers. He transferred to our hotel when it opened to be the new Private Dining Captain. He had been at his old resort for about a year and was a Captain there as well. His boss, Alex, was the Private Dining Manager and he was absolutely the most amazing person ever. Somehow these two made it work and when Alex transferred to Puerto Rico (about six months after the resort opened--surprise surprise) guess who filled his spot? Yes, Carlos. He went power hungry and it ended up being really hard to work with him. Once he got that Manager position he became a dog-eat-dog kind of guy. The only good thing is that he took responsibility for a lot of things, but he also took ALL the credit for anything good that the department did. And less than six months after he was in the Manager position I saw him applying for new jobs within the company, just at another location. He came in and built everyone up, and then he planned to abandon us. After he became Manager he left to go assist another property with their opening in Puerto Rico (where Alex had gone) and we were afraid that he might never come back (which was a real possibility). He extended his stay about a week extra, too, which sucked. Right at six months he transferred to the restaurant to be their Manager and completely left our department hanging (our department was struggling with getting ready for the busy season). And literally the second he transferred, if anyone needed anything (Private Dining and the restaurant shared a kitchen so we were always around each other) he would tell us he didn't work in PD anymore and to find someone else that could help. He would literally be standing next to us, with the solution, and say no. Then, six months later to no one's surprise, he transferred to Florida for another new position. I got on his LinkedIn profile and he totally lied about his positions and fluffed up his resume to make him seem more magnificent than he was...
I could go on. Perhaps I will another time.
The 6-month Curse
It was the policy at The Resort that you couldn't advance into a new position or department unless you had been at your current one for six months.There were two problems with this. First was when help was needed in certain areas immediately- a lot of positions were vacant because of this policy. This was one of those policies that caused The Resort to get in its own way, especially since they always wanted perfection in its staff. The other downside was that this caused a lot of ladder climbing. Usually getting promoted every six months is quite an achievement, but when your resort is suffering because of lack of good employees, they will move up unqualified people into positions that need to be filled. In order to seem like you were qualified (and unfortunately SO many people weren't) you had to seem like you were a perfect employee whenever the bosses were looking. This whole area of ladder-climbing middle-management would throw people under the bus if it meant they looked better for upper management. No one would ever take the blame, learn their lesson, fix the problem, and move on. The buck was passed all the time. You wouldn't expect some of the people who had years of experience to do this, but it happened daily. The other problem was that these middle managers had their heads so far up their superior's butts that they missed chances to really make a difference and a memorable experience for a guest.
Mr. French was a super rich guest (the one so rich that he wasn't on the internet) that stayed with us a couple of times. He was very demanding and very particular about how he wanted his stay to go. Because he flew in from France he had jet lag so he requested to use the spa after hours when no one was there (like 2 am). Initially his butler, Ernest, said no (in a respectful way) because there were liabilities with no one being there. Mr.French complained to the General Manager, who then allowed him to have unrestricted access to the spa. Mr.French, because he is mister rich and powerful, invited a friend in with him and the two of them trashed the spa. The next day when the Spa Manager got there the fighting began. The General Manager denied responsibility and didn't want to be the one to tell Mr. French that he couldn't have unrestricted access anymore, so he handed the issue down to the Front Desk Manager, Carol. She denied responsibility since it was the Spa's problem, not hers, and passed blame and responsibility of breaking the news to the butler. The butler had nothing to do with Mr. French trashing the spa, yet somehow no one would take the blame, fix the problem, and apologize to the Spa staff. And because everyone was afraid of Mr. French they made the butler tell him that his after-hours spa access was revoked.
Carlos was a nice guy, but he was a taker. Some people are givers and some, like him, were takers. He transferred to our hotel when it opened to be the new Private Dining Captain. He had been at his old resort for about a year and was a Captain there as well. His boss, Alex, was the Private Dining Manager and he was absolutely the most amazing person ever. Somehow these two made it work and when Alex transferred to Puerto Rico (about six months after the resort opened--surprise surprise) guess who filled his spot? Yes, Carlos. He went power hungry and it ended up being really hard to work with him. Once he got that Manager position he became a dog-eat-dog kind of guy. The only good thing is that he took responsibility for a lot of things, but he also took ALL the credit for anything good that the department did. And less than six months after he was in the Manager position I saw him applying for new jobs within the company, just at another location. He came in and built everyone up, and then he planned to abandon us. After he became Manager he left to go assist another property with their opening in Puerto Rico (where Alex had gone) and we were afraid that he might never come back (which was a real possibility). He extended his stay about a week extra, too, which sucked. Right at six months he transferred to the restaurant to be their Manager and completely left our department hanging (our department was struggling with getting ready for the busy season). And literally the second he transferred, if anyone needed anything (Private Dining and the restaurant shared a kitchen so we were always around each other) he would tell us he didn't work in PD anymore and to find someone else that could help. He would literally be standing next to us, with the solution, and say no. Then, six months later to no one's surprise, he transferred to Florida for another new position. I got on his LinkedIn profile and he totally lied about his positions and fluffed up his resume to make him seem more magnificent than he was...
I could go on. Perhaps I will another time.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
BotH: chapter 3
Chapter 3
The Hotel Heiress
Sundance was my first encounter with any celebrities at the hotel. Other departments had already been working with them, so I was excited to finally get my chance to see one. I was a greeter at the main entrance for a Toyota-sponsored event in which I handed each guest a spiked hot chocolate as they came in. As I was standing there at the doors Paris Hilton walked out to wait for her ride into town. She wasn't party of the Toyota-sponsored event but she still managed to get her photo opp in front of their banners. Did you know she smokes? I didn't until then...Anyway, I saw her for two minutes and I thought that was pretty cool.
A couples of days later I was grabbing extra hours by helping out in private dining (room service) when Candace and I were asked to go do a clean up in a room that hadn't been serviced for a day so we both needed to go. When we got to the room no one was there and as we cleaned I noticed the room was full of soda bottles laying on the ground that were half full, food barely eaten off its plates with cigarettes put out on them, and mostly that it wreaked of smoke (and not just cigarette smoke). Some of the food had been there for days and the room was crowded with shopping bags and luggage so it was hard to navigate through everthing. This particular suite had the living room and bedroom separate and as Candace was in the bedroom I noticed all of the luggage had Paris Hilton written all over it, kind of like how Louis Vuitton does his luggage. I remember saying to Candace, "who would want Paris Hilton written all over their luggage?" Duh, right?! That was the look Candace gave me, too...my poor brain took nearly five minutes to realize whose room I was in! What struck me the most was how small of a room she had, especially considering the posse she had with her.
I hope they charged her for smoking in her room...
The Hotel Heiress
Sundance was my first encounter with any celebrities at the hotel. Other departments had already been working with them, so I was excited to finally get my chance to see one. I was a greeter at the main entrance for a Toyota-sponsored event in which I handed each guest a spiked hot chocolate as they came in. As I was standing there at the doors Paris Hilton walked out to wait for her ride into town. She wasn't party of the Toyota-sponsored event but she still managed to get her photo opp in front of their banners. Did you know she smokes? I didn't until then...Anyway, I saw her for two minutes and I thought that was pretty cool.
A couples of days later I was grabbing extra hours by helping out in private dining (room service) when Candace and I were asked to go do a clean up in a room that hadn't been serviced for a day so we both needed to go. When we got to the room no one was there and as we cleaned I noticed the room was full of soda bottles laying on the ground that were half full, food barely eaten off its plates with cigarettes put out on them, and mostly that it wreaked of smoke (and not just cigarette smoke). Some of the food had been there for days and the room was crowded with shopping bags and luggage so it was hard to navigate through everthing. This particular suite had the living room and bedroom separate and as Candace was in the bedroom I noticed all of the luggage had Paris Hilton written all over it, kind of like how Louis Vuitton does his luggage. I remember saying to Candace, "who would want Paris Hilton written all over their luggage?" Duh, right?! That was the look Candace gave me, too...my poor brain took nearly five minutes to realize whose room I was in! What struck me the most was how small of a room she had, especially considering the posse she had with her.
I hope they charged her for smoking in her room...
Saturday, May 11, 2013
BotH: Chapter 2
I feel like I need to give enough background for you to understand the irony or humor in certain situations, so I apologize, but hopefully this will be one of the last "background" chapters.
Chapter 3
Do's and Don'ts
The first two days of my employment at The Resort was intensive brand training. Brand training consisted of the history of The Resort (it has a lot of locations around the world), the do's and don'ts of service, and the do's and don'ts of our resort in particular. The next two weeks were then broken down into training in our departments.
I was in awe the first few days. That is the best way to describe it. The Resort is huge, easily the biggest hotel I had ever been in, and it was fancy. When you walked around and toured the property that was the only word to come into mind- fancy. Walking around the back of the house (non-public/employee-only areas) was confusing at first, but it almost felt like you were working on a cruise ship. The main floor to the guest was actually the third floor for employees. It was like being in the belly of the beast.
With a resort this big and with a reputation to uphold (Candace, you may giggle here) there were a lot of rules. Employees couldn't clock in more than five minutes before/after a shift. This was sometimes problematic since most employees were shuttled to the resort from the other side of the mountain and the shuttle only came every thirty minutes. This was probably the most complained about situation for the first few months. Employees weren't allowed on the property when they weren't on their shift unless they had permission--really funny story about this one. Employees had to meet/exceed all of Forbes' 5-Star and AAA 5-Diamond requirements for service. Not as easy as you'd think. You could say "assist" but not "help." Appropriate ways of saying "yes" were, "absolutely," "certainly," "but of course," and "it would be my pleasure." Use the guest's name whenever possible. Never say "guys" as in, "how are you guys doing today" unless the entire group was male. Things like that. Very nit picky, very important to The Resort, and really hard to get used to.
Luckily for me AAA and Forbes didn't include or rate banquets in their criteria to obtain a 5 star/diamond status. Unluckily for me my Banquet Manager was...a piece of work, and she was probably more strict than any undercover AAA/Forbes employee. Even after being trained, we couldn't set the tables until she showed us how before each event. You couldn't go on your lunch break, even if it was scheduled, until she told you it was okay. Needed to go to the bathroom? Better ask Melissa. Couldn't find her? Then you my friend were SOL. Big time. A lot of these do's and don'ts were unnecessary, but some were obviously important even if it was hard to understand why at the time.
Friday, May 10, 2013
BotH: Chapter 1
Chapter 1
The People of The Resort
There are four types of people who stayed at The Resort. During orientation as we marveled how fancy our resort was, we were taught how to treat our guests and what working with the various types of guests would be like. The Resort did not categorize them in this way, that is purely me and how I found them to be.
First you have Regular People. They are everyday people who save money to go and enjoy themselves for a weekend. Sometimes they are uber cheap because they can barely afford to stay there, but they are usually nice people. Most Regular People tip well because they know how hard it is to make money and they realize that we, like them, are also just Regular People. In the first few months I was there I saw Regular People mainly at events like weddings and some conferences, but I didn't work with them regularly until I had been there about eight months and switched departments.
Then there are the people who Think They're Rich (TTR). The TTR were mostly local patrons, mainly real estate agents, brokers, attorneys, socialites, etc that yes, they were rich, but in the scheme of "richness" around the world they weren't that rich. I'd say they were under $500,000 a year (not that that is something to scoff at...). I worked in the banquet department when I first started so I was around The TTR a lot. Rarely were they friendly or conversational and most of the time they treated the staff (and their friends for that matter) like their crap didn't stink. They were not the most fun people to be around...and they didn't tip well. The fun ones were the socialites who showed up to every party to hang out with The TTR and booze it up, usually making fools of themselves. There was a blonde who came to so many parties and you could hear the whispers among the guests wondering why she was there or see the looks of so-and-so has had to much to drink again. As entertaining as she was, this business man, Mr. Rude, was probably one of my most memorable experiences while working with The TTR and I'll get back to him later.
Then there are The Rich. These people are rich. Richey Rich rich. Some of them were so rich that you couldn't find them on the internet, and not because there was nothing to read about them, but because they had the internet cleaned of their presence. A certain man traveled with a security team every time he was at The Resort and rarely talked to us directly...but we'll talk about him more later. The Rich were also usually famous--but not celebrity famous-- famous in their own spheres of influence: CEO's, President's & VP's, Owners, etc. These people were the Bill Gates of their companies, just not as well known publicly.
Lastly there are The Celebrities. Since we were in Park City there was a pretty large celebrity circle that would come to ski or attend Hollywood-Type events (like Sundance). We had special training on how to interact with The Celebrities, mainly remembering to use their pseudonyms instead of their real names, even if it was ridiculously obvious who they were.
The employees that I worked with had varying degrees of experience in either food service or resorts, sometimes both and unfortunately sometimes neither. A lot of them were from all over the world and some of them had the most fascinating stories to tell. I want to go ahead and introduce you to the people you will hear about the most, there is kind of a lot.
Butlers: Nigel, Mike, and Ernest
Banquet team: Ben,Candace, Remy, Me, my mom, Tia, Susie, Christie, Rob, and Lee.
Banquet Bartenders: Chris and Ryan
Private Dining: Carlos, Alex, Josef, and Steve
Registration and Reservations: Alicia, Ron, and Lucy
Chefs: Phil, Tony, Orrin, Billy, Jake, Eric, and Chelsea
Various management people: Melissa, Mr. Great, Amanda, Carrie, and Lori
The People of The Resort
There are four types of people who stayed at The Resort. During orientation as we marveled how fancy our resort was, we were taught how to treat our guests and what working with the various types of guests would be like. The Resort did not categorize them in this way, that is purely me and how I found them to be.
First you have Regular People. They are everyday people who save money to go and enjoy themselves for a weekend. Sometimes they are uber cheap because they can barely afford to stay there, but they are usually nice people. Most Regular People tip well because they know how hard it is to make money and they realize that we, like them, are also just Regular People. In the first few months I was there I saw Regular People mainly at events like weddings and some conferences, but I didn't work with them regularly until I had been there about eight months and switched departments.
Then there are the people who Think They're Rich (TTR). The TTR were mostly local patrons, mainly real estate agents, brokers, attorneys, socialites, etc that yes, they were rich, but in the scheme of "richness" around the world they weren't that rich. I'd say they were under $500,000 a year (not that that is something to scoff at...). I worked in the banquet department when I first started so I was around The TTR a lot. Rarely were they friendly or conversational and most of the time they treated the staff (and their friends for that matter) like their crap didn't stink. They were not the most fun people to be around...and they didn't tip well. The fun ones were the socialites who showed up to every party to hang out with The TTR and booze it up, usually making fools of themselves. There was a blonde who came to so many parties and you could hear the whispers among the guests wondering why she was there or see the looks of so-and-so has had to much to drink again. As entertaining as she was, this business man, Mr. Rude, was probably one of my most memorable experiences while working with The TTR and I'll get back to him later.
Then there are The Rich. These people are rich. Richey Rich rich. Some of them were so rich that you couldn't find them on the internet, and not because there was nothing to read about them, but because they had the internet cleaned of their presence. A certain man traveled with a security team every time he was at The Resort and rarely talked to us directly...but we'll talk about him more later. The Rich were also usually famous--but not celebrity famous-- famous in their own spheres of influence: CEO's, President's & VP's, Owners, etc. These people were the Bill Gates of their companies, just not as well known publicly.
Lastly there are The Celebrities. Since we were in Park City there was a pretty large celebrity circle that would come to ski or attend Hollywood-Type events (like Sundance). We had special training on how to interact with The Celebrities, mainly remembering to use their pseudonyms instead of their real names, even if it was ridiculously obvious who they were.
The employees that I worked with had varying degrees of experience in either food service or resorts, sometimes both and unfortunately sometimes neither. A lot of them were from all over the world and some of them had the most fascinating stories to tell. I want to go ahead and introduce you to the people you will hear about the most, there is kind of a lot.
Butlers: Nigel, Mike, and Ernest
Banquet team: Ben,Candace, Remy, Me, my mom, Tia, Susie, Christie, Rob, and Lee.
Banquet Bartenders: Chris and Ryan
Private Dining: Carlos, Alex, Josef, and Steve
Registration and Reservations: Alicia, Ron, and Lucy
Chefs: Phil, Tony, Orrin, Billy, Jake, Eric, and Chelsea
Various management people: Melissa, Mr. Great, Amanda, Carrie, and Lori
Back of the House: Introduction
It has taken me a really long time to put pen to paper with regards to Back of the House. I have always envisioned it in my mind as an episode of The Office, but after a while I realized that as funny as that may be, it wasn't really what working there was like most of the time. I realized that my thoughts-turned-stories were more of a drama with bits of comedy sprinkled in...a dramedy???
Since some of my friends still work at The Resort, I will use fictitious names throughout. And no, it wasn't really called "The Resort." As I get all of my names sorted and thoughts organized I hope that it will be an enjoyable thing to read about the experiences I/we had there. The only person's identity who I won't change is my mom's because it is integral to know that a mother/daughter pair worked together. Plus, she helps fill in the gaps with some of the stories. All of these experiences either happened to me, I watched them happen, or they were relayed to me from someone directly involved. The hearsay is quite entertaining as well and I'll let you know what it is when I come across it. Also, I'm calling each section "chapters" but in reality they're more like mini-chapters. Or sections. Or...I don't know...a short story.
With all of that being said, I hope you enjoy chapter1 of Back of the House.
Since some of my friends still work at The Resort, I will use fictitious names throughout. And no, it wasn't really called "The Resort." As I get all of my names sorted and thoughts organized I hope that it will be an enjoyable thing to read about the experiences I/we had there. The only person's identity who I won't change is my mom's because it is integral to know that a mother/daughter pair worked together. Plus, she helps fill in the gaps with some of the stories. All of these experiences either happened to me, I watched them happen, or they were relayed to me from someone directly involved. The hearsay is quite entertaining as well and I'll let you know what it is when I come across it. Also, I'm calling each section "chapters" but in reality they're more like mini-chapters. Or sections. Or...I don't know...a short story.
With all of that being said, I hope you enjoy chapter1 of Back of the House.
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