Scenes from a Hotel Chain of Fools

My dream of being a hotel catering queen turned out to be a nightmare on steroids.

Nuts

Before getting my feet wet in one of the few New York City hotels with an indoor pool, I faced a strange job interview with my soon-to-be employer.

My appointment with Tina left me just as nervous and jerky as she was. At one point she lit a cigarette, missing the ashtray with every flick, taking heavy drags until she smoked it down to a nub, and then lighting another.  Okay, it was the 80’s, but sucking down smoke during an interview was not the norm. Within a few minutes, I saw a million red flags.  I thought,  “Nope. I’m out.”

So right after I agreed to be her banquet assistant, she started calling in sick. On my first day, I booked parties, supervised events, scheduled waiters, and zipped around the hallways, trying to cover a lot of bases. I’d been bamboozled. They were only paying me to type, answer phones, and track banquet orders. My feet should not have been killing me. By day two, I wanted to quit, but I needed the money.

When Tina did come into the office, she’d spill her guts, sharing the sad details of her prior life, ad nauseam. Like the time she jumped out of a window and broke both of her legs.  A tragic figure, she was not exactly a breath of fresh air when she showed up.  

And then there were her "magic eyeglasses."  Whenever she made an appearance wearing

glasses, she’d be a different Tina.  The cast of characters lurking behind her "corrected" vision was unnerving.  Sometimes she had a French accent.  At other times she spoke like a truck driver. Once she was a southern belle for an entire day.   And she sat.  And sat. She drank up all the coffee, and never lifted a finger. The girl was a hot mess.  

After six weeks of Tina, I snitched.  I summoned all my courage and scheduled a meeting with her boss. He needed to know I was running the department by myself. I also had to tell him Tina was cray-cray. Nutty. Whacko. I wasn’t criticizing. But boy, did she need help.  And I needed a transfer.  

When I blurted out my story, he was sympathetic, and not the least bit shocked. He knew.  Then he gave me the PC response:  Her absences were excessive and he was going to let her go.  He’d hired a replacement.  I'd have a new boss by Monday.  But wait – there was more. He promoted me to assistant banquet sales manager, which meant I’d get a percentage of every banquet I sold.  Oh. My. God. A raise.  With renewed enthusiasm and a few more bucks, I was ready to take on anything. Well, almost anything.

Jive Turkey

Enter my new boss, Vickie.  Nice lady. Experienced. Native New Yorker. Smart. And we had similar hobbies. A pal.  A kindred spirit, I thought.  Not. So. Fast. 

At five o'clock on the dot Vickie was often MIA, leaving me to cover those annoying evening parties, usually after having been on my feet all day. Vickie prided herself on selling events, which meant she was on the phone a lot.  Funniest thing – If you overheard her, you’d think she was talking to her boyfriend, and on occasion, to her manicurist.  But my snitching days were over. Besides, she was way better than Tina, so my lips were sealed.

Things seemed to be improving, but I was overlooking the cooking.    

Rubber Chickened Out

Our banquet “chef,” Ben, whose English was marginal, wasn’t qualified to run a hotel kitchen. A sweetheart of a guy, he was a “bargain,” plucked from a now defunct fast food chain. We never knew his country of origin, although he told us, more than once.  Who could understand what this man was saying?  Poor Ben was hard pressed to prepare anything palatable. We artfully dodged most culinary disasters by steering guests towards a foolproof menu selection – the roasted chicken. For cocktail parties, we always led with our “très chic” franks in a blanket.  If the guest recoiled in horror, we’d explain it was the latest trend and also very hot in Paris, of course. Thank God most guests were gullible, and cheap.  

Ben was a trooper. He’d thumb through the pages of the esteemed Escoffier cookbook, studying recipes.  He wasn’t great at reading English, although I’m sure the pictures were helpful. Still, his most edible feat was rubber chicken, with a murky (but tasty) gravy, poured all over it.  

Day after day, we got away with it.  Until he was fired.

Chopped

Enter Stan, our new “chef,” a nice fellow who spoke English and was fond of knives.  One day, in a huff about his salary, he was seen juggling knives while shouting profanities.  Soon the knife show became routine. Walking through the kitchen was no picnic when he was around. A fine pastry chef, he made a great Crème Brûléee but not much else. I was relieved when they let him go, and I prayed for a real chef, without the quotation marks.  

You can't make this stuff up.

 Pity Party

I thought my life at the hotel would get a little easier when we finally got an authentic chef. They said he was on loan from another hotel in our chain, but I was told it was his last stop on the way to the front door. I also heard he was known for making great hors d’oeuvres but “couldn’t judge food.” In our business that meant he’d only prepare enough for forty people when you told him you had seventy-five.  

Enter a potential client, anxious to book.  He paid a hefty sum for his one hundred person cocktail party, and we told him it would go off without a hitch.    When the chef brought the food up to the kitchen, Vickie and I were thrilled.  Everything looked scrumptious.  We waited for more to come up, only to learn that was it. We were in trouble. I don’t think he made enough to feed six hungry men.  

The waiters passed the hors d’oeuvres.  We didn’t dare lay everything out buffet style, because even Stevie Wonder could see the food would never stretch. 

Back in the kitchen, the trays of hors d'oeuvres were quickly dwindling. We’d be out of food in no time, and the party was just getting started.  The chef had disappeared. We huddled with the runners and waiters, thinking. Worrying.  Panicking.

Then Vicky had an idea, and it wasn't good.  

As the discarded little plates of picked over hors d'oeuvres came back to the kitchen, she suggested we harvest the uneaten, intact pieces, and re-serve them.   Judging by the blank stares around the room, I'd say we all considered it.  But when she showed us how to reconstruct half eaten hors d'oeuvres, demonstrating how to smoosh and remold them, only to re-serve the slobbery mess to hungry guests.  Like you, we gagged.  That’s when I told Vicky I had a migraine and needed to leave.

The next day I learned there were no complaints, and towards the end of the evening the chef returned with "alternative" snacks.  Tidbits of food, nicely decorated but resembling leftovers from the hotel lobby cafe, were passed around to the uninformed victims guests. We never mentioned that night again, until now.

Cutlery Capers

Food wasn’t our only problem. While planning a luncheon for two-hundred fifty, records showed we were short fifty silverware settings. When we learned the hotel had tons of silverware locked up in “inventory control,” we requested more than enough to get us through the event, and breathed a sigh of relief. Shocked when the inventory folks turned us down, we asked, “Why?” Because our luncheon was at the end of the month.  If we pulled out the silverware, it would be charged as an expense. An expense we were not allowed to post until the first of the next month - two days after the banquet.  

Once again, I felt the burn of familiar hot water.

Ricky, our street smart banquet helper, offered to go up to the Bronx to steal buy silverware for us, through his “connections.”  This was of course a foolish proposition. Why would Vicky and I do something so unscrupulous?  We were not that desperate. Besides, Ricky was quoting sky-high prices – we couldn’t afford it.   

On the day of the banquet, tensions were high, until the waiters assured us they’d solved the silverware problem. I watched them laughing and running to and from the back elevators, and then back to setting up the banquet room. Something fishy was going on, but so what?  Every table was fully set, with time to spare before the guests arrived.

Relieved and happy, I went down to the lobby cafe to take a break before my luncheon started. When I stepped across the threshold I could feel chaos in the air. I saw angry customers, fuming waiters, busboys racing around in circles, and a lot of untouched plates of food, just sitting in front of customers. And then I got it.  Our banquet waiters stole silverware from the cafe to cover our luncheon! With a bit of aiding and abetting by the café dishwasher, silverware was run up to our banquet room, as needed.  I slinked out and went back upstairs to cover my event, which was going quite swimmingly. That leads me to our next disaster.

Drain 'n Serve

The indoor pool was our best feature, so we looked forward to greeting a group of one hundred high school kids from Ohio who were coming in for a pool party. They’d only be at the hotel for one night, and the pool party was the highlight of their stay.  

A few days before the kids arrived, Vickie and I headed to the pool area to map out the event.  I kept staring at the water, which seemed to be awfully shallow, from end to end. Vickie brushed off my concerns. But when we came back two days later, the water was totally gone!  In a panic, we interrogated the pool manager, who explained it had been drained for routine maintenance. WTF? 

In spite of all hell breaking loose, there was no way he could refill it, which would have taken a few days anyway.  The group would be arriving that night.  We alerted the hotel brass, who decided to give the school a discount on their sleeping rooms. But the kids would have a swim-less evening. Bummer.  

When the students showed up for poolside fun, Vickie and I kept low profiles. We let the brass take the heat.  Later, I peeked into the pool area and saw unhappy teenagers, siting at poolside tables in their bathing suits, eating off of a sparse but beautiful buffet. SAD.

Last Course

After an exasperating year, with Silverware Gate, Alternative Snacks and The Pool Party from Hell behind me, I found another job. I also learned a lot. I am now unflappable.  I can pull off an event in the middle of a war zone, if necessary.  And I’ve used those skills to my advantage, for many, many years.