The entire time the bride was arguing with her mom on what specific dressing should be drizzled over her "finely chopped mixed field greens". Those jerks, you don't chop mixed field greens! Or she wanted to guarantee that the beef wouldn't be overcooked. I told her, "Can you guarantee that your DJ will stop and get the people off the floor so the food doesn't sit in the hotbox for an extra 12 minutes turning the med-rare filet into mid-well?" She couldn't answer that one.
Well, finally around 3:30pm, the painful "stress-free" meeting was over. I excused myself - leaving the sales chick to deal with any of their last effort crap and ran to the ballroom to do my pre-shift meeting with my staff for tonight's 274 person high school winter dance.
That's another story for next time.
Next Post: Today's Stupid-ass Coworker Comment
2 comments:
Have you ever thought about being a meeting planner instead? Trust me, from experience, being a banquet manager is PERFECT preparation. Plus, you will know what and what not to do to the operations team.
And by the way - brides and (especially) their mothers are EXACTLY why I didn't go into social planning. I was stuck for years doing every wedding that came through, for two hotels of my career. I vowed later to stay as far away from them as possible. Once I had two banquet managers under me I was already inching away, and now that I'm in sales, I keep all brides at arm's length - at closest.
I was a banquet captain under an incompetent assistant banquet manager and an incompetent banquet manager.
The banquet manager got fired because his incompetence was finally too much.
It wasn't just the turnover and the 33% labour costs.
Accounts were walking away.
I was talking to the assistant banquet manager the next day and he said, three times passed over, 'I wonder who they are going to hire next? I hope this one is gonna be better.'
And I said, 'It's me.' Because it already was. They gave me the job when I tried to leave.
I expected then that I would get someone to fill my old job.
But the effing b said no we can manage because I can do some shifts, too.
So, I can totally understand what Conan O'Brien is going through because I have lived it.
You can guess how many Sunday and closing shifts the effing b took.
A three person banquet team that can cover fifteen shifts a week goes down to ten shifts a week plus whatever I can get out of my boss.
Meanwhile, there are five people in the sales office, who spend their nine to five waiting for the phone to ring.
One day, old mister *** the gm retires and is replaced by a sales manager brought in from a hack hotel.
New gm decides that I should finalize the details on contracts by having meetings just like yours.
But there is no offer of anymore help on the floor.
Just added responsibility.
And more hours.
While five people are sitting in the sales office.
At first I thought they wanted me to move into sales.
I realized though they were just getting more blood out of me.
That set the stage.
I started delegating those meetings to whoever was in.
Five sales people should have done that job anyway.
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