Catering

The Governor Hotel sits in the middle of downtown Portland on 11th and Alder, next to a Starbucks and across the street from a cluster of food carts. In front of the main entrance valets dressed in funny suits chat with doormen, who also wear funny suits. It has several dining rooms on the second, third, and fourth floor. Because of the age of the hotel the rooms have names which are suggestive of culture and splendor such as ‘the grand ballroom’ ‘the billiard room’ and ‘the fireside lodge’. Back in the day the hotel was a private club for wealthy men, a place where old white guys would gather to smoke cigars, drink bourbon, and make fun of their wives.

Today the ballrooms in the governor hotel play host to a variety of private parties, all serviced by Jake’s catering, my employer. I work at Jake’s as a caterer, not as a server in the restaurant which is housed in a connecting building. This is an important distinction. While restaurant servers deliver food to a rotating group of different people at the same group of tables every day, caterers work by the party. Each event is different and requires a different level of service, a different room set-up, and a different time table. Unlike servers we do not get cash tips every night. Instead our gratuity is put into our paycheck at the end of each pay cycle. The gratuity rate is not based on our own individual performance but how the company did overall in the last two weeks. Because of this the caterer pays less personal attention to the guests than the server would. We do not introduce ourselves, we do not provide descriptions of the menu, we do not go the extra mile to ensure a wonderful guest experience because, quite frankly, we don’t have to. I’m getting my tip whether you liked my service or not…sucker.

The caterer’s job is simple. Every day we do the same thing with slight variations. I clock in, affix my bowtie to my neck, don my white jacket with ‘Jake’s’ lettering on the chest, and grab a piece of paper stuck on the bulletin board which tells the details of the event I am working on that day. One of the cool things about the job is that I never know what kind of event I am going to be working at on any given day until I grab the Banquet event order sheet. It could be a fundraiser for the college of naturopathic medicine, or a wedding, or an end of the year party for the electrical worker’s union of Oregon, or a wine tasting for the Oregon Pinot Noir society. The most important part of the sheet to look at is the projected start and end time. This is what gives me an idea of what time I am going to get off work that day.

Once we put on our catering duds we pour water, and coffee, and juice. We set glasses and bread rolls on the tables. We outfit service stands with water pitchers, and tea bowls, and extra napkins to cover up dirty dishes (God forbid the guests see a dirty dish). We always have a pre-meal meeting when our manager tells us all about the event and how we should service it. Often our boss, Nong, will enter the room and give us a talk about how this particular event is very important to business and that we have to remember to practice good customer service. In his accented English he will tell us, “It is vewy important that we treat the customer well. That means remembering to serve the lady first, knowing what type of wine you are serving, what type of food we are serving, always serving from the left and pulling dishes from the right.” The worst part of this emphasis on customer service is Nong’s insistence that we offer to dress each customer’s salad. I always feel incredibly silly picking the dressing up off the table and offering it to each guest, as if they are small infants who are incapable of pouring some vinaigrette on their own greens.

After the pre-meal we are sent back out on the floor which is what we call the room that we are serving the meal in. Once the guests arrive we serve the breakfast, or the lunch, or the dinner. We put down plates, fill glasses, clear dishes. We stack up plates in the back, fill up racks with dirty glasses, throw copious amounts of food into the trash. We take a break and enjoy some free grub. Then its back to work. Once the guests are gone we clear out the entire room. We clear out trash and silverware and dishware and glassware. We strip the tablecloths off the tables and vaccum the floor. Sometimes we move in tables or take out tables. Someone brings up the tablecloths and silverware for the next event and we do ‘the set’. This involves preparing the entire room for the next event. Sometimes we don’t have to set for the next event if it won’t be occurring for a few days. This means that we do a ‘stack and vac, pull top linen,’ meaning that we stack up all the chairs, vaccum the floor, and get rid of the top tablecloth, leaving the bottom one on the table. This is the easiest way that events end and on Friday and Saturday night everyone prays for a stack and vac. After the dishes are sent to the dishpit and the back is mopped and everything is cleaned up one of my managers will tell me to take off. At this point I throw my jacket into a hamper, clock out, and leave the Governor.

And that’s it. That’s the job with some slight variation here and there. It’s routinized, largely unthinking work. It’s pretty easy work. There’s a decent amount of downtime, waiting for guests to arrive or finish eating. However, there are some periods of intense physical labour when we carry full plates of food into the room or empty plates out of the room. The trickiest part is paying attention to detail. Making sure that you haven’t forgotten to fill all the creamers on the table, or to check to see how many vegetarians are sitting at your section, or to grab the ketchup the woman requested while you were right in the middle of serving breakfast to people at another table.

The job itself isn’t highly interested or rewarding, but meeting the people who work at Jake’s makes it worth my time to work there. It is an incredibly diverse bunch of folks who work at the Governor. People work there for different reasons. There are people who see catering as a long-term career, there are people who see it as merely a pit-stop on the way to greater things, there are people who do it to pay the bills while they are going to school, there are people for whom it is a fall-back after a failure in another career, and there are people who see it as a trap from which they can never escape. There are the young, the middle aged, and a few of the old. There are Americans, Russians, Iranians, and Africans. There are the pot-heads and the alcoholics, the sweets fiends and the coffee hounds. There are the ecstatic, the bitter, the depressed, the resigned, the lethargic, and the manic. The thing that cracks me up most about the job is that, no matter how hard you work we are all paid the same and get almost the same amount of hours. So much for America being a meritocracy.

Some of my favorite people to work with are the long-term dudes. These are the older guys who have been doing the job for years and will be doing the job for years to come. They have all found ways to carve out happiness in a rather boring, unfulfilling job. One skill they all share is the ability to constantly look like they are working but, at the same time, never exerting too much energy. This is an invaluable skill because we do not have one of those jobs where you are free to relax and shoot the shit with coworkers when there is downtime on the job. Since our labor is not cheap the managers are always looking for ways to cut hours. If you appear to be slacking then they will send you home, or, potentially worse, assign you a menial chore. The strictest captain, (that’s what we call our managers) Victor, is notorious for assigning chores such as scrubbing down all the walls, counters, and sink surfaces with a brush and sudsy water or polishing all the silverware.

While the younger people are working frantically when the pressure is on, loading their trays to the brim with plates and glasses and then standing around not knowing what to do when their tasks are done the older guys pace their work out. The old timers are more likely fill up each tray to about ¾ capacity, knowing that once they clear it off all that’s waiting for them is another tray. The young people always want to finish the job quickly so they can rush off to whatever post work activities they are eager to enjoy. But the older timers realize that rushing is only going to wear you out faster, possibly lead to injury, and result in clocking out earlier and losing money.

One of my favorite co-workers is Phil. He is the catering philosopher. He always gives me tips on the correct way to do things. He can expound on the most banal subjects for an absurd amount of time. Some topics I have discussed with him include: how high to fill the creamers we set out on each table, how to carry water glasses, and how to organize items on your tray. Phil is in his 50’s working as a caterer and getting periodic cash from his mom to pay for health costs, but he thinks that he has it all figured out. Most of the other workers are annoyed by Phil because of his know-it-all ways and his tendency to take forever to do even simple tasks. He will often start with one task, such as setting down forks on a table, and then he will suddenly switch over to setting down plates or glasses instead. But, despite his shortcomings, I like Phil. I enjoy the confident, factual way he presents subjective opinions as objective truth. For instance, after one shift when we were changing into our street clothes he told me:

Well, we got 5 hours today, and that’s good enough. Generally I’m happy with anything over 4 hours. Anything less than that and it’s not worth your time to come down here and work. But 4 hours is enough money.

Phil delivered this statement with a calm assuredness, as if he was delivering the conclusion to a developed dissertation. But the term ‘enough money’ is completely subjective. Who knows what enough money is? That figure depends on the person. If I have tons of student loans, an extravagant lifestyle, or a gang of kids the target of ‘enough’ money is going to be set way higher than if I am a single, moderate individual living alone. But Phil has his system worked out and knows how much he needs to support himself and he assumes that everyone else should take a page out of his book.

Then there’s Hassan, another old-timer. He’s probably in his late 50’s, a dinosaur in an industry that demands a good amount of physical labour and long hours of standing on your feet. Hassan has lead an extremely interesting life. I only get tidbits of his history during lulls in the job so I have to piece his story together, weaving the isolated tales like pieces of a quilt into a cohesive whole. So far I have gleaned that he took part in the first Iranian revolution, he has lived in Russia and Germany, he has backpacked across most of Europe, and he has dated a woman who loves to bike ride in the nude. He is also politically active. One shift I saw him wearing a pin on his lapel and getting others to sign a form. He told me that he was getting signatures to petition the employers at his other catering job to give them a raise and pay them for some hours which had not been paid to them correctly.

My favorite thing about Hassan is his fastidiousness. When he changes clothes after his shift he is always immaculately dressed. He wears cotton wool vests, dress pants, and leather shoes, all the time. He often talks about the value of craftsmanship and how in his country you can buy a pair of individually tailored shoes that are much more comfortable than the factory produced shoes of this country. He also is careful about what he ingests. He loves tea, but only if it is seeped correctly and he enjoys coffee on rare occasions when he has time to prepare it and sit down to enjoy it. He will only drink coffee or tea from metal thermoses. He refuses to use paper cups because of their harm to the environment. Hassan lives at a neat, sedate pace. He enjoys gardening and preparing meals for himself with fresh ingredients. Hassan always seems busy at work. When he’s in the back he’s wiping down surfaces and when he’s on the floor he’s holding a cocktail tray, ready to take garbage from customers. But, he always has time for a chat and he doesn’t ever seem to wear himself out. If Phil is the catering philosopher then Hassan is the catering Buddha.

One of the most colorful employees is Albert. He is a Russian immigrant who speaks with a rolling accent. He is tall and desperately thin. His face is pinched and wrinkled, hair thin and graying. His teeth are a brown and black cobblestoned mess. Once in a while you might pass him in the back hallways and see him staring off into space, a thousand mile gaze in those black eyes. He has been known to kill time at work by riding up and down the elevator over and over again. He lives next to the hotel and will always eat his meals during breaks with lightening speed shoveling food into his mouth so that he has time to run back to his apartment and chain smoke a few cigarettes before his break ends. But, despite his strange demeanor, habits, and character, Albert retains a child-like humor, and a boyish exuberance which shines through his gruesome visage. He always whistles or turns on rock and roll music while we are putting out place settings. He likes to crack jokes and play pranks on coworkers. Albert doesn’t talk much about his life but rumors abound around the kitchen about him. Rumor has it that Albert was once a rock star in Europe. “I used to be the man, man.’ He tells me on one occasion. He has given several of his cds out. One of my favorite song titles on the cd is, “America, fuck you.” Albert will try to make you uncomfortable. He stands too close when he talks to you and he will grab your elbow or lightly poke you in the side on random occasions. He says things in order to be controversial. He asked my coworker Dominique if she knew where he could acquire food stamps. He told me during a shift that his leg was shaking because he drank too much wine the night before

When I worked as a caterer at my college there were only two groups of workers, the students and the non-students. The school liked to fill a certain percentage of the staff as student positions so they would hire us with little or no interview or pre-employment screening. I remember smoking a bowl of strawberry hash with my friend on a hill on the top of campus before going into my interview. I was pleasantly high when I entered the conference room. It was just the perfect level of stoned where I felt elated yet no sign of paranoia or worry creeped into my thoughts. The non-student workers were first or second generation immigrants of phillipino or latino descent. They were interviewed separately and given a separate payscale.

It was an interesting culture clash to have the sons and daughters of the bourgoise work next to these people whose financial well-being often depended on working 14 hour days at several different jobs. I remember one incident that occurred between a spoiled student and our manager. Our manager’s name was Pinky, a manic hard-working Phillipino woman who had moved to the states when her husband picked her out of a mail-order bride catalogue (no joke). Pinky acted as if her job hung in the balance on every shift we worked. She was in constant motion, setting tablecloths, running dishes, doing all the tasks at lightening speed. Brent was an effete, prissy first year who had signed up to do catering with the idea of collecting an easy paycheck. But catering is not one of those campus jobs where you can sit on your butt and collect some quick cash, like the library entrance desk attendant whose sole responsibility was to glance up from his/her reading material whenever anyone entered into the library. Brent didn’t like to lift anything over 10 pounds and considered clearing food off tables as, “icky.” He would often hide in the bathroom to avoid work. Pinky was infuriated at his lackadaisical approach. She couldn’t quite pronounce his name so she referred to him as ‘Branch.’ “That Branch, he worthless,” she would say. But that’s the difference between someone whose working to pay rent and someone whose working to pay for Subway sandwiches, beer, and weed, the three greatest expenses for a college student.