Catering nightmare (Bulgarian version)

Note to self: never hire anyone you don’t know. Especially if they don’t speak a single word of English; that’s a red flag too.

Sometimes the hiring process is a speedy one in the catering industry. Last Sunday, I thought that new guy, Spasz (that’s not a sneeze; it’s his first name), really had some kick-ass soccer moves. Somehow sheer soccer camaraderie seemed good enough for me to offer him a job. Never mind that Spasz was freshly arrived, literally, from his native Bulgaria; and never mind, either, that his English was so weak that he was struggling with “yes” and “no”.

I somehow managed to communicate on the soccer field, with the help of his brother in law, to meet him on Saturday. The idea was for him to act as my sous-chef, and along with my staff, help me tackle the two VIP events I had that night.

The idea was risky at best; I had never seen him before Sunday’s pick-up game. After all, he could have been the serial killer of the Balkans, or Spasz the ripper, I would still have hired him. So much for background checks.

I tend to be open-minded (some would say naïve) and being an immigrant myself in the archetypal land of immigrants, I really thought Spasz would be a great addition to my kitchen team.

Comes Saturday, Spasz was reassuringly on time. I took him in the Guimobile and we were off to prepare for the first event, a buffet for 60 guests.

The plan, at least in theory, was to set up the first event with my staff, leave the staff behind and then Spasz and I would split to our second event, a cocktail party for 100 people, where my second team was setting up. Pretty simple by catering standards; we do that all the time.

To make things interesting, I had consolidated the rentals orders. That also is common practice for caterers. Having the plates, glasses, silverware, tables and chairs, linens, along with other bar items delivered to one event instead of two saves a great deal on delivery fees.

Now, for a caterer, the challenge with 2 simultaneous events is the timing. If something goes wrong somewhere sometime, it can trigger a chain reaction that is hard to cancel. A sizable risk but again, we like to think we’re pretty good at what we do.

As things turn out, the first trigger to the chain reaction was to hand Spasz the keys to the Guimobile, and expect him to drive from the second event to the first, deliver the rentals, and come back to help me in the kitchen, so we could comfortably serve 100 starving people.

I did hand him the keys with confidence and saw him leaving with a car full of rentals. While communicating with the staff at the first event, I slowly realized something was going to go very wrong.

Spasz never made it to the first party, nor did he ever come back to the second. In fact, we never saw Spasz again. Ever.

One can only wonder what exactly happened for the reason that little is known of Spasz’s whereabouts that evening. We can only assume that he got lost at some point between the two events.

His brother in law called me late into the night and gave me the following update. Spasz had just come home. He did get lost. A lone, speechless foreign alien lost in American suburbia. He freaked out trying to find his way and, his stressed out eyes on the clock, realized minute after minute that he was not going to make it to either one of the parties. Aware of the screw-up and panicked, self-survival finally took over his otherwise perfectly sound sense of responsibilities. At some point, he recognized a road, abandoned the van on the side of the road and started walking. That road was Gulf-to-Bay boulevard, an 8-mile stretch slicing Pinellas county from East to West. It took him a dreadful 5-hour walk to get home. We later found the abandoned Guimobile somewhere in the city, keys on the contact and rentals in the trunk.

Catering events is a lot about planning; and a lot about improvising. Spasz, in his own way, taught me a lot about improvisation. The team at the first event, bless their heart, had to “improvise” a set of glasses, plates, silverware and linens for 60 people, which takes a lot of imagination and very little time. Think “Hell’s Kitchen”. But we somehow successfully managed to cater a great event with our client’s stuff plus some quickly purchased items at the Wal-Mart down the road.

The second event, where I was cooking, was more of a problem. I really counted on Spasz the sous-chef to help expediting food. His absence was devastating, and the stress of the situation difficult to bear.

In the end, in the catering just like in the restaurant industry, all events end up just fine. But sometimes it seems like they need to end up fine, sooner.

Disclaimer:
While the following post is inspired by what occurred in my life, there is no direct connection with real events or persons in this writing. All names have been changed and I modified identifying features like occupations, appearances, features and location, in order to preserve anonymity. I have altered characters, events and timelines in order to preserve the privacy of the individuals who inspired my stories.
In any case, although I preserve the integrity of my stories and try to maintain narrative flow, any resemblance between characters, events or locations in this post and characters, events or locations in real life is purely coincidental.

What is this blog about? Read the first post here.