My History in the Industry

I graduated high school in 1980 and, like any sensible eighteen-year-old, immediately took a job with a title that no longer exists on this earth: Executive Office Receptionist.

If you're under forty, let me explain. My job was to open the mail — physically, with a letter opener, like a pirate with a treasure map — and to answer every phone line for the sales and catering department. That's it. That was the whole job. There was an entire human being employed to do what your phone now does badly while you're driving.

But here's the thing about that reception desk: it sat directly outside the catering office. And catering, from where I was sitting, looked like the single greatest scam ever perpetrated on a payroll department.

These people wrote menus in beautiful handwriting. They had vendors come in and pour them wine. At work. They went to lunches with clients that lasted three hours and came back saying things like “we really made progress on the linen direction.” Meanwhile I was alphabetizing envelopes.

I wanted in immediately.

The Six-Month Pestering Plan

I pestered the Director of Catering the way a golden retriever pesters a screen door. Six months later I was the catering secretary. Six months after that, catering coordinator. Six months after that, catering manager.

I have since learned this is not how careers normally go. But nobody told me, so I just kept assuming a promotion arrived every six months like a dental cleaning.

Five years at the Red Lion Sea-Tac. Then the downtown Westin in Seattle, which at the time was one of the premier hotels in the city — a huge jump in title, a huge jump in pay, and a huge jump in the number of people who could ruin my day.

Three years in, I decided to move to California. As one does.

California, Where I Briefly Became a Concierge

I arrived in California with no catering job, so I took a position as club concierge at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Beach while I looked. Six months of telling wealthy people where the beach was. (It was, in every case, right there.)

Then the Embassy Suites Brea hired me as a catering manager, and I stayed three years before they promoted me to Director of Catering — which required relocating to the Bay Area, because in hotels a promotion is frequently just a moving van with a better title on it.

Walnut Creek for about three years. Then San Rafael for a couple more.

The Ohio Chapter

Then I followed my husband at the time to Toledo, Ohio.

I want to be very clear that I did this voluntarily.

I took a job in nearby Sylvania at the Franciscan Center — a large church facility with event space and, I am not making this up, a nunnery on the property. I was the operations manager. I ran every event in the building. I have negotiated a room setup with a nun, and I want you to understand that a nun does not care about your floor plan deadline.

I lasted six months. Ohio and I agreed to see other people.

Los Angeles, Round One

Back in California, I landed at what was then the Los Angeles Marriott — one of the big downtown properties — as a catering sales manager. Two years.

Then in 1999 the Director of Catering at the Bonaventure recruited me as senior catering sales manager. Largest hotel in Los Angeles. Another enormous jump in pay. Five years of a building that is famously so confusing that guests have wandered its identical circular floors like they were in a Kubrick film. (They were fine. Mostly.)

From there, the Sheraton Fairplex in Pomona — out at the fairgrounds — for my first Director of Catering title. A year and a half of events happening within scenting distance of livestock exhibits, which does wonders for your problem-solving skills.

The Dream Job

My dream, always, was the Biltmore.

If you've never been: it's the legendary historic hotel in downtown Los Angeles, and the ballrooms are absurd. Balconies. Chandeliers. Wall tapestries. Painted ceilings. The kind of room where you walk in and instinctively lower your voice.

They had an opening for social catering manager. Note that this was, on paper, a step down from Director of Catering. I took it in about four seconds.

I stayed a little over eight years as the social catering manager and wedding planner. Best decision of my career, and I'll be writing considerably more about that particular circus another day.

The Victory Lap

After the Biltmore: the Beverly Garland in North Hollywood for a year as catering sales manager. Then the InterContinental in Century City for a year, until the commute began aging me at roughly triple speed.

Then back to the LA Hotel — the very same building that had been the Marriott when I first landed in California — this time as Director of Catering and Special Events. Full-circle moment. Very cinematic.

I lasted six months. That hotel was problematic, and that is me being extremely professional in print.

And in May of 2016, I went back to being a catering manager at the Hilton Pasadena, where I have been happily ever since.

What I've Learned in Forty-Five Years

Yes, I ended my career one rung below where I was in 2005. On purpose. Because somewhere in the middle of all that, I figured out the thing nobody tells you at eighteen: the title is not the job. The job is the room, the people in it, and whether you go home proud of what happened in there.

I went home proud a lot.

Also, I never once got to write a menu in beautiful handwriting. That part was a lie. It was all forms.