Here it is Labor Day, and I find myself working a bit on a holiday. Sometimes we are the toughest employers when we put ourselves to work. Going back to 1984 – January was a very bleak time on Hilton Head for the restaurant business. When cousin Rich called and asked if we would like to work for ten days at the Presidential inauguration as outside caterers to ABC TV News my brother and I jumped at the chance. The pay was $900 for each of us plus hotels, meals, and some spending money. Rich had a brother Dennis who worked for ABC and got Rich his job with the caterer who then hired us.
I worked in Lafayette Park across from the White House! I had a trailer that was like a cafe where TV crew and on-air personalities could eat and stay out of the severe cold that was gripping D.C. on 1/20/84. The weather was so cold that for the first time in history the inaugural parade was canceled because band musicians were unable to play their wind and brass instruments. The musicians were sticking to the horns and such!! Along with my cafe home base, I also had a freezer truck filled with food and a tractor trailer filled with all the equipment necessary to make about 1000 meals three times a day. Meals we made were brought to three different locations within the city. My brother oversaw two locations during our stay.
All the people we supervised were from a culinary union within the city. The workers made hourly wages that were unheard of at the time in South Carolina! A state that to this day discourages unions. Knowing about unions from family involvement with the UAW and the ILA my supervision was made easy by simply asking the workers who among them knew best how to pull off the event? They all pointed to a woman who was I’m sure the oldest in the crew. I asked her to set up the site and then I went for coffee. When I returned everything was perfectly set up! I came to find out this wonderful lady was the mother of the shop steward and sister to the union delegate. Every union job I held had lots of brothers, sisters, and cousins by the dozens whether on the factory floor or the dock.
The weather was so cold on inauguration day that the inside of the freezer truck was warmer than out in the park!! Getting to that truck was so difficult that to avoid taking inventory I asked my crew to place items they would like on the side of the truck to take the last day. An old employer of mine taught me most people if not told they can’t have stuff will not pilfer it.That lesson worked so well that when the caterer saw how much food was left at the end of the event, he handed my brother and I an additional $300 apiece as bonuses. He never knew Cos and I were restauranteurs that knew about food costs and how to maintain them.
What set off this memory of that interesting time was seeing the movie picture “Reagan” this past week. As part of its opening sequence was the Hilton Hotel in D.C. That hotel was shaped in a semicircular design. It had elevators at only both ends of the hall! Our rooms of course were dead in the middle – necessitating the longest hotel walk I’ve ever had to take to get to an elevator in my life. Talk about a design fault. While on the subject of design faults let’s not forget President Reagan’s economic plan of trickledown economics. It is that long held theory that is just now about to be tested and proved wrong. Since Reagan’s theory gained an ascendancy there has not been such a wealth disparity that now currently exists.
Help close the gap for yourself by finding streams of passive income like in the Mathmatecum and also generational income that goes past two generations. A Mathmaticum Directive can create both of those goals for you because of its unique design. There is no better place to put dollars to guarantee such an outcome.
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