In the days when I was first a management person, in the mid 70’s, I had the responsibility for running US national meetings of faculty Department Chairmen from up to 9 different Colleges of Art.
My boss had the responsibility of running the “big” meetings, the meetings of the Presidents and the Deans, and my position was involved at managing a diverse group of independent individuals, and it was seen that as a person “from the faculty”, I would be good at gaining some consensus and moving my project forward.
The most difficult of my job was not the meetings themselves or the consensus, as this was my area of expertise, but actually arranging the meetings. I had some secretarial support, but this whole process was more subtle than it seemed and needed a skilled hand to correctly make it all happen.
Our meetings were usually arranged in different cities around the US, corresponding to the locations of the nine colleges of the then Union of Independent Colleges of Art. This way, one of the tasks was to arrange a tour of the college in the city we visited, and that was a big part of the meeting and instilling a degree of trust between and among the participants.
Faculty were not generally used to these non-traditional meetings, even though they may travel to a discipline meeting once a year, these were out of the normal context. Many traveled and stayed with friends on couches or in sleeping bags, and lived on a per diem stipend for food. In our meetings, I needed to keep the group together for most things, meetings, meals and breaks, except where we scheduled free time off. I needed meeting rooms, not always available at the schools and better off in hotels where we could control breaks with coffee and rolls etc. plus meals together. The problem was, because of the very nature of most art school faculty, to make this appear as inexpensive as possible. This way we would not be accused of being spendthrifts, living off the fat of the land as had been charged in the days before I arrived. It was the sensitivity to the situation that had been overlooked in the past, and the look of the free ride was causing difficulties for the organization to be taken seriously.
So, my perception was that we make it look cheap regardless of the cost. In the grand scale of things, average hotel rooms for 8-10 different people were close to the same price no matter where you went. Coffee and buns etc. was pretty much the same, but silver urns, china and linens would cause more askance looks than paper cups, paper napkins and doughnuts.
My job was to find restaurants, where possible, that looked average, but would be good. I had to find bars or set up bars that would satisfy without tuxedoed waiters serving. I did manage to drink more that year than in the next ten combined.
The response was well founded as I can remember a restaurant in Baltimore that had been visited by the President of our school, and he had taken a visitor and a staff member to lunch. The President was wonderful but a bit penurious, and he remarked to the visitor that this was a very fine albeit expensive restaurant, and as it was lunch he suggested they order sandwiches.
While sitting in the restaurant my later boss arrived with 7 or 8 faculty members in tow and sat down and ordered drinks and dinners, and loudly announced their presence, so that the President took notice. It seemed inappropriate to him that while the three of them were sitting there eating sandwiches, the faculty was downing drinks and dinner on someone’s budget! The perception was on the money, I just needed to try and change it for my part of the program.
As I remember we were in maybe Berkley or some other intellectually focused university town for dinner. I assume it was a San Francisco meeting. I needed a non- big time restaurant without a big expensive menu, where I could take about 20 people from a double meeting. We researched places (before the internet) and found a “hippie” style, really good restaurant, with a bit of entertainment. There was some sort of quiet folk performer in a long dress sitting on a raised floor entertaining for the dinner crowd. It was lovely, we all enjoyed the food and the drinks and wine was plentiful. No one noticed the prices, and everyone had a wonderful time.
While at this time and I no longer remember the cost, I do remember it was considerably more per person than if we had simply gone to any nice San Francisco eatery. The difference was that the meetings continued without complaints of robbing the government, the schools or someone else.
You are what you eat, I guess.
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