SC - Horror story (was Guilty Conscience)

[Chris Adler]

     >Does anyone else have similar horror stories?
     
     Greetings, Master Huen!
     
     BTW, I really appreciated your comments at War Practice on the 
     honey-ginger candies I made.
     
     I've been head cook of about a half dozen events since I started 
     feastocratting two years ago. There have been minor inconveniences or 
     problems at all of them, but none due to the autocrat... until my last 
     one in February.
     
     The ironic thing is that my best friend in the SCA was the autocrat of 
     this event and had asked me to be head cook. Everything went very 
     smoothly during the planning process (she even convinced the king to 
     have court AFTER feast instead of before - which was his preference - 
     because I requested it).
     
     The night *before* the event, I was bringing my equipment and the 
     dishes that were already finished to the site so that I could lessen 
     the work for the next morning. I noticed my friend's crew putting out 
     18 tables in the hall. Hmm. We'd agreed on 16 tables, hadn't we? I 
     thought.  I asked the crew if the extra two tables were for off-board. 
     No, there's no off-board for this feast, I was told.
     
     I called her at home and found out that she thought I was cooking for 
     150 people. Uh, sweetie, we'd agreed on 125, remember? Remember? 
     Please remember...
     
     Okay, so at 11 p.m., I'm figuring out how to stretch the soups, stews, 
     and roasts (not a big problem, really). My only concern was that I had 
     made only 16 loaves of bread, 16 tarts, and 16 flans. No problem: I 
     hurriedly called the laurel who agreed to make the flans and tarts for 
     me and asked her to make a few extras. My mom, who had driven 400 
     miles to help me for the weekend (yes, she's demented) immediately 
     began measuring the yeast to start another two loaves of bread. So, 
     we're under control. Hey, it was just miscommunication.
     
     The next day, lunch went really well, and then we're prepping for 
     feast. My butler comes in at 5 p.m. and wants to start staging the 
     dishes. Honey, you don't need to be here for another half hour, feast 
     will be at 6 p.m., I tell her. That's not what the program says, she 
     replies. I check the program: feast at 5:30. I go and find my 
     autocrat: uh, sweetie? Didn't we agree *weeks* ago that feast would be 
     at 6? (A stunned look came over her face.) Ooooooh... Uh, sorry...
     
     Luckily, I'm one of those anal twits who makes up a schedule of when 
     everything has to get done, by half hours, (including starting the 
     water boiling), and I post it on the wall so that everyone can follow 
     it. We'd gotten everything done ahead of time, so we were able to push 
     everything up a half hour without much trouble. Feast was served only 
     a few minutes later than the program had stated. It certainly wasn't 
     the calmly organized procedure that I had planned or wanted, but hey, 
     people ate hot food and they seemed happy with the meal!
     
     The autocrat called me the next day to apologize profusely. I remarked 
     that I knew it wasn't intentional, and that it was probably good for 
     me to experience how to handle such typical feastocratting problems in 
     a friendly atmosphere, so that I now know how to handle such things.
     
     However, I reminded her, I *have* been studying medieval poisons a lot 
     lately... Just a thought. ;)
     
     In Service, Katja
     
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