[Sca-cooks] Fw: [Aten_Cooks](long) Feast Policy Draft for Review

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Tuesday, July 1, 2003, at 08:01  AM, Bronwynmgn at aol.com wrote:

> Well, my general comment is that I wouldn't be doing any cooking for a 
> kingdom event in Atenveldt anytime soon, not with that load of 
> bureaucratic distrust - as it appears clear to me that they think 
> cooks are inflating their costs for the number of diners served and 
> are trying to prevent that from happening.

Either accidentally or intentionally, they do seem to be involved in a 
classic management-versus-labor adversarial relationship, or at least 
that's how it reads. OTOH, if one assumes that all these controls are 
there to prevent abuse or misuse of the system, you have to wonder why 
this is felt necessary.

[Nota for old-timers on this list: can you _imagine_ the fuss al-Sayyid 
Ras would make?]

> My second comment was somewhat ameliorated by the ability to 
> recalculate 2 weeks before the event, but...unless the situation in 
> Atenveldt is entirely different then it is here in the East, the 
> requirement to be able to name your servers and to estimate total 
> numbers of adults and children who will be feasting 6 months before an 
> event is ludicrous.  Even coming up with a reasonable estimate 2 weeks 
> before the event would be extremely difficult, as most of our event 
> reservations come in in the 2 weeks before the event.  If I were to 
> have followed that criteria for some of our shire events, I'd only 
> have been allowed to cook for about 20 people, when I ended up cooking 
> for 80 because I waited until the Wednesday or Thursday before the 
> event  to determine what my maximum number would be.

And, having allowed incorrectly for 20 and finding there to be a 
reserved 80 two weeks before the event, and, having adjusted 
accordingly, does anybody _really_ think the autocrat won't try to 
squeeze in an extra 20 people the evening of the feast?

I'm tempted to go with the emotional response and say, "Strew 'em. If 
they want this job to be that much harder than it is, they must want 
somebody other than me to do it."

However, we should be teaching our cooks some degree of 
professionalism, if only for the pride of showing some of the other 
bozos the proper way to manage and spend money and time (and all that 
we can do with what we don't waste). I just hate seeing it legislated. 
(Does that make me a conservative? Brrrr.)

As (I think) Bear [?] noted, how many of the people who wrote this 
proposal are, or have been, professional caterers?  I know that our 
local events have followed a policy for years now, and very effective 
it has been, that we simply don't spend money we have not yet received 
in revenues. Yes, we turn people away if they don't reserve in advance, 
and for some reason they really seem not to like that, so they do 
pre-reserve. Yeah, a ton of mail comes in on the last day, and some too 
late, but by and large we're able to announce that it's two weeks 
before the event, we have six reservations, and people had better get 
their checks in the mail or we're buying a box of frozen Brussels 
sprouts to feed the six that pre-reserved. It invariably gets people 
moving, and people always get their money's worth, and then some. We 
hold, what, Andrea (ask the ex-seneschale), about six feasts a year? 
And lose money on them how often? Virtually never.

I'm going to have to reread this proposal before commenting further.

Adamantius (my apologies if there are... font issues... still working 
on being able to see this darned anti-aliased text, which to me is 
simply fuzzy)
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