When the going gets tough…
Today was supposed to be a fairly gentle day, a meeting with my Cornish colleagues and our group marketing manager over in Falmouth (I’d planned to get there early to have a swim 1st) and then back to the hotel via a T shirt printer who will hopefully supply the shirts I am providing as sponsorship for the Padstow to Rock swim in aid of macmillan.
I hadn’t reached Truro when my phone rang - a little fire in the kitchen, all the guests outside in the rain and the breakfast chef on oxygen in the back of an ambulance. Tempting though it was to keep going I dutifully turned around and rushed back to work to see what I could do to help. Lots of very busy people helping to sort out what was needed for our guests - we couldn’t use the restaurant for breakfast either so we had to feed everyone in the lounge and cafe bar. Everyone had jumped in to help, the 2 housekeepers were there serving tea and coffee and laying up tables, the rest of the restaurant staff were working like troopers to get around everyone and Wes the sous chef was cooking danish and croissants in the pastry oven as fast as he could to keep up with demand. A special mention must also go to Joyce, my Ops Manager, who had everyone organised and all the guests looked after following her call at home to say there was a problem.
We did a quick bit of thinking at our morning meeting as to what we could do for our guests tonight - all that was practical really was to do a buffet so the lads worked all day to produce a lovely 3 course dinner with smoked salmon, prawns, crab claws and all sorts of goodies. Everyone who came in enjoyed it immensly, especially as they all knew the reasons for the buffet.
The fire was really very small but it produced a huge amount of smoke and the kitchen was covered in it, stuck to all the walls. Tony, my maintenance engineer, rang around a few cleaning companies and found Rob who had cleaned our carpets in the winter. He arrived with a team of lads and they were all finished by 7pm. We’ve nearly finished serving dinner now and all will be back to normal.
I must say I am very blessed to have such a team of people around me who will do what these guys have done today to keep the show on the road. A big thank you to them all.
