The W Resort, Barcelona. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Once I was first employed as a bartender by the W resort in Seattle, the model was nonetheless owned by Starwood, an vague consolidated company that has since been subsumed into the ravenous stomach often called Marriott. There was a prolonged course of concerned in getting the job. I interviewed twice: as soon as within the HR workplace after which a second time downstairs with the supervisor of the resort restaurant and lounge. After being employed, I attended a compulsory, introductory eight-hour job coaching that was fairly much like the one I’d skilled previous to starting a regrettable stint at Starbucks. I used to be stuffed right into a room with about twenty different new hires—all the pieces from housekeepers to sous-chefs to servers to upkeep staff—and we have been every inundated with Starwood historical past. Starwood enterprise insurance policies. Starwood subsidiary household timber.
We watched movies. We learn dense packets stuffed with glowing buyer surveys and evaluations. We broke into small teams, and we have been quizzed concerning the issues that we realized. We gained prizes—Starwood-engraved keychains, W Seattle pens, and the like—for every reply we obtained proper. These presents could be tossed concerning the room by the 2 HR staff who gave these coaching classes, and they’d clap with absurd enthusiasm every time. Their gusto was on model with that of a game-show host or some seasoned motivational speaker as they shouted into their blouse-pinned microphones.
“And also you get a prize!”
“And YOU get a prize!”
As after I labored at Starbucks, the oddest portion of this arduous coaching session needed to do with language. There have been explicit methods during which we have been educated to talk, each with patrons and coworkers. Instance: The elevator isn’t an elevator, it’s “the raise.” The toilet or restroom is neither, it’s “the WC.” Even our varied job titles have been typically tied up on this peculiar rebranding. Maître d’s have been “W insiders,” room attendants have been “W stylists,” and upkeep staff have been “W engineers.” The dishwashers have been nonetheless dishwashers, and the bartenders have been nonetheless bartenders, and the cooks have been nonetheless cooks—although there was nonetheless that portentous prefix, W, that was all the time current to remind you that this job wasn’t similar to another job. This was a job on the W.
“However what, precisely, does the W stand for?” somebody inevitably inquired, pausing of their vigorous notetaking, of their Starwood-embossed notepad, with their sizzling pink W Seattle pen.
“We’re so HAPPY that you just requested!” the game-show hosts from HR exclaimed—and jumped up and down. After which, they took turns talking, alternating one after the opposite, as if this have been some odd, obsessively rehearsed efficiency that they’d been eagerly ready to unleash.
“W stands for WOW!”
“W stands for WISTFUL!”
“W stands for WHIMSICAL!”
“W stands for WONDERFUL!”
“However greater than something …”
In unison now, pointing in any respect of us like we have been meant to sing alongside, ending on a line that appeared vacant of which means altogether:
“W STANDS FOR W!”
***
As a newly employed bartender for the W, step one started with uniform (designer denims, fitted black button-down) and prolonged to all the pieces from mixing lavish cocktails to serving high-priced meals. However we have been extra than simply bartenders, keep in mind: we have been W bartenders. Not solely did I must do all the pieces {that a} regular bartending gig required, I additionally needed to intention for one thing extraordinary within the lives of my clients—one thing that might actually Wow them. Typically this meant recommending issues that solely a Seattle native would find out about, like taking the foot ferry to West Seattle for a weekday lunch on the seashore or eating at a hidden native restaurant on the quiet north finish of Capitol Hill. Typically it meant phoning throughout city for an unusual spirit or a wine {that a} buyer needed and having an overeager model rep ship it to our entrance door. However this can be a buyer philosophy that exists in any model of high-end service, and it was a element of the job that I used to be more than pleased to ship. I favored to make folks really feel comfortable and appreciated. And I used to be, for essentially the most half, happy with the place I labored and what I did.
Starwood was—I need to admit, after I was first employed there—one of many higher firms that I’d ever labored for. Healthcare packages have been beneficiant and reasonably priced and had comparatively low deductibles. There was an employer-match dedication for contributions to retirement, and low-risk inventory funding choices. Worker reductions for Starwood-brand resorts have been likewise very beneficiant, typically shockingly so, and one may routinely safe drastically diminished charges for rooms at even high-end properties all over the world. One in every of my coworkers on the time, whose brother labored for a significant airline, took such benefit of this explicit perk that the 2 of them continuously tag-teamed airfare and lodging advantages, paying little greater than taxes and processing charges for journeys to locations like Paris, Bangkok, Oslo, and New York Metropolis.
However the W itself was nonetheless a wierd, unusual place. All the things was about “model id,” and managers have been all the time neurotically preoccupied with doing issues to strengthen our not-like-the-other-hotels trendiness. We employed DJs to spin home music throughout lunch on weekdays and brunch over the weekends. We served meals on slim wooden planks. And yearly, round Thanksgiving, we erected some really weird monstrosity in the midst of the foyer and have been advised that it could be our W Christmas tree.
One yr, this “tree” was a tentacled mess of pink and yellow fluorescent string with an elongated, pulsing white strobe in its heart. One other, it was a collection of round glass sheets, in whole perhaps 100 of them, which have been layered like a cake from base to peak and made me consider a twister. Then there have been the mirrored containers stuffed with mirrored balls, stacked like presents, and topped, the place the angel may usually go, with a blinding, neon pink W.
On reflection, I believe that every one this was a promoting level when it got here to the Starwood portfolio and to Marriott’s determination, finally, to buy it. Previous to the merger between these two firms, Marriott didn’t have stylish properties; they have been the no-frills enterprise model. They have been the resort you stayed at once you had a convention on a Monday and Tuesday earlier than you flew out early Wednesday morning. They’d no resort stylish sufficient to have the nerve ample to erect a precariously leaning tower of glass and name it a tree—so this tree, and all the pieces it stood for, was what Marriott Worldwide, Inc. needed for Christmas.
In celebration of the historic Starwood-Marriott marriage, it was introduced {that a} three-day celebration could be hosted by a W resort someplace on the planet so that every one the eclectic W eccentricities could possibly be overtly on show. All of the bigwigs could be invited: common managers, regional administrators, worldwide overseers; and since our resort was one of many unique resorts within the W model, and since we had just lately undergone a big and distinct renovation, the W Seattle was chosen as the situation for the weekend reception.
***
Your entire resort was tirelessly entrenched for the weeks main as much as the celebration. The cooks designed and redesigned numerous rainbow-colored hors d’oeuvres and entrées, served on leather-based, clay, and latex. The managers paced the foyer, trailed by a military of W engineers, pointing to this or that sofa or chair and shifting it barely to the best or someplace out of sight within the basement. And the bartenders created cocktail after cocktail, inspired repeatedly by supervisors to “actually let free with these. Experiment. WOW us!”
In some methods, it was like being written a clean examine. As a bartender, particularly once you work for a bigger enterprise, you’re usually anticipated to do issues a sure method, over and over; not often are you able to deviate from a predetermined formulation. In our hospitality microcosm, this was like touchdown a Guggenheim fellowship or a MacArthur grant. Pour prices, meals prices, cash, was not of concern. We may experiment and create with none restrictions.
“Yeah, okay,” we smirked. However we crafted elaborate, absurd concoctions. We layered amaros and ports in medication vials. We strained purple-and-pink spirits into empty salt-and-pepper shakers. A very memorable drink from this era of unadulterated Whimsy concerned the hollowed-out carcass of an Anaheim pepper, stuffed with blanco tequila, pineapple and strawberry shrub, a contact of salt, and a splash of champagne. I’m undecided how we propped the pepper up. I feel it was type of corkscrewed right into a Mason jar stuffed with dyed seashells.
Two days earlier than the massive weekend, a cartoonish character with a job title like supervisor of magnificence or ambassador of wonderful checked into the resort unannounced and instantly started to survey the scene. He critiqued all the pieces from the fur-upholstered furnishings to the eating room’s stark, minimalistic design. Quickly, he made his solution to the meals and drinks. He sniffed after which dumped a viscous and fluorescent cocktail instantly right into a spotless sink. He spat out an amuse-bouche in disgust. Constructive criticism is one factor; across-the-board dismissal is one other. Usually, I might have been offended by any person telling me that each drink I made them was terrible, that all the pieces popping out of the kitchen was rubbish. However it was exhausting to take the man very severely.
“That is all incorrect!” He tugged at his pin-striped pajama bottoms and rolled up the sleeves of his yellow corduroy bomber jacket. Then he ran his fingers by means of his bleached mohawk. “Have a look at yourselves! This will probably be a catastrophe if you happen to don’t step it up.”
Virtually all the pieces that we had give you as a resort was scrapped. New furnishings was wheeled in. Lighting was accented with blue and purple and yellow wherever doable. And our menu, insofar because the bar and kitchen workers had drafted it, was reenvisioned. All with the director of disappointment peering all the time over our collective shoulders.
The obsessive director was not an anomaly in company tradition, although he was, actually, an excessive. I had seen many like him earlier than—folks whose whole job description is to go from property to property and discover issues incorrect with them, or, as he may put it, methods to optimize. However the bother with this widespread company philosophy is that typically there isn’t actually something incorrect. A few of the most beloved, profitable eating places and bars exist for years, a long time, generations, just because they don’t change. And among the most interesting recipes—in food and drinks—are astounding of their simplicity. The Negroni has three equal elements: campari, candy vermouth, and gin. Béchamel, basically, consists of butter, flour, and milk. That nook restaurant that’s nonetheless standing, and thriving, and that you just love a lot, they do it as a result of that very same dish you fell in love with a number of years in the past remains to be simply the best way you keep in mind it. And it’s nonetheless the identical as a result of it’s excellent simply the best way it’s.
However attempt telling that to the commandant of change.
We did as we have been advised. And when the three-day extravaganza started, the resort appeared like a demented peacock: shockingly colourful, shrieking shrill music, posing nevertheless doable.
The highest-tier administration from Marriott have been collectively delighted. They slurped the gold-dusted oysters with champagne mignonette. They sipped their metal horns stuffed with an otherworldly mix of cucumber soda and chartreuse. And so they paused one after one other to deliberate over the “which means” of a mural above their cocktail tables depicting a creature who was half octopus, half fighter jet.
Our chief critic remained apprehensive, although he would retract his hand at occasions when he instinctually reached out to determine one other obtrusive fault. As an alternative, he zipped up his lambskin jacket with gold-studded shoulder pads, straightened his backbone, and gulped a tincture of glowing wine and caviar, coughing as he completed.
***
After the congratulations have been imparted, and the illustrious three-day occasion was by means of, we settled again into one thing resembling normalcy. Over-the-top drinks, however not so absurdly over-the-top. Over-the-top meals, however not served by folks carrying embroidered gloves or on dishes cast with seal bones. It felt like waking after a frenetic evening of fever desires or some epic evening of partying: the workers in a daze; all of us shifting somewhat slower than regular, regaining our bearings one drink or meals order or new buyer at a time. Ultimately, I blended somebody one thing mundane like a Manhattan or a cosmopolitan, and when no person shouted at me to serve it in a jeweled goblet or to garnish it with a lit sparkler, I breathed an extended sigh of reduction.
However when the fiscal yr drew to a detailed, we quickly found different unlucky adjustments as Marriott staff. Our healthcare plans grew to become much less beneficiant and complete. And it was uncommon now to safe vital resort reductions in any vacation spot, home or overseas, and once you did it was often at an reasonably priced property: nearly by no means at any of the luxurious strains.
As a lot as we have been advised that we might stay the identical W property, the Marriott powers that be couldn’t resist making some adjustments to the restaurant and bar menus as nicely. Our principally regionally sourced beer-and-wine record was largely exchanged with the identical boring picks that populate each different Marriott-property menu. The kitchen stopped in search of out native, high-quality meat and produce in the identical method, and abruptly the menu was inundated with most of the similar generic kinds of issues that you will see at each customary enterprise resort in each metropolis in America.
What remained was the shell. The veneer of W. We may not maintain good folks within the kitchen, as a result of the pay was poor and the work was boring. However that beef patty puck on our once-delectable burger was nonetheless introduced on that very same picket plank. My coworker may not tag-team low cost charges and globe-trot to wherever he and his brother wished to go, however now he may shrug and admit that there have been—technically—extra properties on the planet the place he may keep. I may not inform my family and friends that I had superb healthcare, “whilst a bartender!” However I may nonetheless inform them that I used to be insured.
One night, I needed to inform a daily who spent some huge cash at our property that we have been out of all his favourite wines due to adjustments to our menu and distributors, and his exasperated sigh, the best way he shook his head, will all the time stick with me. We’ve all felt this manner earlier than, I feel, when firms consolidate to increase their revenue margins and companies we like endure the results. It’s not simply that issues change and that one has to regulate to one thing new. It’s that issues change, nearly uniformly, for the more severe: to the detriment of normal folks; to the advantage of corpulent firms.
From what I gathered from the workers who have been employed after the merger, the HR coaching classes remained largely the identical. It was nonetheless W this and W that. Besides, now, the notepads have been embroidered with the phrase Marriott fairly than Starwood. There was nonetheless the identical music and dance of company historical past, however now it was largely the story of the Marriott household tree, with the W hanging like window dressing. HR saved up their enthusiasm, regardless, from what I heard. There have been nonetheless quizzes. Reward giveaways.
“And also you get a prize!”
“And YOU get a prize!”
However I prefer to think about a special model of this routine, changing a number of what I used to be advised in that coaching assembly with the colder, company reality. I think about that HR duo, with their robotic smiles and blouse-pinned microphones, posturing like previous occasions, solely to say one thing like “Attempt to not get sick whilst you work right here!” earlier than admitting that hundreds of Marriott staff have been, in reality, at that actual second, on strike in a number of main cities across the nation. They demanded truthful pay. Safety in opposition to sexual harassment. First rate well being care. They needed that Wow! that the W, and different properties, promised them. And so they needed it Now!
“However what, precisely, does the W stand for?” somebody would inevitably inquire, pausing their vigorous note-taking of their flimsy Marriott notepad with their light pink W Seattle pencil.
“We’re so HAPPY that you just requested!” The sport-show hosts from HR would exclaim and leap about. After which they’d launch into their acquainted, fatigued chorus, their record of all of the wondrous adjectives and optimistic connotations that the letter W apparently stood for all on the similar time. However right here I think about them reaching the tip of this unusual tautology, and one thing abruptly occurring to them for maybe the primary or the thousandth time as their postures soften and their smiles fade: {that a} letter means nothing, inherently; {that a} company won’t ever personal nor mass-produce honest human feelings; that to imagine a W stands for something, apart from being an arbitrary character, is each weird and inane.
Nonetheless, they may lean ahead, their eyes laden with lethargy.
“However greater than something …”
All collectively now.
“W STANDS FOR W!”
Stephen Haines is an M.F.A. graduate of Western Washington College and the previous managing editor of Bellingham Evaluation. His work has appeared or is forthcoming at The Los Angeles Evaluation, Invisible Metropolis, Pacifica Literary Evaluation, and elsewhere. He lives in Seattle.
