Hraba Hospitality Consulting

My last thought was a cryptic thought.  It has to do with all these things in my head, and knowing I can’t make sense of them while still attempting to.  It is like going to Vegas thinking you will be that ONE winner… beating the odds.  I know the odds.  They don’t look good.

So…. again… even that last one was cryptic. I HATE CRYPTIC. A LOT. But like the Tao, some stuff in life you hear sounds good but is bullshit, some stuff sounds like bullshit but is REAL good. And then there is stuff that is … is what it is. That is the tao… and my thought. I want to expand on this by being cryptic with a more obvious point.

My uncle is a professor. After a broken marriage and bitter divorce, he was sullen and angry for years.

Fast forward to said Uncle coping with life.  Working, he found himself at a sociology conference in Denmark.  As conferences go, you sit and listen… you sit and talk.  This was about average.  But he met a guy.  These things often happen, and are unavoidable.  What is usually redeeming about this sort of situation is that some of these people are quite nice, and quite smart.

The two got to talking at a bar, as happens in hotels after hearing a load of shit from panels all day.  Some one needs to have a drink and bitch about such things.

So there was my esteemed unc Joe… riffing and sort of pontificating on why he was still so bitter.

The other cat said something so simple (Simple to me anyhoo… but apparently it took my uncle years to get it).

He said, “You are asking the wrong questions. It shouldn’t be ‘why isn’t it’, it should be ‘what is’.”

I don’t like cryptic, but like my uncle said… he didn’t get it for years, but carried that with him… asking it to himself from time to time. He said he finally got it when he was 40.

I am not sure why, but I get it. You can take it for what it is.

I think a lot of the madness and depression in this world would cease to exist if people could deal with reality, rather than float on clouds of useless gerrymandering.  Yup.  Cryptic.  Makes total sense to me.

(usually how it goes anyway)

You know I dug graves once.  I sort of moved from that for a number of reasons… I was being promoted into the house where you sit and sell grave plots, partially cause they liked me, partially cause I was going to be fired (we bought a backhoe)….  They needed three before the backhoe.  Once they had that, they only needed two and the guys had been there for decades before I came in.

I left because, beyond being one of toughest communication issues and challenging sales ideas, it felt really weird finding old sick people, establishing an empathic and heartfelt connection with them, and then try to sell them something about death.

Freaked me out.  I then painted houses till I fell off a roof twice in one day.

So I worked in tech support for a bit.

I have had at least 20 or 30 real, different jobs.  Radio intern, pharmacist, etc.  I think I did all the radical changes young.

I have forgotten many jobs.  I will update as my mind reawakens.
Jobs:
9 – stockboy in hotel bar
10- updating and maintaining computers in my pops office
12-15 – normal paper / lawn cutting stuff
13-16 – babysitting
14-17 – temp jobs:  accounting in holistic pharmaceutical company, shipping receiving for a networking company, filing for BofA
18 – 20 – SAT sample test administrator, morning show intern on hip FM SF Bay radio station, room service attendant in 1000 room hotel, DJ at college radio station
21-22 – stockboy in pharmacy, cashier in drug store, house painter, technical support for interactive media firm, gravedigger, busboy in restaurants, dishwasher
21- 24 – bouncer, barback, bartender, server, bar manager, banquets captain, set break banquet crew, banquet manager, front desk supervisor, expeditor #1 zaggat survey restaurant, line cook, prep cook, garmanger!
24 – 26 – Niteclub General Manager in 1000 room hotel.. bar and restaurant and hip nitespot in LA
26-28 – Front Desk Manager at 380 room, FDM at 165 room.
28-30 – Consultant and Project Coordinator for the finest hospitality firm on the planet!!!!

Let me tell you a secret… <shhh>

I deal with layovers better than I deal with parking.  It is one of those moments you don’t exist… no one can reach you (if you so choose) no one necessarily knows where you are… you have no responsibility but “kill time”.

Imagine that… to hang in limbo.  No responsibilities, nothing but time to think, or read… or do nothing.  There are few moments in life (like waiting for a parking spot) where everything is out of your hands enough that you can just “be”

no straightening up the office, no cleaning the house, no catching up on errands…

just “be”.

It is good fun if you can get into it.

Layovers are the portal into walking the Tao.