Sharing the super disastrous experience
“Where can I have some noodles please?” This was a question to Darry Cheng, presently the Director of Banquet of the five-star hotel Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong, when he was still a part-time waiter. It was a simple question but Darry just couldn’t answer it at that moment. Now, he will ask all the new staffs this question.
“I asked the new recruits whether they understand the question and 99% of them said yes.” So I encouraged them, “That’s very good because I didn’t understand it . So you all should have promotions much faster than me because you’re all better”, said Darry, who had used less than ten years to work his way up from a waiter to the youngest Chinese manager in the hotel.
If you look at Darry’s resume, you will notice that apart from the speedy promotions that he had over the years, he also has a lot of job titles. Take the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Wanchai as an example, which he has the longest employment history, he had a total of eight different job titles covering all the major dining outlets of the Hotel in fifteen years. Amongst the eight, the shortest one, Café Assistant Restaurant Manager, only lasted twenty-six days, “The boss wanted to find a reliable person to manage the new poolside restaurant as soon as possible. It took only four days to go through seven members from the management to secure the necessary approval for the establishment of a new manager post for me.” Darry was made a manager before thirty years old and became the youngest Chinese manager which was record breaking at Grand Hyatt.
Darry has started his career as a part-time waiter at the Banquet Department when he was sixteen and has been in the industry for more than twenty years. He has served Mr. Bill Clinton, the former President of the United States, three times and also Mr. Hu Jin-tao, the former President of the People’s Republic of China. He has also managed numerous dinner events and parties for international brands. As such, he has countless “success stories” to his credit, but interestingly, he is more eager to share with others his most disastrous experience when he first joined the industry.
Rebuke by boss to tears and hard work
He reminisced once when he literally cried because of rebuke from the supervisor. “I was young and vigorous with passion but I didn’t know much about hotel work. So, I just tried hard to help my colleagues on site arrangements for an event by running all the errands for them. When the supervisor came and noticed something wrong in the work procedures for the decoration of the event site, he yelled ‘Who was responsible for this?’”. What had triggered this slightly over twenty young man to run to the back stairs and cried was of course not just that question, but invective that followed. Darry felt very upset as his conscientious endeavours had earned him nothing but severe scolding by the boss. “I gulped ten bottles of beer that evening and my girlfriend even suggested me to resign.”
The following day, Darry swore in front of a mirror with grudge, “I will not let the same person scold at me again”. Henceforth, whenever there was work assigned by this demanding supervisor, Darry would put in his best efforts and evaluate his own work from the angles of his boss. “After some time, my boss would rest assured if he knew I was the in charge.”
May be the spirit to pursue excellence and not to yield to failure, has made Darry hotly sought after among the hotel industry. His persistence also extends to leading and motivating his team for better job performance.
A career in a vocation
Regardless of his busy and tightly packed schedules, Darry always perseveres in a tradition started by him – that is, interviewing every job applicant, including part-time waiters. Upon employment, Darry will give them an eight-hour training voluntarily. So far, he has already interviewed more than five thousand applicants and trained more than six hundred waiters and interns.
Apart from teaching the basics of banqueting, Darry also shared his “super disastrous experience” with a view to giving the new comers a boost in morale, “I just hope that by sharing my experience, they would not give up easily when they encounter setbacks and difficulties. I always tell the new recruits that the service industry is very important to Hong Kong, and the catering industry is like the Shao Lin Temple in martial arts. You will learn dedication and commitment to work like a team here and also the ability to make swift response to clients on site. Nobody can take away these skills from you and they will be yours for the rest of your life, in whatever service industry that you end up with in future.”
When walking into Darry’s office, you will see numerous photos of him and his apprentices pinned on the wall. Darry enjoys the training process very much and dedicated in training more youngsters with positive energy. He simply has taken this as his mission.
A belated start to study and strive hard
Darry chuckled that he was in fact very lethargic and unmotivated in his studies and that was reflected in his Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination results with just a few points. Knowing that it requires both practical experience as well as professional knowledge if one wants to pursue a career in the hotel industry, Darry enrolled with the VTC course in his spare time and spent the next “seven years without a vacation”. Darry commented that it is all very worth the efforts “because the VTC course is both practical as well as authentic, and I learned a lot about the fundamental operations of various departments in a hotel. The banquet department requires a lot of collaboration with the others and this knowledge is extremely helpful to my work. The study also augmented my social network and some of my classmates are also working in hotels holding senior positions now. We knew each other when we were young and trivial, and we still keep in touch with each other.” Furthermore, his supervisor considering that Darry was studying in his spare time, was kind enough to give him work that required organising and planning that was also helpful in his career development. He said with a big grin, “People say ‘work hard, play hard’. I always prefer to work hard first, and now I can really play hard.’”
Looking ahead and encouraging the new comers from VTC
The new recruits also included interns from the VTC. The Director of Banquet who has completed the course of Higher Diploma in Hotel and Catering Management of VTC on part-time basis has the following comments of his younger fellows from VTC, “Generally, they all have a good attitude towards work and are willing to roll up their sleeves to finish the job. I always encourage them to persevere with this work attitude and they will achieve greater success than me.” As a matter of fact, the hotel and catering industry is currently in acute shortage of experienced people. According to Darry, if the new recruits are willing to persevere with hard work and dedication, their prospects are very promising.
