Cancun became home to my 3rd Beetle, which was a chopped off version of a 1986 red specimen, in a much better shape than the previous one. Later on I had the color changed to white, which looked a whole lot better on the beach 🙂

It had a few holes under the pedals, which was actually very useful whenever the car got flooded with Quintana Roo’s torrential and sudden rains (I had a custom hood made but I was hardly ever able to pull it out in time!)

Although life as a restaurant manager was a little less busy than in banqueting, I worked split shifts and often finished work around midnight or one in the morning.

The hotel had been around for 23 years, and was one of the first ones ever built in Cancun, back in the seventies. By the way, did you know the spot where Cancun was built had been chosen by computer?

The story is that Acapulco was booming and extra space was needed to accommodate the numerous tourists visiting Mexico, in search of beautiful beaches and sun all year long… so the tourism authorities fed all the relevant parameters into a supercomputer and a tiny fishermen’s village appeared on the map as the future tourist hyper mecca of Mexico

More here : (source : geographia.com)

Cancun, best-known for its white sand beaches, near-perfect weather, and bright blue waters, is the Acapulco of Mexico’s Gulf Coast. Unlike Acapulco, however, Cancun has the modern distinction of being the only city in Mexico whose location was chosen by a computer. In the late 60s, seeking the ideal spot to build a resort center, the Mexican government entered in factors like average temperatures, beach quality, and accessibility, and – lo and behold – the program spat out set of coordinates near the northeast tip of the Yucatan peninsula. Cancun was born.

Massive resort construction has turned what was once a sleepy fishing village into a city of over 350,000. The city has its own international airport and everything for fun-seeking tourists: five-star dining, discos, activity oriented beaches, bars, a nearby underwater amusement park where you can swim with dolphins, and outdoor markets. Deep sea fishing and dive boats are easily arranged.

In my late twenties at the time, and managing a team for the fist time, I was confronted to the challenge of getting the job done through other people, without them feeling they were told to do it… (hmmm, sounds like a sentence straight out of the “How to be the perfect leader” does it not? :):):)).

This is an aspect which differed from the sunny postcard and the turquoise waters! I found out the hard way, and, well, learned a many lessons  again!

I managed a team of six waiters who could have been my fathers or grandfathers, for some of them… most had been around since the hotel opened. On the positive side they brought a wealth of experience, and knew all the guests, which in many cases were repeat customers, year after year.

They also knew all the “tricks of the trade” (a chapter on that later!!), and to make things trickier, the hotel’s union’s representative was on my team :)…

I was straight away labelled as the new manager (“let’s see how long he lasts, we have seen so many of them before”)!

Habits die hard, and my first attempts to change ways of setting up tables or welcoming guests brought an immediate negative reaction from my colleagues… they quickly requested a meeting with me, the Human Resources director and the Food & Beverage director, to highlight my “harsh and unfair” manners :)… only a few weeks on the job and there I was, about to be put on the grill!!

This was the real first I had at work, I remember coming out of it shattered and devastated, the only thing I wanted to do was to bury a whole in the ground and hide there forever!

I chewed on it and did not dig a hole, I just hung on… eventually I must have thought something along the lines of “if you can’t beat them, join them”…

The lesson I have learned during this not so easy period, is actually made of of a collection of tips (that sound so obvious now that I list them!) :

• hang on, don’t give up (agreed… sounds like from another self help book, but so true!)
• diplomas don’t teach you the “real life” (ask my students, I tell them this about 95 times a day
• before you start changing procedures and ways of working, observe for a while few months, you will achieve more that way, instead of trying to impose authority through your title straight from the start (look at politicians, it just does not work that way!)
• have empathy for your colleagues, maybe there is something preventing them from carrying out their work the way they should (lack of equipment, motivation, most probably recognition…)
• learn about the culture you are in before you do anything else
• be kind and fair but keep your boundaries
• diplomacy has avoided many wars…

Bonne semaine !