Outtake Articles: Weddings II: Pray For Rain

Okay, following this one, here’s another one I wrote. This from late March. 12:30 right now — and currently at what I would call a Problem Wedding. And, unlike the wedding in the article below, there are no mojitos to help me.

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Pray For Rain

There are three places to get married on the property. One is in the house itself. Or, rather, a tented portico attached to the house. The other is the lovely south lawn, which has a backdrop of hundred-year old oaks, meadow and forest, and is right behind the house where no one can see you from the driveway. The third place is, by far, the most popular – the Hemlock Grove. Back when the house and grounds were privately owned, the grove was a tennis court. When the house fell into the hands of the NPO that now runs it, the hard clay courts were sodded over with sickly grass and a small dais was built at one end. The grove is surrounded by Hemlock trees, which are all twisted, Poltergeist-looking things, seeming to want nothing more than to close in on the wedding guests and devour them. It’s also right along the main driveway that weaves through the property up to the house, which crowns a hill in the southwest corner of the 40 acres. The house is home to offices for the NPO, and a bookstore/gift shop that’s open seven days a week. Traffic is light on the weekends, but people are still coming and going.

My boss, the event planner, who is constantly engaged in open conflict with the rest of the organization and the shop, demands that the driveway be blocked off during any actual ceremony in the grove. Usually a half hour window. There is a back entrance to the property (which is actually easier to negotiate and closer to the house), so the job of the house manager is easy enough: Block off the top of the driveway, then hike down to the other end and stop folks from driving up. There’s a little vantage point beneath an ancient Chinese Chestnut that’s a pleasant enough spot to sit and watch for cars and keep an eye on the ceremony, waiting anxiously for that moment when the couple kiss and march away from the edge of the road and head up to the house.

Blocking the drive shouldn’t be a terrible moment of confrontation. Folks who are coming to enjoy the grounds or visit the shop get a map showing them how to drive around the block and a coupon for the shop. But we live in an entitlement culture. The people who come up the drive all think they own the place, or that their time is so extraordinarily valuable it’s impossible for them to spend a few minutes going around to the back gate.

I’ve come to fear the people coming up the drive. I’ve been screamed at, I’ve been called more names than I ever heard from all the school bullies in my life wrapped together, and I’ve had two people try to run me over. One person, while I was speaking to her through the driver side window, beckoned me closer as if to whisper something. When I leaned in, she slammed on the gas and sent me sprawling. All so she could get to the bookshop and buy a bag of birdseed at about 30% more than it costs at the supermarket.

Every time I work a wedding, I pray for rain. There are a number of reasons, besides fighting the indignant idle rich on a private driveway, why rain is so welcome. It usually means the party will end on time, instead of screaming into overtime (I once oversaw a 14 hour event). Sometimes, the rain will dampen spirits and people will start to leave early. Most importantly, it keeps everyone inside. At the end of the event – even if only 50 people or so are attending – the south lawn always looks like a midden. Napkins and glasses, plates of food, even clothing. It’s my job to go out there and clean everything up – often in the early AM with a weak flashlight. A good, rainy day will shorten my stay at the end of the event by about half an hour. Sure, I lose the pay, but $20 an hour isn’t worth it. My job is very clearly set in my head: Sit in the office and watch movies and drink rum. Right now I’m at an event with 108 folks and the bartender is serving up mojitos. Breaking my personal tradition, I’ve befriended an elderly lady who is now bringing me glass after glass and telling me how much of a dear I am.

Rain can backfire, though. It also means mud and slime on the floors. But that’s the caterer’s problem. They clean up the house, supposedly to the point where it looks the same as it did when they came in. All part of the job except, by 1am, or later, they’re all exhausted. It’s up to me to muddle through Spanish and follow them around with a checklist, making sure they don’t cut any corners that the staff people who come in on Monday will notice.

The NPO that owns the house and grounds is small. They have about 20 employees, including my boss, who is sequestered in a small corner office on the first floor and forced to take abuse from the rest of the staff. She invites abuse, perhaps, but she’s not totally off base in her persecution complex – the staff do give her a hard time. Those other 20 employees are all weird-ass housewives and spinsters. There’s a department that specializes in naturalist education for children, there’s a team handling membership, one for accounting, one to organize volunteers, and the two grindhouse monkeys who run the bookshop. They’re probably the best of the lot, though that might be my bias talking. I worked in the bookshop for ten years and, back then, working with the wedding folks was easy. Much easier than it is now. We house managers (there are seven other morons just like me), obey one simple rule: You pat my back and I‘ll pat yours. When your boss has been driven to the edge of madness by her idiot co-workers, there’s not too much you can do to work out job related problems like shifting schedules around. When I worked the shop, there was clear antagonism between the shop and the weddings. But one or two minor compromises, and I found myself rewarded by the house managers with plates of food, crates of booze, or whatever else fell into their sticky hands. Two years after I started working at the shop, I jumped over to the wedding crew and spent what was, then, a six month probationary/training period. I’d tag-team a wedding with one of the old salts and learn all of the ins and outs… Mostly how to steal alcohol and food, and what to do if you found something valuable while sorting through the lost and found….or unlocked cars left in the lot by drunken patrons.

Such sinister activities have been lost in the mists of time. That was 1993, and I’m now the last of the old guard. All of my co-house managers today are a new set. Not only are they thrown into events without training, but they don’t know how to rob the place blind. I’m not sure which is the greater crime.

I was trained that, as a rule, you should walk away from the wedding with the equal of your paycheck in booze. It’s more of a game than anything else, because a couple hundred bucks worth of booze is harder to put together than you think. There’s an art to the crime.

Every Friday, the booze is dropped off for the weekend events. It’s all stacked in the house manager’s office so, throughout the event, there it all is. But, the caterers are also flying in and out of the office to restock the bar, and the green room for the musicians and the photographers can only be accessed through the house manager’s office. Plus, there are the stuffed birds. People burst in frequently, and there’s just no warning at all. So how do you steal a trunk-load of booze if you have to get up, grab the box, and hide it throughout the event, all with the knowledge that, at any second, the door will open and it’ll be someone who can get you fired?

Well, you just take it piecemeal. It’s not worth picking and choosing, either. Hop up, take whatever you can grab, then squirrel it away. Sometimes it’s easier to take advantage of late night events. A catering staff that’s short and tired doesn’t really care what’s going on. So just shove a few boxes into the corner of the office and turn out the lights, as if you’re locking the office up for the night. Let’s hurry up and get out of here…nothing to clean up there.

Turning lights off, in general, is the best way to control people. A dark room, even with the doors open, is unapproachable.

It sounds bad to confess to habitual theft. It’s not even useful. I have so much booze at home, there’s no way I could drink it all short of a Leaving Las Vegas binge. Even then, it’d be a tall order. The theft used to go on so I could get booze… Now it happens because it’s all part of the game.