As we were bringing in our canned food for the Atlanta Urban Ministries food bank this past Sunday, I thought of how small gestures can have a huge impact on folks, especially folks who have been through difficult times.
Years ago, when I was still in property management, I was helping to plan a company Christmas party for around 50 employees and their spouses. Having spent a decade in the hotel business before getting into property management, I was accustomed to setting up ice carvings at most of the “fancy” parties and I decided we needed to have an ice carving. I contacted a friend who was a hotel Chef and ordered an ice carving shaped like our company logo. I faxed a sketch over to the Chef a few days before the party but he never got a copy of the sketch. In those pre-email, pre-cell phone days we weren’t as easy to track down and he decided to carve the 50 pound block of ice based on a description I had given him over the phone. Well, we apparently weren’t on the same page…
The day of the party arrived and I went to fetch the Ice in my handy-dandy Ford F150. The Chef had carved the ice the day before and left it in the freezer of the ice house for me to pick up. When I got to the ice house, and they removed the plastic from the carving, my heart dropped like an icicle shattering on the frozen ground - it was all wrong!
The carving looked nothing like our company logo but it was too late to fix it. The party was in a few hours and the ice really didn’t look that bad. So we loaded it into the handy-dandy F150 and headed for the party. We set the huge chunk of crystal clear frozen water on a lighted tray, spread 20 pounds of ice cubes around the base and added mounds of shrimp, scallops and cocktail sauce.
The boss came in to see how things were going, took one look at the carving, which looked like the pyramids of Giza, and declared “I refuse to pay for that. Get that embarrassment out of here!”
Everyone else disagreed. They all said the carving was really nice and the seafood looked really tasty. “Let’s get on with the party!”
The guests arrived. The party started. Folks were mingling and enjoying the food when I overheard one of our building porters speaking to his wife. Mr. Otis was over 65 years old and had worked at the building over 25 years, since the day it opened. He was asking “Who brought the ice? Who is responsible for bringing this ice here?”
I thought he was going to fuss at me for getting it wrong like the boss had, but I sheepishly put my hand up. “I did Mr. Otis. I brought the ice.”
He walked over to me and hugged me! He had tears in his eyes and said “Dan, when I was 15 years old my Daddy got me a job at the Capitol City Club. I was a busboy. We used to put on huge parties for some of the richest folks in Atlanta. All of those parties had ice carvings. I always wanted to have a party with ice! Thank you for getting this ice. It’s the best Christmas present I’ll get this year!”
Mr. Otis retired the next year. I am so glad I went to the trouble to get that crazy ice carving. Isn’t it wild how a big old chunk of frozen water can mean so much to someone?
No comments:
Post a Comment