Unsustainable Hype
Events which take a long time to plan can be pretty amazing when executed well. Think: awards galas, major sporting events like the Superbowl or the World Cup, ceremonies like weddings, and even major conferences with national or international organizations. I recently returned from the ASHE Project Design and Construction (PDC) Conference, an annual conference for anyone involved in the physical realm of the health care industry. The attendees included nurses, hospital administrators, facilities directors, architects, doctors, vendors, consultants, engineers and construction companies of all flavors. The PDC is not the largest or longest conference by any stretch, but it is a big deal in the health care industry.
It was my third time in attendance, but I am constantly amazed at the scale of everything at a large conference: entire hotels booked solid and people occupying every available open spot—lobby, hallways, pool, bar, lounge, restaurant, gym—and likewise at the convention hall; every table, booth, computer, patio chair, hallway or bathroom seemed filled with people. I thought about the manpower it takes to get one of these things to run smoothly, and San Diego was a great host.
When it comes to big events, it is hard not to get a little amped up. The sheer scale of everything can be overwhelming at times. If you are not a people person, it would be torture on a massive scale. If you are the gregarious type, you would be giddy to the nth degree. Folks who travel probably see it as a break from their hectic schedules to stay in one place for three or four days. The rest of us totter between awe and annoyance, depending on the event and time of day.
I then thought about each individual’s job who works at any convention center spot. For attendees, even for those whom it is old hat, it is hard not to get a little juiced because of the buzz of activity. I recognized it would be very difficult for me to work in an environment which took a lot of adrenaline to execute, expecially if it happened all the time. For conventioneers, you might attend one or two or a few a year. For hotel employees, especially in San Diego, it happens almost every week of the year. Imagine that: your job is responding to a series of humanity floods; just as one convention ends, you are checking in the next set of guests. Similarly, the convention center cleans up after one mess only to make things pretty for another onslaught. And maybe the second shift janitorial staff would not feel the rush associated with the crowds and the hype, but surely greeters, counter staff and servers would.
This strength would be hard to maintain, like always being happy. You would like to be happy all the time, but it would wear you out. And besides, it is normal to have emotional fluctuations. Status quo for daily living is not ecstasy for most of us. There are probably a handful of jobs that are constantly hit with wave after wave of large scale stuff that needs dealing with judiciously, and with particular verve or aplomb. I think of waitstaff at certain restuarants, and there are others but probably not as many as you think. To always have to work at a supercharged level with no down time to recover. It would be like Superbowl Sunday or Election Day every day, or the lunch hour rush that never flagged. But maybe they see it as old hat, like an air traffic controller or a soldier at war must approach their jobs. The only way to survive without cardiac arrest at a young age would be to be calm, but that would fly in the face of the energy or pace required for some of these jobs.
I was a banquet waiter at the largest hotel in my hometown for a summer. It was a demanding job most of the time because during the summer months, most Saturdays and Sundays we hosted four wedding receptions each day (we had two banquet halls). There were basically two rounds: the 1pm-to-5pm reception and the 7pm-to-closing reception. Even servers like myself were affected by the charged atmosphere. The music, people, emotions, dress, history, families, relationships and potential for nearly anything to happen all fed the hype. I would come in at 11am and immediately work on setting tables and cleaning silverware knowing the place would be nuts in less than two hours. After the first wedding we tore down everything, cleaned, and built it back up again as quickly as possible. The later reception would often go past midnight, which meant sometimes I would not leave for home until after 2am. On Saturdays I would have to get up and do it all over again the next day.
This kind of pattern only worked because I was off most of the rest of the week, except for the odd Kiwanis Club luncheon or class reunion. Surviving the hype was all about resting up for the big weekend. I could not do it every day or even five days a week; there was just too much energy invested to recover quickly enough to repeat the effort daily. When I was at the PDC, I imagined how the convention city employees do it without amphetamines of some sort. It is a tiresome topic on which to think.
The daily sine wave of life’s activity is my recourse for without the lows, for perspective, there would be no highs. So hats off to all those who work at a very high energy and attention levels, every day, every week. You earn a pampered vacation of some sort in my book. In a world of hype, you sustain the unsustainable.
