Ganesha and the Guru

A week ago I attended a conference for meeting planners. I hadn't originally intended to go to this one, but someone asked me to speak as part of a panel on food and beverage planning ... it's more tedious than it sounds... yes, extremely tedious. Since I detest all of the budgeting, selecting, ordering, revising, revising again, again, again, and ultimate complaining about food and beverage at meetings, I usually avoid personal responsibility for this area.

This ability to have a someone else deal with the tasks one hates is one of the few benefits of being a lead planner, but one still does have to understand it in order to be ultimately responsible. So I fought the instinct of asking the requestor if she had called me by mistake. I agreed to the engagement, guessing they might still call me in a few weeks and, with appropriate embarrassment, explain that they meant to ask someone who actually does food and beverage planning as a primary responsibility. To my surprise, when I told my contact I would speak, she became effusive, excitedly lauding my abilities and proclaiming her relief that they'd gotten me of all people to speak. I knew at that moment they were absolutely confusing me with someone else.
Only the charm school admonition not to argue with people who are paying compliments kept me from trying to correct the obvious misunderstanding. Besides, what if I really am that brilliant? Wouldn't that be grand?

When I hung up the phone I took a long look at the image of Ganesha I keep in my office. "What if I'm getting carried away with flattery?" I wondered. Ganesha is the elephant-faced, Hindu god of obstacles. While I am not Hindu I keep the image in my office to remind me to be humble, because Ganesha is known to throw obstacles in the path of those who are full of themselves. The nagging thought that this was a dangerously conceited engagement stayed with me as I packed my bags for the conference. I forged ahead in this ego massaging endeavor, trying to be mindful of the fact I could not possibly know as much as the three chefs with whom I would share the stage.

Meeting planner conferences are, as one would expect, pretty awesome. The host hotel always has its best foot forward. All of the restaurants and caterers are trying to outdo themselves. Best of all, everyone is talking about one of my favorite topics: planning meetings. We do Myers-Briggs assesments and listen to analogies between marketing success and sky diving, because speakers like to showcase themselves at these meetings too. There is entertainment. The food is great. The fundraising auctions feature weekend getaways and bottles of wine. This conference was no dissappointment, notwithstanding the fact that no attempt was made to learn about nor accommodate my special dietary needs.

The irony of this is that accommodating special dietary needs was one of the topics on which I was invited to talk. With Ganesha nagging me to be gracious, I refrained from pointing out how much work it was to find something edible on the buffets that weekend during my part of the presentation.

Gluten Free Dessert

Graciousness goes a long way, and I avoided offending my fellow panelists who seemed a bit put out by those of us with special diets. In fact, I felt a little bad for them, because at the beginning they clearly had no idea they were sitting with the enemy. I understand that people like me are a pain, because we just can't eat what the other 200 people are having. Nonetheless, I didn't choose to be made sick by common foods. I try to be understanding of the fact that it's a nuisance to host me for a meal. Likewise no chef wants to poison his guests, nor will he if informed. Namaste.

As for the audience, I was pleasantly surprised to be a hit in my debut as a speaker. It turned out that I knew a lot more than I thought I did. I covered organic certifications, medical diet trends, the life and death importance of honoring special dietary requests regardless of how stupid they sound, the effect auditors have on meal bugeting in the government sector, strategies to reduce costs, ways to make cheap food look expensive, etc. I mediated an audience debate. I carried the banner for those of us with special diets. Above all, I had fun

The difficult part was dealing with compliments afterwards. I had done well, but I didn't want to allow myself the fantasy of actually being a Food & Beverage Guru. While I've learned a lot in seventeen years as a meeting planner, the truth is I face the same food and beverage dilemmas as everyone else who has ever tried to feed four hundred people and make them happy and do so with very little money. Here's what I know: it's a lot easier to philosophize about food than it is to actually serve it.

Food & Beverage Guru? It was certainly gratifying, and hopefully someone appreciates the merits of lemonade more than they had before. Still I'm probably better off focusing on my day job. I already have the grandiose title of Farm Diva, and there is a lot of satisfaction to be had in that aspiration. My chickens think my manicure looks delicious. Plus, after five months they're not dead and no one saw that coming. Now there's an accomplishment for which to pat myself on the back.