The following weekend we had a great time attending the Hollywood Florida St. Patty’s Day Parade.  After the parade it was nice to take the kids by the office and to have them sit at my desk.  My son Adam picked up the picture of my new business card, featuring an updated headshot, exclaiming “Dad,  you are wearing a SUIT!”  It made me realize he hardly ever sees me wearing more than shorts and sandals if at home or business casual attire if I’m coming from the office.  Here’s a picture of the kids and Cathy in our office that day:

                                     

One side benefit of being in the office for two weeks straight was that I got to reach out to some old contacts who I had not been in touch with for some time.  One of my calls was to Tim Kelly, old client I had known since he was Assistant Guest Services Director at MGM Grand who I found out on this call was now the VP of Hotel Operations.  I recalled that Tim was the type of hotelier who always returned his messages promptly, but even factoring-in that I was surprised when not even one hour after I had left my voicemail I received a call back from Jill Archunde, who now serves as Director of Hotel Operations.  I have also known Jill for many years and was excited to hear of her promotion too.  I listened with amazement as Jill described how just the day before they had mentioned me in a manager’s meeting and had talked about how they needed to track down my number in their files. 

Within one day I had sent Jill a proposal offering to meet with her in person in her office to review it; within one more day I found myself booking a flight, and then a few days later was back at MGM Grand to meet with Jill in person. 

How exciting it was to enter that lobby for the first time after so many years.  I had been there at least a dozen times to conduct training or manage the training projects of our various HSA International trainers, and many other times to speak at hotel industry conferences being held there when I was a guest speaker.  Here is a picture I took outside looking up at the building, followed by a picture of the famous gold MGM Lion which has been photographed by countless visitors every day since the opening nearly 17 years ago:

                               

                              

The best part was that before leaving I had a signed agreement from Jill and dates to come back to conduct the training in only 10 more days.  What’s even more impressive is that as busy as Jill’s job always is, she insisted on personally checking me in online, printing my boarding pass, and even arranged for the hotel limo to take me to the airport.   

Later in March when I returned to conduct the training it was a wonderful experience to be training  participants from this department, most of whom have worked for the PBX/Switchboard department for 10-15 years and yet who were able to adapt to this major change in their job descriptions.  Here are picturesof me with the six groups of participants from the new Guest Services Department  over the last three days of March:

 
                                 

  
                               

                                 

                                  

                                 

Here is a picture of me with Jill Archunde, my gracious host and the Director of Hotel Operations at MGM Grand: