Entertaining for business

[NYC Mike]

We have a nice tidy rule that saves everyone trouble, most senior person pays.

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We had a slightly diffferent rule. The second most senior person pays and the most senior person signs off on the expense report.

Jim

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Yes, I've done it that way in the past and also the way Busboy mentioned. In my current setting there is only 1 person who signs those reports.

-Mike

Edited April 8, 2006 by NYC Mike (log)

[MichaelB]

We have a nice tidy rule that saves everyone trouble, most senior person pays.

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We had a slightly diffferent rule. The second most senior person pays and the most senior person signs off on the expense report.

Jim

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Many companies -- and now most large companies -- enforce a "senior person pays" rule. This assures that someone not present has to approve the expenditure.

[therese]

Surprising enough many hosts told the server to tell the guest that if they wanted to order a special wine to advise the guest that he would be charged separately for this wine or any others he wanted to order plus a service charge. Others firmly said all wine will be ordered only by myself, very few said it was okay serve them whatever they want.

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So I'm not insane.

The restaurant I'd chosen was a relatively small place, chef-owned, and in a slightly dodgy, artsy sort of neighborhood, so business dinners definitely not the norm. Because all of the guests lived locally and were bringing spouses the location was perfect, though---not far from work and easy access to the freeway for people who lived in the 'burbs. And of course the food and wine were great.

So even though the staff knew that I was the host, etc. I wouldn't be surprised to find that they'd never encountered a renegade wine purchase before. And since I hadn't pre-chosen the menu (because I really did want the guests to have exactly what they wanted) it was not so immediately obvious that this guy was departing from the plan.

Had he actually gotten up from his chair and come down to my end of the table to suggest that we try a different wine, one that he particularly liked or that he'd been wanting to try or whatever I'd probably have ordered a couple of bottles for us all.

[therese]

Plus, the poor person gets the Amex points.

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Love those Amex points.

Apart from the points, though, I actually do like hosting work dinners. I like picking a restaurant that's convenient for the guests, serves food that suits a variety of tastes, features a nice wine list, uses locally-sourced ingredients (thereby supporting the local farms), and is chef-owned and/or managed (thereby supporting them). And that one instance of renegade wine purchase aside, have had uniformly pleasant evenings.

On the other end of the spectrum are expense account dinners where a rep is present and paying. As has been pointed out upthread this seems to bring out the worst in some people, though I do think it's really more a question of them being that sort of people in the first place. There are certain of my colleagues that I simply refuse to dine with, as I know they will be rude and condescending to the rep, and pretty much invariably drink way too much in an attempt to extract the most "value" out of the evening.

[therese]

...As the waiter leans over to set down my dish I manage to murmur "Bring me a glass of merlot. Any merlot, I don't care." He returns in  something like 20 seconds (clearly recognizing desperation when he hears it) with the glass. My boss, seated to my left, notices it, and instantly leans over to hiss "Hey, where'd you get that?" And I told him and he ordered one as well and finally our host realized that he'd not ordered wine and did so, just asking for a bottle of whatever I'd been given.

The funniest thing about this entire episode is the fact that my boss was a very proper sort of guy, very aware of what is and isn't socially okay, but desperate situations call for desperate measures.

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Remember my very proper boss, the one who (like me) was so desperate for a drink during the awkward dinner I described upthread that he also broke social convention and ordered a glass of wine when his host hadn't and also hadn't invited him to?

He really was an amazingly proper sort of guy, very formal but also very pleasant, almost disarmingly convivial (all traits which have served him very well in his career) and very good at hosting dinner for colleagues.

One night we were out to dinner at a fancy Italian place, one of his favorites because they had very experienced old school waiters and a great wine list. Our guest was some big whig (whom I can't recall) but also at dinner were several other fairly senior colleagues from here in town. Dinner proceeded nicely through our first courses and those plates were removed and then cutlery for the next course was placed. One of my colleagues, a very pleasant guy who was seated to the left of my boss (I was to the right of my boss) suddenly held up a piece of cutlery he'd never seen before and said, "Hey, what the heck is this thing?" And before my chairman could murmur "Fish knife," one of the old waiters who'd been in the background walked up, took the fish knife out of the first guy's hand and said, "It's a fish knife." He didn't actually say "you ignoramus" out loud, but it was understood.

Not a big deal to the guy who'd said it, and we all laughed it off, but I gather that my boss later had a quiet chat with the manager. Had it been the big whig who'd been corrected I think the little chat might have occurred right then and there.

Edited April 8, 2006 by therese (log)

[FabulousFoodBabe]

My business-dinner stories are all pretty old ones, but still vivid in my mind (wine sent back just for grins was always big with ad agency types and back then, having huge, four-course lunches was big, as well.). I recall once having to sit through a meeting where I got my a** kicked, the client didn't want anyone to think they liked our firm better so they didn't back me up, and some dweeby person kept calling me "Junior" and "Sweetheart." After stopping the meeting several times to say, "it's Fabby," I had to take them to lunch and let them pretend like it was all in a good day's work. It was kind of gratifying to have the agency head drop me a note later and say, "you handled that very well." I wanted to tell them I spit in the guy's food but I figured that being a jackass in a bad suit was its own punishment.

What stands out most for me, though are experiences as the entertain-ee.

Husband took a job halfway across the country. Kids and I finally relocate; we have dinner one night with his new boss and boss' wife. Predinner cocktails were, for boss, six beers (wifey had three champagne cocktails and a martini). Two bottles of wine at dinner, with some brandy afterward. Wife was sitting at the table in a big Gael Greene-like hat, getting more and more dramatic and gesturing around as she told tales of her life; we could see the waitstaff at the restaurant being instructed to work around her flailing. Husband just smiled and got more and more quiet and florid in the face. As they actually got into their car and drove off ... I looked at Mr. FB and said, "you have got to be kidding."

This behavior was repeated every time we were near them. apparently, it was a company-culture thing.

Another new boss, who seemed normal, took us out on our first night in a new town. Once again, husband drank a lot but he was a big guy, he just started leering at my boobs and craning his head to get a better look at them and then his wife, who was very drunk by then, starting snarling at him. No one else found it odd; they just kept eating and chatting. I'm worried that, sitting to the guy's right, I'm going to be in the line of fire when the food started to get pitched. Yet another company-culture thing.

I like NYC Mike's company culture better, I think. And no, spouse is no longer with either company!

[therese]

What stands out most for me, though are experiences as the entertain-ee. 

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Neither my husband nor I do much that includes spouses, either him as mine or mine as his. We work for the same parent company, weirdly enough, and occasionally are both at the same event but not as each other's spouses.

Second visit recruitment dinners, "thank you" dinners like the one I describe early in this thread, and holiday parties are about the extent of it, and my husband only goes along if he anticipates the evening being at least bearable. Somewhere along the line we came up with a sort of formula that takes into account the company, the food, and the distance (as long as an hour in the metro Atlanta area). Oh, and how important spouse participation might be a in particular instance: my husband's presence de rigueur at second visit recruitment dinner, for instance.

[PCL]

I eat out as part of my working life a hell of a lot, and after reading the thread to this point, I feel relieved, fortunate even. I've always found it to be a two way street. My experiences in this field are split evenly between being the entertainer and entertained.

As host, I pick where we go, and the places I go to, know the drill. It is a simple drill, I call the shots, discreetly, but surely so. The wine question is solved by way of a friendly discussion with the group in order to ascertain preferences, and sometimes to let some boor show off and feel included.

As guest, I'd just go along in a quiet, appreciative manner, and just drink whatever has been ordered. When passed the wine list, which happens now and then, a mid-range bottle is usually safe, and if unsure, damnit, pass the list on!

[therese]

Although I don't dine very often with reps, they tend to be memorable dinners for various reasons.

A couple of years ago I was in Philadelphia for a very large conference. I'd been invited to dinner (along with some other senior consultant types) several weeks earlier by the head of marketing for one of the vendors of a company out in Silicon Valley. This guy is himself reportedly very into food and wine, so into wine that he's actually makes some himself, as he lives in the hills around Santa Cruz. He talks about food and wine a lot.

So he's talking up the place he's chosen and I'm thinking that this is going to be great, actually worth burning an evening on (because I'm turning down dinner invitations from people I know at the conference, people who won't buy me dinner but are really cool) and wondering where he's booked: Striped Bass? Le Bec-Fin?

So when it turns out that he's booked Roy's I am not quite as excited as I might be. Sure, lots of people think of macadamia nut-crusted mahi mahi and shrimp on a stick when they think of Philadelphia, I'm just not one of them. And because this guy has yattered on just endlessly about this amazing place we're going (and because my evil twin is now sort of peeved to be burning up an evening) I point out that I've been, that we've actually got one (because it's a chain) in Atlanta.

So he books elsewhere, Italian, and it's pretty darn bad. Actually worse than Macaroni Grill, though of course he couldn't have known, and because this conference is so big most restaurants were booked up. So I ate and drank and made nice conversation as was my job as guest.

Apparently the rank and file reps at the meeting used the reservation at Roy's and had a great time. They all thanked me the next day, at least the ones who could speak through their hangovers.

[therese]

In spite of the title of this thread, lots of my dinners with reps and/or industry people are great: wonderful meal, wonderful company. Not surprisingly these are generally when the rep really is into food and/or wine, and either takes the trouble to find a great place, or asks me to do it.

The best of these is a guy who works for Danish vendor. He's not a rep but rather director of research for the firm. He's expected to entertain at meetings but has a lot of leeway in whom he invites along (definitely not tied to revenue or potential revenue), and I'm usually one of the lucky few.

Recent meals with him (and his co-workers) have been at One Midtown Kitchen for Richard Blais' one bajillion course tasting menu and an omakase meal in D.C. at a place whose name I can't recall at the moment.

So it's not always dinner in hell.

[therese]

From another thread, but an excellent example of just exactly the sort of evening that prompted me describe some of these evenings as Dinner in Hell.

[therese]

I attend a lot of meetings, meetings whose purpose is not the exchange of money but the exchange of information. Many of the participants are from other countries, and most of the participants are not in the private sector, so there's generally some pressure to keep expenses under control while maximizing interaction among participants.

To that end, meetings typically offer food as part of the registration fee, and said food can vary tremendously in quality.

The single most amazing meal I've ever eaten in this context was in Freiburg, Germany. My husband (or soon to be husband---I don't think we were technically married yet) was actually the meeting participant and I was just along for the ride. The opening gala dinner was held in a large hall decorated with Bavarian this and that, with big tables in the middle and buffet tables around the perimeter, all of them pretty much sagging under the weight of hors d'oeuvres: caviar, ham, foie gras, salmon, whatever. There must have been 200 different canapes. My husband, eyes bugging out, tried everything he saw, remarking on the quality. I cautioned him to not eat too much, as there were surely several courses to follow. He scoffed: "Are you kidding? No, this is dinner. There's a huge amount of food here. How could they think of serving more food?"

"Sure, honey," I answered, "whatever you say."

Six courses later he admitted that he could have taken it easy on that first course.

This particular meeting, although purportedly scientific, was heavily underwritten by a drug company.

[therese]

Well, I've just come up with a new variation on "dinner in hell."

I was in Bethesda earlier this month for a two day meeting, a grueling marathon at which about 40 experts in my field weighed in from 8:30 AM to 7:00 PM each day. We were booked into a hotel that offered shuttle service to downtown Bethesda, so I ended up eating dinner there three evenings in a row.

The first two meals were at Green Papaya (mediocre upmarket Vietnamese) and Cesco (suprisingly good Italian).

By the end of this meeting I was pretty whipped, and looking forward to a quiet meal with close colleagues: preferably no more than three of them at a time, but five as the absolute limit. More than six makes it hard to get a table (particularly as this was Saturday, and it was already after lunch when plans started coming together), and presents all sorts of difficulties later on.

So we settled on a nice group of six and I was charged with finding a restaurant. Unfortunately the first two I called (on the recommendation of the same person who'd suggested Cesco) were booked, and I finally called Bacchus, a Lebanese restaurant that gets decent press (including some mentions here at eG) and the enthusiastic endorsement of the hotel shuttle bus driver (normally information I use in deciding which restaurants not to frequent) while satisfying various diet and budget restaurants.

The meeting over, we re-grouped downstairs to wait for the shuttle. The shuttle takes a regular route through Bethesda, stopping at various areas with restaurants, so when another large party from our meeting got off at the same time I wasn't initially too concerned. When it became apparent that they were also dining at Bacchus I experienced a twinge of anxiety, as I doubted that the other party would have thought ahead to book, and I didn't want to lose our table in the ensuing confusion, or, god forbid, have the two parties somehow be combined.

So I made my way to the hostess stand and gave my name and the reservation time and party of six, and she replied, "Oh, yes, they're getting your table ready now." And she peeked around the corner and then looked in the reservation book again and finally pointed out that the reservation had been changed.

"Changed?" I inquired.

"Yes, changed," she replied. "Changed to a party of thirteen."

"What? Changed to a party of thirteen? Are you sure? Thirteen?" I'm guessing that my voice has turned into a sort of hiss at this point. I look at the other guests in my party, none of whom admits to inviting along an extra seven bodies, and by this time the extra seven bodies have trailed in behind us, and we are eventually all lead to a hot, dark corner of the restaurant, with six people squished up on a banquette, five on the opposite side, and seats on either end where there isn't really space because there shouldn't be this many people.

I'm claustrophobic, so pick an outside corner seat. The person who sits down beside me, in the end seat, is a colleague that I don't particularly like, and sure enough, he is the one who has added himself and an additional six to our party.

Because there are so many of us thhe waiter suggests a family style, set price dinner. We surrender our menus (which did list some things that sounded reasonable) and I hope for the best. My hopes go unfulfilled, however, as boring dish after unpleasant dish (one being lamb that was literally one of the worst dishes I've ever eaten) arrive. I manage to not say unpleasant things to my unpleasant colleague, and do have some very nice conversation with other colleagues, and finally the bill arrives.

No question of asking the waiter to divide the bill into thirteen (though given the generally poor quality of service throughout the evening it actually would have acceptable, IMO) and there'd be the usual nightmare of some people with cash and some people with credit, etc. and finally unpleasant colleague and I split the bill. I actually had to carry it to the kitchen to present it to our server.

So now I get to try and have this meal reimbursed. Meals weren't covered by the meeting, and I hadn't bothered to get the trip expenses pre-approved at work (because air and hotel were covered), so I'm going to have to do some fast talking.

Dinner in hell, indeed.

[Megan Blocker]

In my last job, I worked as a recruiter for a major investment bank here in New York. I recruited for the back office of the bank, at all levels from entry to managing directors. With fifty open roles at any given time (that's just on my plate, not bank-wide), we sometimes had to use recruitment vendors/agencies to fill the jobs. Cue lots and lots of lunches.

There were a few vendors I loved working with and enjoyed - surprisingly, those tended to be the ones who didn't take me out much. The pushier ones were always begging for a lunch, so I would usually have to go out with them once or twice a year to keep them quiet.

Our offices were in the Flatiron district, so restaurant options were always really good - I was taken to Gramercy Tavern, Eleven Madison Park, Tabla, Union Pacific, Union Square Cafe...so it's not like the food or the service were bad.

Mostly, the lunches were just tedious. But there was one time when I went out with one recruiter who was particularly sketchy (all sorts of issues with H1-B visas and falsified resumes, if memory serves) to Gramercy Tavern, right around Christmas time. It was the first time I'd been to a lunch without my manager, and I had brought two of my slightly-more-junior colleagues with me. I was the oldest (at 23), and I guess the vendor thought that meant we all spent our time drinking and puking, because all he talked about for the entire meal was "hugging the bowl," "worshipping the porcelain gods," and so on. For TWO HOURS.

I was so ill, I couldn't even eat my delicious meal. Sigh. Such a waste.

Now I work in offshoring and vendor relationship management, which translates to a lot of mediocre midtown Indian. Blah.

Edited July 30, 2006 by Megan Blocker (log)

[BeeZee]

As those who live in NJ know, we are lucky to have an abundance of diners on every major highway. I've had 2 really pleasant lunches recently with customers, just casual/spur of the moment things. Last week had lunch with a customer (7 Brothers Diner on Rt.46) who bought ME lunch and we spent a very pleasant hour or so sharing industry gossip and horror stories. Seems that there's a correlation between the cost of the lunch and the pleasure of the experience...high end lunch often winds up feeling too much like work.

[AK@Spicehouse]

In my last job, I worked as a recruiter for a major investment bank here in New York.  I recruited for the back office of the bank, at all levels from entry to managing directors.  With fifty open roles at any given time (that's just on my plate, not bank-wide), we sometimes had to use recruitment vendors/agencies to fill the jobs.  Cue lots and lots of lunches.

There were a few vendors I loved working with and enjoyed - surprisingly, those tended to be the ones who didn't take me out much.  The pushier ones were always begging for a lunch, so I would usually have to go out with them once or twice a year to keep them quiet.

Our offices were in the Flatiron district, so restaurant options were always really good - I was taken to Gramercy Tavern, Eleven Madison Park, Tabla, Union Pacific, Union Square Cafe...so it's not like the food or the service were bad.

Mostly, the lunches were just tedious.  But there was one time when I went out with one recruiter who was particularly sketchy (all sorts of issues with H1-B visas and falsified resumes, if memory serves) to Gramercy Tavern, right around Christmas time.  It was the first time I'd been to a lunch without my manager, and I had brought two of my slightly-more-junior colleagues with me.  I was the oldest (at 23), and I guess the vendor thought that meant we all spent our time drinking and puking, because all he talked about for the entire meal was "hugging the bowl," "worshipping the porcelain gods," and so on.  For TWO HOURS.

I was so ill, I couldn't even eat my delicious meal.  Sigh.  Such a waste.

Now I work in offshoring and vendor relationship management, which translates to a lot of mediocre midtown Indian.  Blah.

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Vendor management, my kinda girl. Offer still there for lunch for you and some friends any day. Email me AKlein@starwich.com. We deliver and cater for our friends