Arriving in Beijing on July 18 with my favorite train, chatting with colleagues about what we would have expected in the months to follow. Spent endless weeks of training in an international school where all the District Manager and Chef are learned by heart the battle plan. On paper, perfect at the macro level, from the outset lacked some details, but it goes on. Order of Battle: Follow the menus, follow the plan. The plan I have eight people to watch. A gymkhana task matrix, a good challenge.

The powerful tools of a millionaire budget allowed me to share the hotel room with a snorer professional, with great stress from lack of sleep for the whole week. Meanwhile, the first challenges ahead: trucks blocked the entrance by security that does not want to take responsibility, responsible for arriving in China at the last minute, providers who do not find the goods or do not have clear details like "but they are 100 or 1,000 cakes a day? ".

It begins. From the I and a colleague to come for an apartment with a room .... The picture shows the cathartic moment of the coin toss: who would sleep on the army cot in the living room? I win. A week later my colleague moved from friends.

The first 10 days were formative: calls at all hours of the day or night, openings, chat, discussion, staff coming from Shanghai, coffee. So much coffee. After two days I understand the irony of things: each place serves meals to people often massively single nationality (for example, the Canadian boxing, beach volleyball to Brazil, ...). This has meant working even harder to deliver in each of them the right offer. Quickly. Over five days in an Olympics in the end make the difference between a service "perfect" and a "decent".

All of a sudden the password is no longer follow the plan, you have imagination, change, adapt. In China this means risking great because the staff needs time and patience gets confused otherwise. A big job for more than 100% because in Chinese all the chefs assigned to me (rest of the staff not to talk about it) do not speak like a Comma in English.

Meanwhile, the office, the boss of bosses every day is a victim one day purchasing, human resources one day before those who do not follow the plans, after those who can not change. Every iota of pressure received from the upper floors of the customer is transferred under par, with disappointing choice of modes, times, and understanding of the realities on the ground. I love staying here for details of synthesis and because they are inside the company, but personally I was extremely disappointed by the project management, especially on the treatment staff. Do not miss the urge to point it out and see what this will mean.

Another thing that will remain of this Olympic experience is definitely the fact that they live by the work involved. With your pass to enter all the structures, the pleasure of seeing the time on the internet a lot and sit in the press box, enter where the spectators can not run around the Olympic lane when other cars are blocked by traffic Peking understand how many people and how many stories there are behind a Olympiad to be able to run the machine. A lot really.

Professionally, having seen our staff stand at the Olympics in Shanghai, the hundred things to untangle without pauses (one day "free", but on the phone, in a month and a half), the pressure to achieve results and the results obtained in every respect, the thanks of many managers and customers, this will certainly among those work experiences that teach you a lot, and be proud of.

Now I go to work, write why it is so late ...