What only one person knows

They are not secrets: they are details learned by setting up. That the north-east corner has a fall in the floor and tables wobble there; that the pantry door opens inwards and eats sixty centimetres; that from the table by the column nobody can see the top table and there is always a complaint.

Each of those details costs one event to learn. When the person who knows them leaves, the venue does not lose a salary: it loses thirty details it is going to relearn one at a time, each of them with an incident in front of a client.

The plan as the memory of the room

The difference between a manual and a note on the plan is that the manual has to be remembered. A note written at the exact spot in the room appears when that spot is being set up, which is the only moment it is any use.

That is the test for deciding where to write each thing: where it will be read. A «room quirks» document in a shared folder is opened by nobody; a note on the north-east corner of the plan is seen by whoever places that table.

Service notes: what to write down even when it seems obvious

The rule is to write what you would explain to somebody new on their first day. If out loud you would say «oh, and watch out for…», that goes in writing.

  • The spots where no table goes, and why. The reason matters: without it, somebody puts one there anyway, assuming the note is out of date.
  • Which way each supplier comes in and how high that door is.
  • Where the electrical boards are and which circuit carries the hot buffet.
  • Which tables have a poor view of the stage or the top table, so close family are not seated there.
  • How long each set-up task really takes in that particular room.

How you train somebody new

With last season’s plans, not with a manual. Somebody starting in March can look at fifteen real set-ups of that same room, with their notes and their incidents, and in one afternoon understand the space better than after two weeks of being told about it.

It is also how training stops depending on the person who knows having time. In high season nobody has a free afternoon to teach; the plans are there anyway.

What it really costs when it leaves undocumented

You can put a figure on it. If the person leaving had accumulated thirty details, and each one gets relearned through an incident, and an average incident costs somewhere between extra work and a gesture to the client, a season easily runs to several thousand euros. On top of that is what you cannot see: the months in which the team works with less confidence.

Documenting it, by contrast, is a task of minutes spread out: every time a new detail turns up, it gets written on the plan. There is no documentation project to run; there is a note to write on the day you learn it.