Thursday, April 12, 2001
by Kevin Yee
Fair warning: today's column is a completely
different, altogether more whimsical one than usual.
It will fill you with disgust at the true extent
of my geekdom, hinted at during that lovely story about deriving fun
from silly games at the Disneyland cash management counter. We're talking
true geekdom here. You'll be embarrassed to know me. Feel free to click
away now!
For those sadists among you who read to this next paragraph, allow me to begin by admitting that I loved math in school. Algebra in particular appealed to my sense of the orderliness of the universe and gave me deep satisfaction. In fact, I used to do quadratic equations for fun — no joke! I think my excitement for the field can be traced to my teacher Mr. Proffitt, a weird but fun guy. Mr. Proffitt always set aside Tuesdays to burn through a number of new theorems and equations. He called them "Turbo Tuesdays." (Which meant we did most of the week's work on one day — this was part of his eccentric charm). A few years after experiencing those "fun" days, I had turned Lead at Cafˇ Orleans and remembered Turbo Tuesdays.
I think what triggered the memory was our new pushcart for stocking, which had somehow gotten the appellation Turbo-Cart (because if you were reckless and foolish — in short, a teenager such as Disneyland hires by the thousands — then you might be caught running fast with the cart, then jumping on to it for a thrill ride... turbo-charged as it were). I think they still use that term to this day at the Cafˇ, in fact.
Anyhow, I'd noticed as a non-lead that leads tended to under-stress cleanliness. Things were always done in a halfhearted manner, and yet this is a restaurant! I vowed to make cleaning one of my top priorities when I got a chance to call the shots. Once working as a Lead, I realized that the realities of the workplace dictated some discretion, even at closing time. Can't have everyone doing extremely major amounts of cleaning each night — bad for budgets and bad for morale. My solution was to do an occasional (perhaps once a month) night of super-cleaning. Everyone who worked on such a closing shift would be asked, cajoled, or bribed into extending to help out. The name of this operation, of course, was a Turbo Close. See Mr. Proffitt? You had an impact!
Budgets, quotas, and profit margins being what they are, extra labor hours caused by turbo-closing would make this impossible to do nightly. But every so often on a very busy day, I'd crunch the numbers and see that we'd come out more than rosy with current staffing levels, and declare that tonight was a turbo close. Groans all around was the inevitable first reaction.
On the surface, turbo-closing was unpopular with the crew. Who wants to stay an extra thirty or sixty minutes beyond their scheduled off-time when there were parties to attend, beers to drink, and women to love? However, I knew even then that the Cast Members secretly liked turbo-closing. Normal closing routines were not so bad; with no guests around you crank up the radio and gossip freely with your fellow closers while wiping down counters and sanitizing utensils. It's not quite fun — it's work after all — but it's not stressful either.
Turbo closing in the French Market kitchen means masks, gloves, and climbing around for the hard to reach spots. See the hostess in the background?
Turbo-closing prolonged the experience, and provided a sense of camaraderie. Ironically, the feeling of community was sometimes centered on the ostensible hatred of turbo-closing: they would rally around their supposed desire to be doing anything else. But I could tell by their comments and actions that they really liked it. Many of the CMs were like me and preferred things sparkling clean, yet the normal 45-minute closing time just wasn't adequate to get things truly 100% clean. So the turbo-close gave them a chance to really take pride in their work and their location. The CMs were often happy to point out how clean they had made some counter or machinery which normally doesn't get cleaned due to time constraints.
We'd do the normal nightly cleaning first. During the hours the restaurant was still open, I had prowled through the place, looking for nooks, crannies, and shelves that normally don't get cleaned, and I would compile a list. High on the list was things that need brassing. We used a substance called Brite Boy that was moderately noxious to breathe and resulted in blue gunk buildup if you didn't get it all. The result of this toxicity is that not everything brass actually got "brassed" (clean with a brass cleaner) very often. And restaurant designers, in particular those employed or contracted by Disney, have some sort of brass fetish — it's everywhere.
Turbo Closing means "clean" isn't good enough: it must all be sparkling.
After everyone finished their normal closing duties, each person received special assignments culled from that list — polishing hard to reach brass, emptying and scrubbing storage shelves and cabinets, detailed cleaning of the soda fountain dispensers (sometimes by dismantling them first), and so on. Without turbo-closing, many of these areas simply suffered from months until appalling conditions arose in those cabinets.
A necessary component to the closing routine is to call over the Lead to be inspected when you were finished; only once you were "cleared" could you go (or more likely, be assigned to help out someone else). Turbo Closes were no exception. Because there were so many small jobs on the list, I was constantly busy checking out the work done. Sometimes I'd be picky about it if the job was only half-done — this is all about cleanliness after all! But I'd be sure to congratulate the Cast Members who took pride in their work. Without that recognition I have no doubt that Turbo Closes would be even less popular.
A small aside: soda dispensers get filthy. It disgusts me to think about that. But worse yet is an iced tea dispenser that is not properly cleaned (unscrew the nozzle) on a nightly basis. I can tell which restaurants don't clean theirs very well, for a particular odor comes from it. Disney is not unique in this lack of detailed cleaning, by the way — many restaurants suffer from it. In fact, Disney is rather fastidious about keeping these things clean. The health inspectors always checked the nozzles when they visited. But there were harder to reach parts of soda and iced tea machines we tackled on Turbo Close nights.
If you've never worked in restaurants, you may not know the pain that is brass. The French Market seems to be made up of the stuff.
The recent addition of Cast Deployment to Disneyland Attractions includes time for "make up work" such as might appear on my cleaning list. This is one element of Cast Deployment that is unpopular, yet I think it's necessary for the long-term vitality of a location. It keeps things clean and well-maintained... otherwise it's all too easy to claim you will search for burnt-out lights "later." The way things work out, "later" almost never comes. And when it comes to cleanliness and food safety, well, you can do the math on that count.
Turbo closes made me popular with the supervisors; they could see that we all had pride in our location. I'd make a point to ask the supervisor to come "check us out" at the end of the night, and the CMs proudly stood by the area he or she had so carefully cleaned. The supervisors also liked that they now had a super-clean restaurant (always good for the annual and surprise health inspections!). Besides, the extra hours didn't hurt our daily bottom line numbers, since I would only do it on days when we could "afford" it.
It was a win-win situation, as of course the Guests benefited from a cleaner and safer restaurant. Of course the poor CMs had to be extended and weren't really given much of a choice. Given a compelling enough reason / excuse, I would naturally relent and allow that one person to escape a turbo-close, but on the whole people didn't mind. Some even wanted the extra hours to get more money on the paycheck. Even now, years later, I hear from former CMs how much they enjoyed turbo-closing.
But there were always groans, I assure you. Now that I think about it, maybe some of those groans were real after all? Naw....
Next up: Cast Members and Crime
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Are you a CM or a former CM? I would love to hear and share your stories! E-mail me! Stories and comments you submit become property of and may be published on this site; we normally don't publish last names of current CMs, but if you wish to remain anonymous altogether or do not want me to share your stories, please let me know when you e-mail me. — Shoshana NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in reader-contributed stories do not reflect those of Cast Place or MousePlanet. CM – Cast member; company lingo for “employee.” Empowerment Evolution – The 1995 attempt by newer park management to introduce modern accountability and market forces into the stodgy Disneyland methodology and power hierarchies. The name was meant to “empower” rank and file employees by removing layers of their management, though now there are more managers than ever. TPO – Theme Park Operations; the division of the Disneyland hierarchy that actually works in the theme park itself. TDA – Team Disney Anaheim; the name of the on-site administration building. Area manager – used to be responsible for an entire land, with all business divisions in the area reporting to him. Area supervisor – the immediate boss for location supervisors who divide up a department of intelligently grouped locations. The area supervisors in turn reported to the area manager. Nowadays all supervisors and area supervisors have been replaced by managers and assistant managers — the same idea, but smaller “business units" than a department; usually just one location in fact. RFT – “A” status; a full-time hourly employee. RPT – “B” status; an hourly employee five days a week but just not quite 40 hours usually. CR – “C” status; an hourly employee who works weekends year-round and five days a week during all school holiday periods (including summer and Christmas break). CT – a part-time hourly employee who works five days a week during all school holiday periods (including summer and Christmas break). No seniority, so shifts worked are usually quite short. Locate the employment center to fill out an application, and they will call you for an interview (dress nicely, just shy of an actual suit). Once there, follow these rules, in this order of importance: 1. Smile and be very friendly. They want outgoing people.
2. Do not let the group interview throw you off balance. They want outgoing people who can “perform” a little bit.
3. Do not worry about job (in)experience. They don't care. They want friendly people, not experienced and/or hardened people.
4. Do your best to convince them you already have a Disney attitude: you want to work with people, you're a team player, and you would consider this a dream job (however, don't overdo it on the crazy-Disney-fan side either). Strike a nice balance.
5. Did I mention the importance of a smile? 
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