The good folks at the Tulalip Resort Casino shared a "back of the house" tour of both the hotel and casino sides of their operation.  Here are some tidbits from our tour on the hotel side.

Housekeeping: The hotel's housekeeping operation has a capacity to handle 1000 rooms, in line with plans for a second tower.  The operation includes giant washers and driers, featuring the "Chicago Mangler," a huge, $1.2M machine that spreads, dries, irons, and folds -- feed in a wet sheet, and it comes out pressed and folded.  We were treated to a fine view of the giant lint vat (the lint traps in housekeeping are, we're told, the number one hotel fire hazard).

Automated Uniform Delivery: This is one of the "efficiencies" lauded by hotel management.  Instead of individual lockers for employees to store their uniforms and clothes, the hotel uses a delivery system.  An employee swipes his or her card, and a dry cleaning-type rack automatically delivers the employee's uniform to a door.  The employee opens the door, removes the uniform, and goes to change.  With nearly 2000 uniformed employees, this saves quite a bit of time and space.

Rethermal Technology in the Banquet Kitchen: Here's another fun one -- the Alto Shaams.  This, like the uniform delivery system, is another efficiency to save time and space.  Banquet food is prepped ahead of time -- about 70% of the cooking process is completed beforehand.  Then the food is "quick cooled."  When serving time comes, the food is "rethermed" and plated.  The retherming process uses Alto Shaams to heat and finish cooking the food.  As we enjoyed lunch before our keynote presentation, we can attest to the food quality.

Organizational Culture: I am highly interested in organization management, since I now have to manage one -- the UND School of Law.  So, I noted some of the aspects of the hotel's messages to employees and the culture created by the same during our tour.  There are signs expressly stating that the hotel has a culture of hospitality, with other messages like "Our best today, and better tomorrow."  Or my favorite, the sign about "energy vampires" and "energy givers" (though I might have gone with "energy angels" for parallelism, unless that's inappropriate in a workplace): Energy givers are supportive, contribute positive energy to the work environment, and help coworkers to do their best.  Energy vampires suck that positive energy, support, and cooperation right out.  And you can only get rid of them by driving a stake through their hearts.  (That last bit wasn't actually on the sign, but it seemed to be implied.)