At This Hyatt, a Class Staff Is at Your Service

It’s 10 a.m. on Tuesday and Gunter Heine, an out-of-town businessman, has just sat down to his first meal of the day at a Westlake hotel.

Breakfast is the usual: two eggs, toast and bacon. But his waiter, standing about 4 feet high, is anything but typical.

Gingerly balancing a circular drink tray and an order pad, 10-year-old Andrew Radir carefully writes down the order and is prompted--once only--by a professional, adult waiter standing alongside to ask: “Bacon or sausage?”

Then Andrew is off to the kitchen, where he will learn how to place the order. It’s not every day that the fifth-grader waits tables.

But Tuesday, he and 17 of his elementary classmates from Westlake School took a crack at working positions from hotel manager to bellhop, adding an uncommon twist to an otherwise ordinary day at the Hyatt Westlake Plaza in Thousand Oaks.

The morning event, called Camp Hyatt Career Day, was part of a national campaign by the hotel chain to introduce youngsters to the hotel and travel industry. To participate in the program, the students were required to submit resumes and undergo an interview with a committee of teachers for the jobs. Forty applied, 18 were hired.

Kimberly Lorier, 10, said her winning smile and work history got her a job as a chef in the kitchen where she donned a white chef’s hat and smock and helped prepare pizza and fruit salad.

“I told them that I always have a smile on my face and I’m really good with cooking because I have kitchen duty at my house two nights a week,” she said.

Claiming he was “good at making salad,” 11-year-old Charley Alexander also had his eyes on a chef’s position. But he settled for becoming a housekeeper, a job he later said was more difficult than he had expected.

“It’s hard [making beds] because they have three sheets and humongous beds,” he said.

Indeed, most children found the jobs more challenging than they had anticipated. For 10-year-old Ryan Loring, who was filling in as the 255-room hotel’s general manager, it was the paperwork. “I didn’t know that you had to sign so many papers,” he said.

But for most of the kids, the chance to play dress-up in a real-life situation was a welcome break from school. “It was interesting to meet a lot of people,” said Randy Deitemeyer, 10, who spent his morning performing all of a bellhop’s responsibilities--minus the valet parking. “And I got to skip school.”