POIPU — Gary Enos, a bartender in the Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort’s banquet department, has been working there for 25 years. He’s been with the company for 35 years. Enos has been telling all his co-workers that he’s just about
POIPU — Gary Enos, a bartender in the Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort’s banquet department, has been working there for 25 years. He’s been with the company for 35 years.
Enos has been telling all his co-workers that he’s just about ready to retire.
“I tell everyone, ‘Next year I’ll retire,’ and then HR tells me that I have to fill out all the paperwork and I tell them I have, but just very slowly,” Enos said.
He’s just one of the 130-plus employees who were celebrating not just the Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort and Spa’s silver anniversary, but their as well.
The employees’ 25 years of employment was memorialized Sunday at the Ilima Terrace with a special blessing by Cultural Manager George Thronas and words by General Manager Keith Butz. The festivities included a beachside view complete with a band, buffet dinner and open bar.
Butz said employees can work at the Grand Hyatt Kauai all their lives and feel good about it because they take care of each other. Those who start with the company are called charter members, he said.
“This resort is very indicative of the island itself,” Butz said. “Every day is different. We take care of our associates. We treat them with dignity and respect. Some employees want to be in the same positions for 25 years. Others want to move around.”
Sandi Costa, a supervisor in the laundry department, has had that job since Oct. 16, 1990. That was even before the grand opening of the Grand Hyatt on Nov. 15, just one month later.
Costa said she’s worked with a lot of the same people for 25 years and still sees them every day. She still remembers what it was like back then.
Around that time, Costa said, there were housekeepers and room inspectors checking the hotel and getting it ready for that grand opening, a celebration not unlike the one on Sunday.
Fellow charter members Nancy Abigania and Paulino Bayno, both 61, were some of those charged with the task of getting the resort in tip-top shape prior to the arrival of the first guest on Nov. 15, 1990.
“We were all cleaning. Even when I was an inspector, I was helping them clean up some too because they needed more cleaning instead of the inspection,” Abigania said.
Beside being charter members and celebrating their 25-year anniversary, Abigania, Costa, Bayno and Enos all had two more things in common: They were all thrilled to be employees at the Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort and Spa, and that they were being celebrated Sunday.
And Enos said that when he does finally retire, he’ll be happy to sleep in. But there’s one thing he’ll truly be happy about finally getting to do.
“Nothing!” said the 66-year-old.
