Peter Lao
Barista
Sydney
Peter.Lao@aar.com.au
Peter Lao, a waiter and barista at Allens Arthur Robinson's Sydney office, finds it a 'nice and friendly place to work'.
Considering that he once managed a café in Darling Harbour where 16-hour shifts up to seven days a week were the norm, Peter appreciates the smooth-running corporate environment. He now gets a private life to enjoy with his family, reading (sci-fi) and following his rugby league team, the Sydney Roosters.
Peter, who worked his way through three years of a Commerce degree and is qualified to sell real estate, finds working with a close-knit team at Allens satisfying. Keeping clients and partners happy for Peter is about good service, but also being aware of how to minimise the level of intrusion into partner/client meetings. What is a big plus about working at Allens is the high level of organisation that goes into planning the daily service delivery, helped by the layout of the new Sydney premises.
Peter's day consists of checking the meeting rooms in the morning to make sure they are clean and well stocked. Then there are the morning and afternoon 'rush' periods when the majority of client meetings take place. Most of these have been pre-booked, but sometimes meetings run over their allotted time and Peter needs to be aware of any 'on-demand' requests. It can be quite normal to be providing extra food for meetings well into the night when clients are thrashing out final details of multi-million dollar deals.
Peter thinks that the key to the smooth running of the Allens catering team is the close-knit nature of the group. The team have learnt to support each other in a variety of tasks when things get busy and this can make all the difference to the team's enjoyment of their work.
