Sunday, October 11, 2009
I Know You Are Out There
You're out there. I know you are. Come here and post, all of you! For a brief moment, we were at the top of Google. Now we are not. We must raise our profile. I need more stories about Jesse Sartain. Like the one about him having a stroke before a sales meeting, then showing up at the meeting anyway in a hospital gown.
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Can you post any pictures of Jesse Sartain?
ReplyDeleteI actually don't have any. Try a Google images search and post the links here so we can all fuck with his images. Fair use!
ReplyDeleteThis site is hilarious! good work.
ReplyDeleteI worked for Messy Sartain right around 1994-1995. this was during the American Tasting Institute days. fraudulent to the core! the tastings we did had no merit at all and were pretty much fueled by alcohol. I actually did a couple of tastings in my own kitchen. a complete lie and joke. Messy was a lunatic. payroll bounced routinely and I was usually dispatched to the Mission National Bank to deal with the dozens upon dozens of checks that had bounced. we would then switch to another account since Messy said "we had to let that one cool down".
traveling with Messy was always entertaining. I dealt with logistics for putting on his tasting events and that annual awards show that was a huge embarrassment to say the least. to secure the event space (and penthouse hotel room) at the Hilton in NYC we fedexed a bribe to their GM - $5,000 in cash via fedex (I sent it myself).
there was a pretty famous story of an event that Messy did and he managed to fall down a flight of stairs (drunk - again) and everyone applauded! that makes me laugh. I think Lydia Bastianich has a rendetta on Messy. in one of the awards show he gave Nora (of Nora's in DC) a chef of the year award. I watched this unfold and felt really bad for her - she really thought this was something special.
His wife was interesting. Rosie was from Brazil and very sweet. can you imgaine putting up with that sweating mass of flesh day in and day out?? she was from some poor village and one year when thay went back there Messy had business cards made up with her title as "international singing star" - no joke. again - another example of his general delusion.
another story involved a coworker using his fedex account to import cocaine from mexico. everyone thought that was pretty hilarious.
Messy loved his booze (yet a buddhist - whatever). watching him get drunk was sad sad sad.
Anyone remember his "dining for dollars" program. solely thought up to make him fat and not have to pay restaurants in SF. he preys on chefs and restaurant owners that are "forgotten" and desperate for recognition. his whole mantra is about preying on people in the guise of giving them the attention they deserve.
the wife had a sister who used to hang around. she had this baby (no father - natch - this is messy's world people!) that was sadly retarded. they used to lay the baby on a blanket in the photocopier room. so you had to step over the damn baby to make copies. good fun!
when Messy's temper flared (often) you had to run. he is belligerent, a bully, ass, jerk, you name it.
His Porsche was especially funny. white and of the style from the Risky Business years. that was one sad Porsche let me tell you. once we were on our way to the airport - Messy thought we were leaving from Oakland yet it was SFO. the idiot did a U turn on the highway. can you imagine dying in that piece of crap?? idiot.
I did see the story of him having a stroke? he was then quoted as saying he had sold ATI for like 4 million. joke joke joke - all lies.
believe it or not I lasted at ATI for 10 months. I ended up quitting and Messy gave me $500 (cash - I'm not stupid people!!) to shut my mouth about what I knew.
what amazes me is that he is still out there and making some amount of money. amazing that people still are taken in by him.
Why is he still around??? Doesn't anyone care enough to drop leaflets in front of his office referring to this site?
ReplyDeleteI don't why this old creep crossed my mind, but after a quick Google search here I am.
ReplyDeleteI worked for Jesse close to 25 years ago. Yeah, he's been at this game for that long. At the time he was publishing a tourist guide that was distributed at high end hotels. He sold ads in this guide to equally high end restaurants (I remember well him yelling at me to call one Hubert Keller to demand payment and threaten him if necessary w/ a lawsuit).
With his contacts from these restaurants he started The Great Chefs Cooking school, and promptly got sued by PBS for copy write infringement over the name. Again, it was a good excuse to suck up to these known chefs, even though as far as I could tell he had no personal interest in cooking - just dining out. At the time his office was located on Union Street in the City with his living quarters in the back. Every morning, upon Jesse's awakening, the office would fill with the aroma of his morning bong hits. If he was in a good mood (rarely)in the afternoon he'd break out the red wine and let us have a glass ourselves.
One of my colleagues got him busted for his labor practices and after having him threaten me that he was going to turn me into the IRS for tax evasion (have another bong hit, Jesse), I left while I still had some dignity in tact. My last image of Jessie was him driving down Union Street shouting obscenities at me as I walked away from his office. Classy guy, I tell ya.
Oh yeah, and the Buddhist thing? He told a male colleague of mine that he just used that as a way to pick up chicks. "Ever since I became a 'Buddhist', I get so much more action. You should try that line too. Chicks love Buddhists."
Ahahahahaha!! I served a 2 month stretch in Hell (ATI) in 1995. I had the typical career arc: hired, managed to put up with his shit for a couple of weeks so I got 'promoted' to his assistant role after the prior assistant quit. (good person, can't remember her name) I shoulda known something was up when she specifically in writing request that her last check be ready in 72 hours and that Assface not be there when she picked it up.
ReplyDeleteRosimai was there, and the daughter - we had a receptionist who didn't know how to work the phones, but she was at least good-natured.
Since I was also Jessie's computer dude, he paid me to do some home stereo set up work for him. Sacks of hammers were smarter than this guy - it took me a while to explain to him that the clearly stolen stereo gear he bought was just not functional and he needed to return it to the store har har.
So, what to day - I suffered all the abuse you tend to suffer working there. He used to summon you to his desk by snapping his fingers. Classy dude. He hired one chef about the same time as me to be a 'taster', made him cut his hair short, and then fired his ass.
I guess the end came for me when he bounced a payroll check to me. This caused several checks of mine to bounce and when the check he gave me to replace it bounced too, I quit and took him in front of the labor board. Since the original check that bounced was 30 days late by the time we appeared, he ended up having to pay me a months worth of salary so that is something, and he did eventually pay up.
Wasn't enough for me. When I saw him on the street three months later, I still gave in to the urge to run up behind him, give him a swift kick in the asshole, and melt into the night.
I like to think that kick was from all of us.
My Uncle passed away on April 3rd, 2011. He suffered from a massive brain tumor which eventually took his life. I'd appreciate if you took down this whole blog and let him RIP.
ReplyDeleteNicole Sartain
I agree with the previous remark from Nicole. I'm an ex-employee from the late 80'S you all had a choice to quit if you could not handle the work environment or the presure to produce. Move on with you life. What does not break you makes you stronger and he made me a stronger person. Let him rest in peace...
ReplyDelete