Houstonist Bartender: Salty Dog
Weekendist Nov. 20-22: Art all day every day
Ever since Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau head Jordy Tollett went blond back in 2003, we've suspected there was something of the wild child about him — and now we know what: Earlier this week, KPRC's cameras followed Tollett around and filmed him whiling away the hours with liquid lunches. And that may cost Tollett his job, the Chronicle reports.
Channel 2 spotted Tollett spending a two-hour lunches sitting at bars at the Front Porch Pub in Midtown and Floyd's in Clear Lake. And he wasn't just eating at the bar: According to the story, Tollett was served four drinks from the bar one day at lunch, five drinks another. Tollett got testy when KPRC's Robert Arnold asked him about the midday bar crawls, saying he only drinks Diet Coke. Maybe.
"Are you saying you've never had a drink at the Front Porch or at Floyd's during the middle of the work day?" Arnold asked."I ain't saying that. I'm not going to say that. It's absolutely, positively true I may have," Tollett said.
And "may have" then changed to "rarely."
"You said, 'during the day,'" Tollett said.
"Yeah," Arnold said.
"OK, well, I'm saying -- not every day," Tollett said.
"Not every day," Arnold asked.
"Right, 'not' more days than every day … not, not more," Tollett said.
Hey, it's OK — we can forgive Tollett a few cold ones as long as he's coming up with great marketing schemes like Houston. It's Worth It. Oh, wait.
When KPRC pressed, Tollett explained that he often has lunch meetings with people who prefer not to meet in offices and hotels, so the station sent an undercover producer up to Tollett one day at lunch. "What do you do for a living?" the producer asked. "I wear funky shoes. ... That's what I do for a living. I sell shoes," he replied. Arnold called Tollett on that one, too, and he went into something of a tailspin: "I don't know. You know. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I joke with people," Tollett said.
Mayor Bill White doesn't seem too impressed with Tollett's professionalism: "If people are supposed to be working, getting convention business for the city of Houston, that's what they ought to be doing, not hanging out at bars," he told KPRC. When Arnold asked the Mayor if Tollett would keep his job, he replied, "He's had the job for quite a while and I think it's about time that we looked at alternatives."
According to the Chron, the GHCVB's board has called an emergency meeting for Thursday to consider Tollett's contract; in addition to the TV report, he'll probably have to answer for a city controller's audit report that's critical of management practices and record keeping at the bureau. A draft of the report has been released, and the final version is due in the next 10 days. Meanwhile, Tollett's insisting he's done nothing out of line — though his new attorney, Rusty Hardin.
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he SHOULD sell shoes... I love it when drunk people get shoes for me!