The Alpo Crew

This post is the final post of a short series on the students sticking around in Cambridge to help out with class reunions.

The 100 tables and 1,000 chairs that await alumni don't just magically appear under the big tents. Hours beforehand, a brawny crew of Alpo workers—short for Al Powers—had set them up.

But their setup routine wasn't the leisurely unstacking and unfolding that one would expect. Rather, it was a game.

One by one, an Alpo worker rolled each round table to its designated spot indicated by a master map that had been previously designed to allot ample room for guests to sit and waiters to pass.

The Alpo crew then brought over dollies of metal chairs and placed two flat stacks on each table with five in each stack.

Then, the game began. It was almost a race, but more so against time than against each other.

Each Alpo worker ran to a table, and in a swift swinging motion, flipped each chair in the air which then landed in a spot by the table. He or she repeated the process until all 10 chairs were securely placed before scurrying to the next table.

Time for one table: 7 seconds.

Erik C. Fredner '12, a second-year Alpo worker, was particularly proud of this procedure, though he said that different Alpo workers would argue about the best strategy for actually opening the chairs.

Fredner was on the team that set up the Law School chairs last week. They even captured it on video, he said: 500 tables, 5,000 chairs, 50 Alpo workers—all in less than 5 minutes.

"It's a really great job," Fredner said. "It's all the simple problems that you already have the answers to... It's a wonderful break from any sort of academic rigor."

Photo by Xi Yu/The Harvard Crimson.