In the July 18 edition of Working, Slate’s Jacob Brogan talks to the president’s director of scheduling, Gregory Lorjuste. What goes into planning every second of the president’s schedule when he’s on the road? How many test runs does the president’s staff do before an event? And what was the most meaningful event Lorjuste ever coordinated? We were a bit stunned—and impressed—by his answers.

And in this episode’s Slate Plus bonus segment, Lorjuste walks Brogan through the biggest event he’s ever had to schedule: President Obama’s 2009 inauguration.

Jacob Brogan: You’re listening to Working, the podcast about what people do all day. I’m Jacob Brogan. This season on Working, we’re going to the White House. Talking to the people who operate within its walls about the particulars of their jobs during the final months of an historic presidency.

This week, we chatted with Gregory Lorjuste, deputy assistant to the president, and director of scheduling. This is the guy who is responsible for figuring out what the president is going to do from one minute to the next whenever he’s on the road.

Lorjuste talked to us about how he fills his own days, describing the ways that he and his team work out the details of those complex schedules, and he also explained how they proceed when things start falling apart, whether on account of bad weather, or in the face of some pressing tragedy. Then he offered a little advice about time management and talked to us about the most meaningful day that he’s helped schedule. And in a Slate Plus Extra, Lorjuste tells us about planning the inauguration.

If you’re a member, enjoy bonus segments and interview transcripts from working, plus other great podcast exclusives. Start your two-week free trial today at Slate.com/WorkingPlus.

What is your name and what do you do?

Gregory Lorjuste: My name is Gregory Lorjuste. I am deputy assistant to the president and director of scheduling for the White House.

Brogan: What does that entail? What is the scope of your job as director of scheduling?

Lorjuste:  My specific role is to, one, manage the team that works on the day-to-day, minute-by-minute schedule of the president. I’m the guy that focuses on everything that’s happening outside of the house. So whenever the president travels domestically, or internationally, I play a part in helping shape how—

Brogan: Travel. Appearances. Speeches. Stuff like that?

Lorjuste: Yeah. I will focus on like making sure that those events are handled properly. And at the same time, sort of like overseeing what’s happening here in the house. You know, thinking not just about what’s happening today, but what’s happening tomorrow, next week, next month, next year actually.

Brogan: We’re in the Executive Office Building right now. Can you describe the office?

Lorjuste: When I got promoted, you know, this is the first time that I actually had office space to myself. And I took pride in making sure that it’s decorated in a way that explains who I am as a person. You know, so there’s photos of John Lewis who is, you know, my fraternity brother and someone throughout college, you know, once I learned about all that he did, it inspired me to be like an active leader.

Brogan: You also have a lot of pictures of your kids.

Lorjuste: Yes. And that helps me stay grounded. Me being able to look at my kids, you know, so there’s a lot of photos that are facing me and they’re facing folks that would be meeting with me, because I want them to know that my kids are extremely important to me. So, yes, I will do the best I can to work, you know, and to make sure that the president’s schedule is in tip-top shape, but the most important thing to me is my family. And then there’s the map that sort of shows everywhere that I’ve been since being in that job.

Brogan: There’s a sign outside your door that is counting down the days that you have left.

Lorjuste: Yes. So each day, you know, I’ll write what day we have. And it’s not a reminder of like we’re all going to be unemployed, but it’s more like, Hey, we still have 189 days, you know. So, although there’s nothing that we can do for folks, to not say this is like at one point we’ll all be lame ducks, but like the president is going to work up until Jan. 21, you know, the last second, and so will his staff. So we won’t get day 190 back, so let’s make it special.

Brogan: So, at the end of this administration, you will have scheduled something in the neighborhood of 3,000 days.

Lorjuste: 365 times 8. But, I mean, it’s hard to judge it. Because, you know, in a typical day like the president can do anywhere between three to five things. You know, some being events that you see on TV, but the meetings also count. So, the 3,000 number is safe.

Brogan: Sure. Well, is there one day in those thousands of days that you’ve been involved with that is especially precious to you? One day that seems especially important?

Lorjuste: So, yes. And for several reasons. The trip that the president took to Newark, New Jersey, it was special to me because he was going to an area that I grew up—so, I grew up in a small town called Irvington, so right outside of Newark. And the focus of the trip was to talk about second chances.

You know, so I’ve had several friends that have either been murdered in the streets through the gun violence, or kind of gone down a negative path and are in jail, you know. So, I know what I’m doing is special and not common for the folks that come from where I come from. You know, so to be able to go to a city that I’m familiar with, driving in the motorcade, and being able to point out places that I’ve been, places where like a friend of mine was gunned down, you know, and knowing that the president came to talk to young men about, you know, You’ve made mistakes and society sometimes don’t forgive you, even though the justice system has. And I feel your pain. And this is what I’m going to work to do to help you. So, like talking about Ban the Box and making sure that there are programs that are in place so once a person comes out of prison that they don’t feel lost.

 So, like that trip or all the trips that kind of relate to, you know, going to hard hit areas where it’s more about making people aware that, look, this is a nation of second chances, and we can’t tell someone that they’re free and they’re really not. Although, none of the people that he met with were folks that I knew personally, but I know 10 people that wasn’t in the room that will be impacted by what he’s saying, you know. And so being able to schedule it and be in the meetings where we’re talking about who is going to meet with and where he’s going to go, and then actually living it with him would be a trip that I would say is the best one for me if I had to pick just one.

Brogan: Is there a particular moment on that day that stands out to you on that trip?

Lorjuste: So, on that trip, one of my best friends, you know, like I got a ticket for him to be able to hear the speech, and like he was able to go backstage and take a photo with the president. That was special for me because his brother, you know, months earlier lost his life in Newark and I see the pain in his eyes every day. And for him, you know, knowing that, all right, like the president was here and he’s talking about the gun violence that happens. And me being able to introduce him to the president, and the president taking a photo with him. And seeing that photo, then passed it around the community, and folks just, you know, like look, it’s going to be okay. You know, that was special to me. And it’s things that no one else at the time realized. Because like you don’t walk around and talk about, you know, like all right, I’ve had five friends that’s been murdered since I’ve worked here. That’s just not something that people will ask me.

You know, there’s a difference between empathy and understanding. And at a certain point, I don’t want empathy. It’s hard, like, thank you for feeling bad for me, but I need someone that I can relate to. So going back helped me be in that environment and be with the person that has the same pain as I do, or have to live their life with the same type of pain that I go through.

Brogan: How many people do you work with? How many people are on your team?

Lorjuste: So, in total the Office of Scheduling and Advance consists of about 28 people, but it’s split between scheduling and advance. So scheduling is primarily the folks that are working on the minute-by-minute plans, so sketching out the day. And the advance side are the executors. So, if you think of a canvas, you know, we will draw it in black and white and the advance team will add the color.

Brogan: They’re the people that go out in the field and make sure that everything can happen accordingly?

Lorjuste: Yeah. They’ll get them into the beast, get them to the site, and kind of walk them through step-by-step what he’s doing.

Brogan: Is there a lot of interplay between what you do and what they do? A lot of give and take?

Lorjuste: Yes. They are never here. Because like they’re bouncing from city to city. So they actually need folks that are grounded that are taking the time to understand why we’re doing this. Let’s say the Democratic National Convention. That is just one day of the president’s time, but like we will plan out what he’s doing weeks in advance. And it’s the actual scheduling side that will sit in on meetings, trying to get a better sense of like why we’re going to do this event. So, talking to the policy departments, we then implement, all right, well this is how much time we’re going to allot to this. You know, this is how the president is going to get from point A to point B.

Brogan: So, for example, when someone is say writing a speech for him, do they have to come to you and work out with you how much time they’re going to have for it?

Lorjuste: Yes. So like speechwriting, before we set a time, so we would talk to the Office of Speechwriting and say like, all right, for this particular event or this message, you know, how long do you think the president’s remarks will be? They will tell us, you know, we’re thinking that it’s 20 to 25 minutes. We take that 20 to 25 minutes and add the other component. So, if the president is going to work a rope line, we know that that will take anywhere between 10 to 15 minutes. So we tack on that to what speechwriting has given us a guide.

Brogan: So, you’re having to schedule that down to the minute?

Lorjuste: Yes. To the very minute. And what’s important for us, too, is to never go into an event and just make it our own, because obviously the Democratic National Convention is going to go on for days. And they already have their set plans. So like we are just trying to find the balance. All right, everything that you guys have worked on for probably over a year now, how are we going to position the president in a way that it’s not going to take away from the overall theme of this, and it’s also going to be respectful of his time.

Brogan: When you’re dealing with the president himself, how much of your own thinking about his schedule is just based on what you know he wants to accomplish, what you know his priorities are? How much of it is what he’s telling you he actually wants to do?

Lorjuste: So, like our interaction, at least for me, there’s times where I have gotten it first hand, where you’re sitting in a room and the president sort of says, “All right, well this is what I’m thinking,” and like everybody is taking notes. And we go back and then shape it. So, like everything starts off with an idea. We then take that and try to make a picture out of it.

Brogan: How specific is an idea when it first comes to you from the president that you then have to start working with?

Lorjuste: Well, so I’ll use our trip where the president went to India. He was going to be awarded—every year they honor a leader with a special award. And it’s in New Delhi, and the president said, “If I’m going to go to India, it would be great if I can visit the Taj Mahal.” We then start to plan that out. And the Taj Mahal being an attraction that everybody wants to go to. Like we now are thinking about, well, when the president visits the Taj Mahal, how are we going to be respectful for like the thousands of people that also want to see the Taj Mahal on that day?

So the planning starts from the minute he says it. We’re trying to think about worst-case scenario and how do we make it like best case scenario. Not just for him, but for everybody that’s going to be there on that day.

Brogan: And I assume that very quickly with something like that there you’d really have to start talking with advance people who are figuring out travel times and things like this, right?

Lorjuste: Yes. So, every time the president travels internationally, we do this thing called pre-advances, where myself, the director of advance, Secret Service, you know, a bunch of different departments will visit that country six to eight weeks in advance. And that’s basically to set the framework of the trip.

You know, so for the India trip we landed and the first thing that we would do is we would meet with the ambassador for a brief meeting, just to get his understanding of what he envisions this trip to look like. And they have their set criteria of what they want the president to do. So, that meeting sets the tone of what the rest of the visit is going to be like. So we’ll talk about the meetings that we would attend, so when the president met with Prime Minister Modi, you know, this is how long it was going to take. This is the room that we’re going to use. You know, this is what the interpretation is going to be. All that helps sort of sketch out, all right, well, if it’s consecutive interpretation, you know, then we need to add more time, because it’s not simultaneous.

So, that’s a bilateral component. And then we kind of then incorporate the cultural component, where the host is probably not necessarily worried about what else we do. They’ll give us suggestions. Well, if you’re going to go visit a cultural site, you should go here. So we spend one to two days in these countries basically, you know, in the eyes of a normal person or a tourist. So if the president is going to visit this museum, we actually go to the museum, check out the art, and get a guided tour. If we meet a great guy that gives a good tour, he in turn will be the person that guides the tour that the president does.

You know, so it in that way gives us an opportunity to live the trip before it happens. So while they won’t be special to anyone until the actual day, we’ve already created a skeleton eight weeks ago. By the time we get back to D.C., we’re now adding the final touches.

Brogan: Are there things that you’ve learned to look out for and to anticipate?

Lorjuste: Yeah. And for me, the way I look at my job is, you know, I’m scheduling the President of the United States, but I’m also scheduling, you know, Barack Obama the father, the husband, the sports enthusiast. For example, we try not to schedule something if he’s going to do a foreign leader call not at the time that there’s a key game going on.

So, while it’s not important for someone to track the [Chicago] Bulls’ schedule, it is for me, so I can be able to say without a doubt, like look, it’s fine if we’re going to ask him to do a call at night after dinner. There’s nothing that I foresee going on that’s going to stop him from doing something that he enjoys privately.

Brogan: Are you a meticulously scheduled person?

Lorjuste: I used to. You know, so I’m great at scheduling the president, but I am not at myself. The one thing that I try to do, and it’s only for my kids, you know, so I have a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old. I want to be home by the time they go to bed. 9:30 p.m. is the cutoff for my daughter Riley, so I try to make it home by then. And even if I have tons of work that I still need to do, I’ll tuck her to bed and then like open up my laptop and start working again.

Brogan: When do you start working in the morning normally?

Lorjuste: So, typically a day will start, roughly I get in at 8:45 a.m. My first meeting is not until 9:30, so it gives me 45 minutes to clear out my email inbox, read scheduling proposals, which the majority of all the events that land on the president’s schedule come in the form of a scheduling proposal, where it’s the department head’s opportunity to sort of give us a snapshot of what it is that they want. So, from the title of the event, how much time they want, the press component of it all, who is attending. And we take that and sort of try to fit it in to a particular day.

Brogan: How much of your day do you spend going through those kind of proposals?

Lorjuste: I leave it for the morning. Because it’s formatted in a way that we created the document, it’s easiest for me to sort of scan and understand, all right, what do they really want. And sometimes, you know, folks will say they need 15 minutes for a meeting with 50 people. And I already know that that’s not reality. So, I will start to edit it myself and say, alright, I think this can happen on Wednesday, or like on a Monday where we know that we don’t have any tours in the house, so we basically have free rein to plug in things.

 So I’ll take 45 minutes me reading SPs, which prepares me for my first meeting which is with our leadership core, where we’re now talking about what we have coming up. If I use today as an example, we talked about the town hall that the president is currently getting ready to go. So, any final details that came after the schedule went final—what do we need to make sure that the president knows and the travelling party knows.

Brogan: So that’s your 9:30 meeting. What happens after that?

Lorjuste: I then meet with my schedulers. I have three schedulers. We’ll meet and talk about what’s happening tomorrow, then Monday. I try to stay five days ahead of everybody else. So, if someone asks me about what’s taking place next Thursday, I can spit it out with ease, and not just me but my scheduler, who is assigned to that day can also do that.

Brogan: So you have a different person assign for each?

Lorjuste: Yes, so there are three schedulers. We have a board where like each day of the week someone is assigned a day. And what ends up happening is once I’m ready, I think an event is in a good place where we know that it’s actionable, and everybody has signed off that the president is going to do this, I start to funnel the information to the daily scheduler, because it allows me to slowly move away from July 3 and now start to focus on the fourth, fifth, and sixth. And the scheduler of the day will take the torch in terms of like going final on it.

Brogan: So to some state you’re really looking at the president’s schedule from above as it were?

Lorjuste: Yes.

Brogan: From a few hundred feet up. And then other people are diving in once you have a general sense?

Lorjuste: Yes. Because what ends up happening a lot of times is once an event finishes, everybody else is also thinking about the next thing. So like we need people that are just not focused on the day. So like if you talk to a scheduler, they will tell you everything that’s happening Monday, Wednesday, and Sunday because those are the days that they have, whereas for me, I’ve got to think about the entire week.

Brogan: Which seems like that must be really especially important on these travel days and travel weeks, because I guess you’re not just thinking about what happens after he lands, but also about even what happens in the air and such.

Lorjuste: Yeah. You know, so when a president flies out to someplace, we even use the airtime. So if we can schedule a foreign leader call on Air Force One, that’s killing two birds with one stone. He’s actually going to the location that he’s going to give a speech at, but also can talk to a foreign leader about a matter that’s important. Where if he were here, it would be tough to schedule a foreign leader at the same time as him walking to a speech.

Brogan: Does that stuff go in his briefing book? How does that information get passed onto him?

Lorjuste: So, the schedule will always go in his final briefing book, along with the memo for the—

Brogan: Evening briefing book?

Lorjuste: Yes. Evening briefing book. Along with the memo attached to it. The end of my day always ends with looking at the schedule and the memo to make sure that it matches. If we’re listing that 15 people will see the president, those 15 people are also in the briefing material. Because that’s how he makes the connection, alright, well my time is going to be used doing this with these 15 people.

Brogan: Are there usually bios or things like that?

Lorjuste: Yeah. Every bio—short bios of each person that he’s going to meet. Also included, we’ll ask questions like has he met this person before. And if he has, they’ll list out—

Brogan: I wish someone would tell me that when I went to a party.

Lorjuste: When is the last interaction. We try to make it as easy as possible for the president to walk into a situation knowing that this is the first time that he’s going to see this environment. He should be able to walk in and just sit down or deliver a speech without having to worry about, well, is so and so here, you know?

Brogan: Has all of this kind of long distance thinking about scheduling and time changed the way that you think about time itself? Is that too existential? Do you have a philosophy of time that’s emerged out of this work?

Lorjuste: Well, only knowing that, again, once a second has past, you don’t get it again. So, you know, I try to, for myself personally, use every minute of the day. Look, let’s not waste any time. We have the tough role in scheduling the president of the United States and we know that everything he does is important. But, you know, as a human being, we should feel the same way, too. The stakes are a lot higher for Barack Obama, but for a Greg Lorjuste, I want to make sure that I have time to exercise, or I have time to eat, I have time to read, and go to my kid’s science fair.

So like time—I’m a little anal. Where like my friends are like, oh, well, we can just do this. And I’m like, no, let’s actually schedule it out. Let’s map it out. Yeah, I am a defender of time.

Brogan: Are you able to think about your own schedule differently than you do when you’re thinking about the president’s schedule?

Lorjuste: No. I’m a total scheduler. I was the best man for my friend’s wedding. And he didn’t ask to be scheduled, but I scheduled him.

Brogan: I’m sure he was grateful.

Lorjuste: Yeah. You know, where like from the nitty-gritty, like every schedule has the weather for the day for the president. So like the valets know how to pack and like what to put out. Every schedule kind of like lists out how long it’s going to take to get from point A to point B. And, you know, I’ll do that for anyone if they want it. Even if they don’t want. Because I’m attending, it’s already scheduled, where I can tell, oh man, they’re not going to make it in time. It’s going to take 45 minutes, so like should we get started or should we wait?

Brogan: You’ve been listening to the president’s director of scheduling, Gregory Lorjuste. In a minute, he tells us how he and his team modify the president’s schedule when the unexpected occurs.

When things are running late, are people—involved parties—usually understanding?

Lorjuste: Yeah, because, you know, our job really is to take the president’s vision and do the best that we can in timing it out. Because like you need time as a framework. Secret Service can’t do their job if they don’t’ have a document to go over. Air-Ops can’t plan and coordinate flights without having a time that we are going to go wheels up and wheels down. But, you know, the schedule will change.

A good example where the president met with a bunch of stakeholders to talk about the events that happened in Baton Rouge and Minnesota and Dallas. And knowing that we’ve scheduled way too many of these, we know that there’s a start time, and it’s hard really to gauge an end time. Without saying how much time we planned for it, we didn’t plan for it to be a four-hour meeting, but it ended up being that long because you can’t really time out emotions. You know, and we planned it at the end of the day, where we knew that if it were to go longer that it was okay. It didn’t screw up with anything. He was a little late to dinner, but outside of that it didn’t ruin someone else’s plans. And that’s, you know, one of the key functions of my job is to kind of think about how does this fit in the overall life of the president.

Brogan: It’s not just about timing, it’s about emotion, about feeling?

Lorjuste: Yeah. You know, like because we don’t do a good job if the president is the only person that walks off the stage and says this is a great event. We look at it in terms of how do we make this great for the president, for the RPs, which is a term that Paulette defined for you guys.

Brogan: Real People.

Lorjuste: Yeah, the Real People. They need to benefit from this event as well. So it’s always the consumer. The president is going to pitch this to X and like they should enjoy it just as much as the president should.

Brogan: Does he ever deviate in other ways on the fly from the schedule as its set?

Lorjuste: Yeah. Like, you know, it’s one of those—we can say that, you know, the speech was going to be 20 minutes, but if the president ad-libs and adds a story as he’s speaking, like he thinks about, like that changes. Or, there’s a friend that’s in the audience that he wants to spend extra time with. Like all of that he does it and we adjust. It’s all about adjusting. And we stand ready to do it.

Whether it’s in a time of despair like last week, where the president was supposed to be in Spain up until the beginning of this week, but the trip was cut short. So, we’re planning how to get him home, you know, so like talking to the Spanish government and explaining like, look, yes we wanted to be here longer, but the trip will get cut short. So those logistics have to be planned at the same time as logistics for Dallas.

And the part that I’m most honored about is when you think about a trip like Dallas, you know, it wasn’t planned, so for trips that are planned we have the ability to sketch it out. The president will be the first thing that’s dead center and we schedule around him. For Dallas, you know, he’s not the focal point. The focal point are the lives that were lost. And how do we go to a city and be sensitive to what’s happening and also plan a trip that is heavy on logistics. You know, where like there’s certain things that have to happen, you know, for security reasons and such. We’re the first team that anybody sees before they see the president. So having that honor, you know, it’s great.

Brogan: What’s it like having to think about these really emotional intense events? These events that are so weighty for individuals, for the nation, for the president himself? What’s it like having to think about those events in such practical terms?

Lorjuste: So, every meeting that you attend, you know, every call that we have is one that we don’t want to do, or we wish that we didn’t do it. I kind of take a step back and think about like me as a dad, me as a brother, a son, and the logistics of like how we’re going to get the president there will be worked out. Like we’ve been doing it for close to eight years, so that is always easy.

It’s finding a way to understand how folks are going to receive him or how do we do it without screwing up the environment, or like just what’s happening. And it’s tough. I don’t think if you told me that, all right, well, on Tuesday you’re going to have to schedule a trip to Dallas where the president is going to have to give a speech about five lives lost, like I probably would choose to like, all right, well, I’ll pass. Could you give me a trip where he’s in Madrid and going to be touring some stuff in Madrid? But since we don’t know that, you know, like you know, when it happens, as sad as we are, we take honor in knowing that we’ve got to do this. You know, this is something that’s going to help in the healing process. It’s like pain and a sense of glory at the same time, because we know that the message that people hear will help.

Barack Obama: Scripture tells us that in our sufferings there is glory. Because we know that suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance. Character. And character. Hope.

Lorjuste: You know, so we can’t change what has happened. We’re sad that it happened, but like if we’re going to move forward as a country, as a nation, you know, this was the first step and like we played a small part in shaping that.

Brogan: Well, it’s like you said, you don’t get day 190 back.

Lorjuste: Yeah. You know, so we want to be able to look back and say, you know, despite the obstacles and this happening, I think everybody that attended that event, everybody that heard that speech understands that we’ll heal as a nation. And this is what started it.

Brogan: Are there mundane things that mess with the schedule? What about traffic? Does that ever become a problem? Or airline takeoff times?

Lorjuste: So, the president will never have issues with traffic because he has police escorts.  But when we go to a place like California, we understand that driving in LA is—as tough as it is for the person driving to work on a normal day. You know, so it would be 10 times worse if the president is in town. So, instead of driving, we’ll take a helicopter. And that’s understanding like, look, again, we’re not trying to come into an environment and mess anything up. You know, so we’ll lift. Things that happen—

Brogan: You have to be sensitive to other people’s schedules as well?

Lorjuste: Yes. Things that we don’t control is like if it rains. You know, so like the president typically lifts from the south lawn to Andrews to then fly off, but if we have a bad weather call, which like we are always tracking, that changes things. So you go from being able to get to Andrews quickly via helicopter to now having to add additional time for a drive. You know, how does that look? And all of that happens, you know, literally probably 30 minutes to an hour before game day. So everybody is in motion for plan A and like quickly has to turn to plan B. And what does that look like? You know, how much time gets added to the schedule and how could we make up?

Brogan: Having dealt with this for so long now, do you have any advice for people who are themselves, for example me, perhaps, bad at time management?

Lorjuste: So, the advice I would give the average person, or just like my friends, my wife, in general is: Time is precious. So, the more detailed you are on the front end, the better you are as it happens.

You know, because there’s no panic in the changes that we have to do because I lay out every possible plan where at the same time I’m telling you like the best-case scenario—I can if you are willing to listen to the worst-case scenario. And that’s how I schedule myself, too. Like you’re thinking about, all right, if my bus doesn’t come, how am I going to get to work? Or where do I have to walk to get to the next bus? Who do I have in case there’s no busses? What colleagues that I know drive into work that I can bum a ride from?

Brogan: So you have a backup plan?

Lorjuste: Yeah. You know, so the more you plan on the front end, the better you are on the actual day.

Brogan: We’re in the last months of an historic administration. An administration you’ve been in for a long time. When you’re thinking ahead to those last 189 days of the time that we’re recording this, what kind of priorities do you set for yourself?

Lorjuste: So, I want to make sure that I don’t take for granted everything that I’ve experienced. So, that board over there lists all the countries that I’ve traveled to since working here. And like the yellow represents all the places that I went as a private citizen, which is not much, you know. Coming from a family of nine, we never traveled. Like Coney Island was the one thing that we would do. So, it’s been an honor to be able to travel the world, learn about different cultures, see different things, whereas if I weren’t in this space I probably wouldn’t have thought about being able to do that.

So taking this experience and being able to effectively share it with my kids, who are over there, so they know that our culture starts with two people immigrating from Haiti, having nine kids. Them not knowing what they were going to do. They stressed the importance of education. Us now getting education has opened the doors to a son being able to work at the White House. A daughter who is a school counselor. You know, and the list goes on. So, what’s going to be next, you know, so for our kids?

Every day going forward and I have that board because I want to make sure that I can talk about each day, you know, whether it’s through pictures or the notes that I share. So, one thing if I can say, every trip that I’ve gone on I’ve written my daughter, Riley, and my son, Aiden, postcards where I talk about one thing that I’ve done. And I end it with saying I can’t wait till you get older so I can talk to you about this.

And that’s my way of never forgetting what has happened here. Who knows what job lays ahead for me. But I know that there are things that I have that, you know, whether it’s 20 years from now, I’ll be able to look at it and go back to July 12, 2016, and remember that day as if it happened yesterday.

Brogan: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. This was great.

Lorjuste: Well thank you for having me.

Brogan: It’s a pleasure.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Working. I’m Jacob Brogan. We’d love to hear your thoughts about the podcast. Our email address is Working@Slate.com. And we read all of those emails that come in, so please do send them in. And you can listen to all seven seasons at Slate.com/Working. This series was produced by me and Mickey Capper. Our executive producer is Steve Lickteig. And the chief content officer of the Panoply Network is Andy Bowers. Thanks to Will Saulten and Efim Shapiro, and special thanks to Rachel Racusen at the White House Press Office.

In this Slate Plus Extra, Gregory Lorjuste tells us about scheduling the inauguration in 2009.

You were—talking about a big event—I understand you were involved with scheduling the 2009 inauguration.

Lorjuste: Yes.

Brogan: What goes into an enormous, I assume, event like that? How is that different than what you do on an ordinary day or week?

Lorjuste: So, inauguration for a lot of us, well me particularly is, we went through four months in my case in scheduling as a campaigner. And like the 2008 campaign was very special. We did things outside of the box, whereas when we got to D.C. and was planning inauguration, this is something that is deep in tradition and there’s certain protocols that you have to follow. So, our first couple of days, or my first couple of days, it was rough understanding the concept that we can’t do this fully the way that we want to. You know, there’s certain things that the president has to do by law, or because of protocol. And so I spent a lot of time talking to the ceremonial protocol team, understanding why do we have to go to St. John’s. And why does the day start with like a tea here? And it’s deep in history.

So, kind of taking a day from the very beginning. Well, for 2009, the president—that was the longest schedule. It was 23 pages. Well, the longest schedule that I’ve ever scheduled. It was 23 pages in length. And you from like 8:00 in the morning, so everybody is tracking just like I’m tracking. The minute he kind of left the hotel, well, the Blair House, he’s on camera. And like I’m watching the schedule that I’ve worked on for a month and a half.

You know, like each day, learning something new, adding something new to it. And here it is for the world to see and for the president to live. Watching that on TV, you know, several things happen. So, Sen. Byrd got sick during the luncheon that happens in the Capitol. And that delayed the program. So as a person that’s scheduling the first day that the President-Elect Barack Obama becomes President Obama, like I’m panicking. You know, trying to figure out, all right, what does this mean for everything else? What does this mean for all the balls that we were doing? So, you go into, well, not panic mode, but you go into like, all right, well how are we going to still make this day special and to go seamless. Despite an event happening that no one can plan for. Like no one knew that Sen. Byrd would get sick.

Brogan: Do you start pulling things from the schedule when something like that happens?

Lorjuste: No, like it’s more alerting, you know, so talking to the president’s personal aide at the time was Reggie Love, and like his trip director, Marvin Nickerson, on like well how does it look? Because we don’t see it.

You know, we hear it and like I found out through the news ticker, like what do you think? So they’ll ask, all right, well what can we trim down? And you’ll kind of list out, all right, well these are the next things that the president has to do. This is the time that it should have happened. If we are delayed by X, this is what the rest of the day would look like. And on that particular day, like since we couldn’t X out anything, he was going to end later, the president ended up making up time through kind of like going through the rest of the day with ease. But for that short moment, we didn’t just sit there and say, oh well, someone got sick and it’s not our problem. We kind of like started thinking for everybody else. Assuming or knowing that someone would ask the question, “How does this affect the rest of the day?”

Brogan: It was, as I recall, pretty cold that day, right?

Lorjuste: It was pretty cold.

Brogan: Were you finding already that you had to take things like weather/temperature into account when you’re planning travel time and such?

Lorjuste: So all of that, you know, so like doing the walkthrough at the Capitol and being outside and knowing where the podium was going to be, you know, like all right, it’s chilly right now. So we would go at the time that the president would actually be out there. So we have something to base why we’re going to tell his trip director or personal aide that maybe he should have a long coat, or we should advise everybody that’s going to be on the platform that they should dress warmly.

So, those little things, again, like you learn by just, again, going through it and when folks ask, “Well why are you asking this?” You can say, well, you know, we actually did a walkthrough and at this point it was pretty cold. Or when we say like, you know, we need to do this event before this, because we know that at X time the sun is actually going to be shining and it’s going to cause a glare. If the podium is going to be here, like, let’s do it at X time.