Concierge Confidential (10 page)

They're usually all roommates with one another. When one person goes back to Holland, somebody else comes in from Barcelona and lives in their room now. It becomes this whole incestuous community—and they always wind up sleeping with the same people. They also always wind up as easy prey for the sexual predators on the staff. We all knew that the food and beverage director was screwing around with the little girls. Then one day he just got sloppy.

The security guys called me over, laughing. “Hey, Michael. You need to come up here and look at this.” They had him on tape, doing it on camera in one of the banquet rooms. It was him and some girl in a corner, looking like they were wrestling. Yes, he got fired. But I could understand his perspective. He was just a guy that ran the food and beverage department, and made sure that the water got charged out of the minibar. In the outside world he was nobody. But the hotel was his world. Here he had a bit of power, and he figured he might as well roll with that. Nobody got hurt.

Somebody only got hurt when it came to dealing with people with real power—the guests.

6.

The Bad, the Bad, and the Ugly

Lucinda Oskar worked at Deutsche Bank. She had a high position with the firm, and she was pure evil. She was the kind of person who was confrontational just for fun. She would complain about things like a fingerprint on the window. She would also tell us how long it took before we answered the phone. “Hello, it's Lucinda Oskar. It took you four rings to pick up.”

I often fantasized about contacting people at Deutsche Bank and showing them what a monster she was. I wanted to record her phone calls and send the recordings to corporate communications or whatever, to let them know how their brand was being represented on the street.

Then I realized that she was probably generating billions in profits for them and they'd laugh in my face.

Every time she would check in, she would be exasperated immediately. She practically walked in sighing with impatience. “Hurry up!” she snapped at everyone, because to her everybody else was stupid. She was five feet of terror that I wanted to push in front of a taxi. Whenever I saw that she was coming into the hotel—which was quite often—I used to get a bit excited. She couldn't hurt me, no matter how much she tried. I'd dealt with bigger and badder than Lucinda Oskar before.

But Aneka wasn't like me. Aneka was one of the wide-eyed does from Europe, and in a much more tenuous position. One day she came up to the concierge desk in tears. “What happened? What's wrong?” I asked her.

“She's so upset with me!” Aneka sniffled, probably afraid of getting fired.

“Who?”

“Ms. Oskar.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I picked up the phone and she wanted to know what the program was for the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. I didn't know. So she said, ‘What are you,
stupid
? You don't have this information?' ”

Aneka wasn't a concierge. There was no real reason for her to know what was going on at Carnegie Hall. There was no real reason for her to be speaking with Lucinda Oskar on the phone, either. What Lucinda liked to do was just dial phone extensions at the hotel until someone picked up. If no one answered the first number, she'd keep dialing until some random hotel employee answered a phone—in this case, poor Aneka.

“Come here,” I told Aneka. “Don't worry.” The hero in me took out the flyer, and I showed her how to find the information for future reference.

“Thanks.” Aneka calmed down a bit, knowing she wouldn't be trapped the next time.

But I was going to make sure that there wasn't going to be a next time. Against all hotel protocol, I initiated a call to Lucinda Oskar in her room. “Hello,” I said. “It's Michael from the concierge desk. I understand that you're interested in knowing the program for the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall.” Then I just read her the program like I was a robot. “Is there anything else?”

“I don't know to
whom
I was speaking before,” Lucinda said, “but she's so
stupid.
How difficult of a question was that?”

“I agree,” I said, calm and steady, “that it's not a difficult question at all. What
is
difficult, however, is the concept of intentionally upsetting people. We can all agree that you were really seeking confrontation and
not
information.”

“Who are you?” Lucinda snapped. “This is ridiculous! How can you talk to me this way?”

“Ms. Oskar, certainly we know that there is a difference between seeking assistance and seeking a confrontation. Asking Aneka if she is stupid, as you did, clearly indicates which one you were looking for.” Lucinda tried to interrupt me, but I kept talking over her. “My name is Michael, and I think it would be best if you deal with me directly. It may be amusing to you to hurt others' feelings, but we are too busy for that.” My tone was extremely professional, but I wanted her to understand that she was busted, and that it was time for her to stop the bullshit. I hung up the phone, feeling totally triumphant.

“Oh my God!” Aneka said, no longer feeling valueless and stupid. “I can't believe you did that!”

It's true that Lucinda Oskar was pure evil. It's also true that she was quite a smart lady, and she had stayed at the InterContinental chain religiously. She did what a smart lady who was pure evil would do: Instead of going to my manager, she went to someone in global corporate and repeated verbatim our conversation. That global corporate manager, whoever they were, then called my hotel's resident manager Ronald—who then called me.

I sat down in his big office. Its huge window faced the lobby; it was as if we were meeting in a see-through bank vault. I instantly realized what was going on. I also realized that even though it felt good for the moment, in hindsight I didn't really win. It felt good, but it was a waste of my energy because it didn't educate Lucinda at all. Still, I managed to redeem Aneka's sense of self-worth. Maybe it wasn't such a mistake.

Like a typical German hotelier robot, Ronald recited my conversation with Lucinda with exact precision. “Certainly we can't be treating our guests like this,” he concluded.

“That is absolutely ridiculous,” I insisted. “Look in the comments in her guest profile. Clearly the woman is out of her mind! Give me a break.” It was true. If you looked in her profile you'd see, ad nauseum: complaint; complaint; room moved; complaint; room moved; rebate.

COMPLAINT KARMA

When you complain in a hotel, you leave a trail in the system. It's all logged through programs like Fidelio, Opera, or Hot Sauce. It's one of the big benefits of the industry-standard software. Staff often go out of their way to put
positive
comments in people's portfolios. When people act great, staff want that to trail them to other hotels in the chain.

The next time that a positive customer checks into a brand hotel in another city, whoever's checking them in will see the comments. Everyone
always
looks at the comments; it's an internal way for employees to warn one another or to encourage rewards for good behavior. When a customer I praised went to another InterContinental Hotel, I am positive that they received some perk upon checking in.

Being nice is free—and it gets you free things.

Ronald did not dispute my denial. I had too good of a reputation. As smart as Lucinda Oskar was, she was also quite stupid, because now I had a bug up my ass just waiting to get back at her.

The porter came down from her room and handed me her airline tickets, with a note of instructions. Apparently she didn't take me up on my offer to call me directly. Her instructions were asking for me to reconfirm her tickets. Reconfirming tickets is a very European, very old-fashioned thing to do, one which there's really no call for anymore.

Lucinda's tickets were for the 6:00
P.M.
business-class flight back to London, wait-listed for first class. The 6:00
P.M.
flight is the most popular flight;
everyone
wants to get out on that. With people as traveled as Lucinda, their ticket is usually not reflective of what they're actually doing. They've changed it many times, but because they're super-triple-platinum members they don't bother them with more tickets. It all comes down to the confirmation number.

I got on the phone and called British Airways—as she instructed. “Hi,” I said, “this is John, Lucinda Oskar's assistant. I need to make some changes on her flight. Here's the confirmation number.”

I read the guy the number from the ticket. “All right,” he said. “How can I help you, John?”

“She wants to switch to the ten o'clock flight.”

“Well, she's wait-listed for first class,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, we're not gonna do that. We're gonna go with the ten o'clock flight.”

“I'm sorry, but we don't have any first-class seats available. We don't even have any business available.”

“That's okay, that's okay. Coach is fine.”

“We'll wait-list her for business class. But there are a lot of people ahead of her for the upgrade, I'm afraid.”

“Oh, darn! That's so unfortunate. All right, it's probably best for me to just take a confirmed seat for her in coach. She'll have to hope for the best. She just wants to get home, bless her heart.”

From the sound of the seat number, she was practically in the back bathroom. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Should I? Shouldn't I? Ah, what the hell.
“Yes. She would like a Hindu meal.”

Now I had to send her ticket back to her room with the porter. I was very careful to make sure that I had clean hands and nothing could be traced back to me. All I did was write “okay” on her note, which she could have interpreted any way she wanted. She must have had a great flight, because I never heard from Lucinda Oskar again.

But even though Lucinda was a dreadful, horrible person, I didn't have to deal with her or think about her when she wasn't at the hotel. She wasn't some nemesis that haunted me day in and day out, an enemy I couldn't avoid dealing with no matter how much I tried.

In other words, she wasn't The Trough.

The Trough was, and still is, the most impossible restaurant to get into in New York City. It's been that way for over fifteen years, and it's kind of crazy. Other places are often very hard to get into—Per Se, Union Square Cafe, and Dorsia come to mind—but for it to go on for that long is kind of unprecedented. As the buzz trickled into their restaurant, the consequence became an air of total arrogance.

The whole idea of getting in somewhere fancy and important is to
feel
fancy and important. But when you go to The Trough restaurant, they make you feel like you're trespassing. You're taking a tour of Graceland, but all of the rooms are roped off. You're welcome to step inside—but you're not welcomed. Any restaurant-review website is full of scathing attacks on The Trough, simply because of their attitude. I absolutely loathe their whole condescending philosophy—and I eat my heart out because it's so impossible to get in.

Part of gaining access to a hot restaurant is knowing people on an individual basis. But you can't just call a restaurant of that caliber and ask who the manager is. It'll be like, “Um,
who's
calling? We can't give that out but I'll leave a message that you called.” It's very much need-to-know information.

I used to case the place because it's not far from my house. The Trough seems like a pretty unassuming establishment from the outside, but the “no trespassing” energy it generates could not be any clearer. I was mastering the art of getting past the gate, but this place psyched everyone. One day, I saw an Italian Wine Merchants truck double-parked outside, delivering wine. I looked up their phone number and called them. “Hey, I was dining at The Trough and I think they mentioned that you do the wine? I
love
their wine list. If I wanted to get something from their list, how would I do it?”

“That's no problem. Was there anything in particular you were looking for?”

“Yes, I was just in there talking to the manager. To … uh … oh, man. I'm totally blanking on his name.”

“It's Hal.”

“Hal? Are you sure?”

“Yeah, it's Hal Druiter.”

I chuckled at my “forgetfulness.” “Of course,” I continued, scribbling down the name while it was fresh in my mind. “I just love him. I'm going to ask
Hal
for his favorites and then call you back. Thanks so much! You've been a big help.”

Now that I had his name, I called the restaurant asking for him specifically. I called over and over—and left messages over and over. It was all for naught, but I still felt like I had gotten one step closer. I knew for a fact that The Trough had several tables specifically reserved for walk-ins. A lot of restaurants do hold literally a couple of tables for walk-ins (though not for reservations). They're designated just for that purpose, and they're usually at the bar or are side tables. If you put your ego in your pocket, walk in there, and say that you'll be happy to wait for a half hour, you
will
get a table.

One night I went into The Trough for dinner without a reservation, knowing that if I waited I'd get a table eventually—and get to meet Hal. When I saw him I was surprised, because he looked somewhat nondescript. He was about fifty years old, with a very precise blond hairstyle. But he was very charismatic and seemed like he recognized everyone. “Hi,” I said to him when I walked in. “I'm Michael Fazio. You're so hard to get in touch with! You must see my name every day on your call list.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

“We're just going to try your walk-in policies tonight,” I told him, using the right lingo.