by Jacob Tomsky
Now that it was revealed which department we fell into, we tended to group up for the party, getting to know each other.
“Dig this general manager. He look like a slave owner with that headpiece,” Walter said.
“Nah,” Perry said. “Chuck a cool motherfucker. You just enjoy that free drink you got,” and then he took a long finishing pull from his own bottle of Heineken.
Everyone was smiling. Everyone was friendly. Everyone had a name tag on. It was like a big crazy family, and we opened tomorrow. We were all in this together, and everyone in that banquet hall, after two weeks of service training, two full paychecks for nothing, couldn’t wait to unleash their skills on a real guest. The managers had whipped us into such a frenzy that if any actual guests had wandered into that party, we would have serviced them to death, mauled them, like ravenous service jackals.
Already the hotel had created the possibility of a home for me, a future. It seemed so glamorous, all the linens and chandeliers and sticky pastries. The hotel was beautiful, and I was honored to be a member of the opening team. It was at this very point I realized my life of constant relocation had led me to this nexus of relocation, this palace of the temporal where I could now stand still, the world moving around me, and, conversely, feel grounded. I studied Mr. Daniels as he circulated the party, all conversation politely cutting off when he unobtrusively joined a group. That was the position I wanted. That was a life I could own. And I distinctly felt, because this is exactly what they told us during orientation, that if I performed with dedication and dignity, took the tenets of luxury service to heart, hospitality would open herself up to me and I could find my life within the industry. I wanted to be king. It was possible to be king. I swore that day I’d be the general manager of my very own property.
This excitement carried over and crashed like a wave on the following day, the day the hotel opened. But before we were able to molest our first guest, we had to sit through the opening ceremony.
One thing about hotels: once they open, they never close.
I don’t mean they never go out of business; certainly they do. But the fact that a hotel could fail to be profitable astounds me. Why? The average cost to turn over a room, keep it operational per day, is between thirty and forty dollars. If you’re paying less than thirty dollars a night at a hotel/motel, I’d wager the cost to flip that room runs close to five dollars. Which makes me want to take a shower. At home. That forty-dollar turnover cost includes cleaning supplies, electricity, and hourly wage for housekeepers, minibar attendants, front desk agents (and all other employees needed to operate a room), as well as the cost of laundering the sheets. Everything. Compare that with an average room rate, and you can see why it’s a profitable business, one with a long history, going back to Mary and Joseph running up against a sold-out situation at the inn, forcing him to bed his pregnant wife in a dirty-ass manger.
The word “hotel” itself was appropriated from the French around 1765. Across the ocean, a hotel, or hôtel, referred not to public lodging but instead to a large government building, the house of a nobleman, or any such place where people gathered but no nightly accommodation was offered. America, at the time, was filled with grimy little inns and taverns, which provided beds for travelers and also functioned as a town’s shitty dive bar. Having a monopoly on the alcohol game was a boon, one given to tavern keepers in gratitude for putting up travelers, something no one wanted any part of. It wasn’t until George Washington decided to embark on the first presidential tour of his new kingdom that spotlights began to shine on these public houses of grossness. In order to present himself as a man of the people, he turned down offers to stay with associates and wealthy friends, instead lodging himself in tavern after tavern, sniffing at room after room, frowning at bed after bed. For the first time in American history, townships were ashamed of their manner of accommodating travelers. The country was unified and expanding. Something had to be done about our system of lodging.
So, in 1794, someone, some asshole, built the very first “hotel” in New York City: a 137-room job on Broadway, right there in lower Manhattan. It was the first structure built with the intention of being a “hotel,” a word that was quickly replacing the terms “inn” and “tavern,” even if it only meant that swarthy innkeepers were painting the word “Hotel” onto their crappy signs but still sloshing out the booze and making travelers sleep right next to each other in bug-ridden squalor. The first big hotels failed monetarily or burned to the ground or both. It wasn’t until railroad lines were getting stitched across America’s expanding fabric that hotels, big and small, began to prosper and offer people like me jobs.
So, profitability aside, what I am referring to here is not the fact that once a hotel opens it will never close (or be burned to the ground!) but that once we cut the ribbon on the hotel, once we opened the lobby doors, they never closed again. In fact, they unchained them because they were built without locks, as almost all hotel lobby doors are. Three o’clock in the morning—open. Christmas Eve, 3:00 a.m.—open. Blackout—open. World War Whatever—open (with a price hike).
The mayor was kind enough to attend the opening ceremony, going down the line of sharp-dressed employees and shaking hands (or giving elaborate daps, depending on ethnicity). And then in came the public, and there we stood, smiling, proud, ready. The locals poured into the Bistro Lounge, strolled through the lobby as if it were a museum of classical art, put handprints on fresh glass doors, and began to scuff, mark, and mar the pristine landscape, putting their asses in chairs, creasing and bending the leather, scraping and marking the cutlery as they bit down hard on steak-tipped forks.
For a long while at the valet stand, well, we didn’t have shit to do. We stood those first few hours, feet spread and planted at shoulder width, arms behind our backs with our hands clasped, as we were taught to stand. Then we began to shift on our feet. Then we began to talk quietly out of the sides of our mouths. Then to turn our heads and talk openly at a normal volume. Then to go to the back office to check our cell phones. Not Perry, though: he remained at his post, and the most he did was shake his head when everyone started to get restless.
“We ain’t making no damn money,” Keith said, swinging his fists at his sides, directing the comment at Perry, who had somehow become the de facto leader: not simply because Perry was older, though he had a good five years over everyone else on the line, but because of something in his calmness, the way he held his lean body still, the way his eyes were so white and his face so black and all of him so goddamn calm and cool.
“This day-one shit, Keith. Relax yourself.”
“Shit, I needs money. We got that full wage last two weeks, but now we on that hourly wage adjusted for tips, ya heard me? I mean, we ain’t even seen a car and—”
“Y’all tighten up. Chuck coming through.”
And we did. But not just for Perry. Mr. Daniels had an absolutely presidential charisma. I wanted to work for him. We all did. He came out through the lobby doors into the porte cochere (“fancy word for covered driveway, shit”) and walked down the line, rattling off each of our names like an old friend. But then he stopped, as if he’d forgotten something, and walked back to stand before us on the tiled driveway, the soft rush of the marble water fountain pulsing behind him in the cavern of the porte cochere.
“A bit overstaffed, it seems? Gentlemen, I hate to say it, but when a property opens, especially one as illustrious as ours, known for service, well, we have to overstaff for the first few weeks. You see, people come here, and they want to see the service. They actually want to see a bunch of employees standing around doing nothing. It’s sad but true, believe me. And that’s all well and good for the front desk, collecting a full wage regardless, but much harder on people who depend on proper staffing and tips, such as yourselves. Men, I’ll be honest. It’s going to take some time for our occupancy to build. However, we already have some meetings and parties booked, transient business, some that’ll bring 150 cars
in and out on the same night. So we can look forward to those. In the meantime, I’ll have accounting up your wages to non-tipped status until business starts booming. Which it will, believe me. How’s that sound? Also, we will be selecting a valet captain at the end of the month for those who are interested and worthy. Perks include an hourly wage bump and the best shifts. Hang in there, gentlemen. Coincidentally, you look fantastic.” He slapped Keith on the arm and walked off into the garage.
“That’s my boy right there,” Perry said, relocking his hands behind his back and smiling at the fountain across the driveway.
Perry was elected valet captain, zero resistance.
After a month, all of Mr. Daniels’s predictions played out: occupancy picked up, filling the garage with luxury vehicles and our pockets with ones. The elite New Orleans social scene also played a role, holding banquets, balls, and charity affairs in our meeting spaces, causing tremendous, short-spurt traffic influxes, then again a flurry of tickets coming out at the party’s end. When it came to the social scene, a man we named the General quickly became our favorite guest. His chauffeur would pull him up in a canary-yellow Bentley, impossible to miss. Whichever valet was at the head of the line would stand off to the side of the Bentley as the doorman opened the door. The General, poor of hearing, poor of sight, his seersucker suit riddled and blotched with military medals (hence the name), would tilt up his chin and peer through his cataracts, looking for anyone willing to assist him with anything. His liver-spotted hand always held a stack of fresh, sticky two-dollar bills. The valet would post up beside his vehicle, as if intending to park it (even though the chauffeur would rather let us piss on his shoes than let us touch the interior of the Bentley), and the General would peer hard at the parker, mumble something militaristic, and rip off a two-dollar bill for him. All we had to do was insinuate we were helping, and we’d get tipped. Press an elevator button, hold a door. Shit, perform a sweeping hand motion as if to usher him along the way, and there was a two-dollar bill coming. Not to mention his vision was so bad you could follow him, executing multiple amped-up, essentially useless functions, and come back to the valet line with ten or more fresh, sticky bills.
Not that we needed bigger pockets to fit all the money. I learned something indisputable about any valet-parking position: the job kind of blows.
Imagine a dark, stuffy, sweltering ten-floor parking garage with no elevator, New Orleans summer heat licking at your neck with a fat wet tongue as you run up ten flights, walk along Level 10 holding the keys up above your head, sweat dripping down your arm, mashing the lock button so the car yelps, helping you locate it. Slip in wet, learn the vehicle, lights on, AC on, throw it in reverse, flop that wet arm over the leather passenger side headrest, and back up, AC only blowing heat on your sweating face, reversing quickly before—SHIT, BRAKE—Keith tears by in a Porsche going goddamn ninety, the tires screaming, hip-hop from a local station shaking the whole garage level. Now you’re sweating even more from fear, from almost smashing together two seventy-five-thousand-dollar vehicles, but the AC is beginning to work, and, who knows, this is a Mercedes-Benz S500, get it down safe, and all this sweat and fear might be worth it. Now my tires are screaming because I’m taking the turns like a maniac, flying down the level ramps so fast my stomach drops (and so does the front end, right into the concrete, but who cares—that’s internal and nonvisual damage), gunning it on the straightaways, turning up the Vivaldi loud because it makes my reckless driving seem beautiful, and scraping the front end again coming down a ramp (Level 7, something about Level 7, the shit always bottoms out), but I don’t hear the scrape, just feel it, because Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is blasting, and then—FUCK, BRAKE—there I am bumper to bumper, my Benzo just about underneath a mammoth black Escalade, its headlights burning my eyes like the end of a white tunnel I almost died inside, Perry perched in the driver’s seat, laughing, pointing his long finger at me, so I reverse hard, bringing the back end of the Benzo right up against the wall, maybe some contact there, but nothing that’ll be discovered before leaving the hotel. Perry pulls up alongside and lowers the automatic window. “Used to have me one of these big bastards. Back when I moved bricks. Get on down there, Tommy, the Zulu Krewe is wrapping up their ball, and Keith and Walter are stealing all the tickets. That shithead Walter be pulling three tickets at a time. He playing with the wrong motherfucker.” And then I pull forward, our two vehicles an inch apart, his side mirror going right over the top of my Benz, and then I gas the fuck out of it, tires screaming, taking it down the last ramp going thirty and then braking it down to five, rolling out of the dark garage ever so slowly, with such care and attention that I have time to make eye contact with my customer, his face crunched with concern for his vehicle.
“Here you are, sir. Enjoy your evening.”
“Hm,” he says and pushes past me, no intention of tipping, but I smile and close the door softly for him, my eyes already on the valet counter for my next ticket. There it is: another goddamn tenth-floor ticket. Not only is Walter tripling up on tickets; he’s handpicking them by floor to minimize running. Another Mercedes-Benz S500. Time to run.
Okay, listen up. We are getting complaints, gentlemen. No more tire squealing. I understand y’all are trying to do your job quickly, but that garage is like an amplifier, and if you burn tire on 10, we hear it down here. How do you think that makes our guests feel, listening to crazy peel outs while waiting for their cars to come down? No more burns. Take it slow. Number two: do not change the radio station. We’re getting complaints that when guests leave and turn on the radio, it’s blasting Hot 93. These guests have no interest in listening to Cash Money Millionaires.” We all took a second to laugh there. “Do not touch the radio. Do not change the seat alignment. Easy, right? Big night tonight, mayor’s having another charity dinner, two hundred in and out by 10:00 p.m. ALSO, if you get a hotel overnight valet ticket coming in, park it on 10, DON’T BE LAZY AND PARK IT ON 2. All that means is you’ll be running up to 10 all night for these transient party guests. You see an overnight ticket, park it all the way up. Because it ain’t coming back down tonight. Keith, you hear me? Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on down here, you guys.”
That was John, the assistant front office manager. Bellmen, doormen, front desk, and valet parking all fall under the front office. John had recently been assigned to us to crack down on all the bullshit. Without a doubt, bullshit was getting ubiquitous down here.
In our back office, where we kept the car keys filed by number in fat yellow packets, we also had a small CD player to motivate ourselves. Our CD collection kept growing and growing. Down comes a Lexus, the guest slips a folded dollar to Walter, and he struts into the back office, pulling a jewel case from his underwear.
“Check this shit out, brah. Now we got some Beethoven up in this bitch. Classical, ya dig? Crackers make mad money listening to shit like this.”
And we all knew Keith was stealing pocket money from the vehicles. We’d see him counting up big piles of change in the back office during his shift. Also, he made too much noise when he ran.
Unfortunately, once your vehicle rounds that corner into the cavern of the garage or takes a right at the light, any manner of terrible things may happen at the hand of a valet parker. What’s the best way to ensure your vehicle isn’t taken advantage of? Well, sorry, not much can be done. When your daughter goes on this date, you just have to pray she comes home before midnight and unmolested. However, performing a walk around before your car goes speeding off never hurts. On the valet ticket is a sketch of a vehicle that the parker or doorman uses to mark any already present scars. That way, later, should a guest assume he or she has discovered a new scratch, the valet can quickly prove the scratch was preexisting and already marked on the initial ticket before the vehicle was ever moved (even though the valet might have clipped a pole while parking it later and, you know, marked it then). So performing your own walk around and familiarizing yourself with any present flaw
s might pay off later. Should something happen, this little bit of surety will come in handy, and if the valet happens to watch you checking your vehicle, he might be more careful not to add anything fresh. If you do see the actual valet getting into your vehicle, it wouldn’t hurt to drop a few dollars at the outset, so you are on his mind as he pulls it off. Then again, even if you manage to establish initial contact with the parking valet, the valet who retrieves it later will have no connection to you and all the alone time he needs with your car. If you cannot stand anyone having private time with your baby, then you can always leave it in direct charge of the doorman. The driveway is the doorman’s domain, and he can, and will, allow certain vehicles to remain parked for hours in his direct line of sight and conveniently ready for departure. How can you secure a coveted spot right out front? Give him a nice crisp twenty-dollar bill. He’ll be more than happy to help. Doormen love twenties. They love it even more if your car is luxury and makes their driveway look expensive. If you have a busted-looking Chevy, you might as well give it to Keith and let him steal all your change.
“Dude taking nickels and pennies. That’s some low-down poor shit,” Perry said. “Listen, Tommy, you know you my boy. Come up in my office to talk some business.”
