by Jacob Tomsky
Eventually, Terrance stopped scolding the housekeeper and introduced me. “Nancy, this is the new turndown manager, Tommy. You will show him respect at all times. Clean up this damn cart.”
Nancy was the cutest little old lady: black, even darker than Terrance, and super-squat with puffy gray hair and a sweet smile. Despite Terrance’s tirade, she smiled and squeezed my hand before starting to right all the overturned shampoo bottles.
One minute into my training and I already disliked my boss. I wasn’t sure what kind of manager I was going to be, but I knew what kind of manager I was not going to be.
Terrance walked me along the hallways, checking his clipboard for vacant suites. Despite the sheet confirming the room was vacant, he still knocked before slipping in his yellow master key and touring me through the unoccupied rooms.
“This job is very easy,” he said, pounding the clipboard against his closed fist to accentuate “very” and “easy.” “It’s about attention to detail. You see this one hotel room? A hundred and fifty-five different quality points, check points, that make it a clean room. Baseboards, no dust. Hospital-cornered sheets, pulled tight as possible. Vacuumed, stain-free carpet. Streak-free mirrors and glasses. Tipped toilet paper. Here.”
He handed me a standard checklist, and it went on and on and on with minute points in a small font, filling both sides of the paper.
“Nancy is one of the best. That’s why she has these two top floors on club level. I give her a hard time because I give everyone a hard time. I’m going to give you a hard time.”
“Great.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I certainly do.”
Pushing through an unmarked white door to the supply closet, he stopped and turned to face me. This was a man who hits the gym, grunts and screams as he benches 350, and then leaves more angry than he went in. He had one fat vein surging out of his white starched collar, and it ripped up his throat and pulsed in a rage, as if it were filled with hot sauce and pumped that burn right into his brain.
Coincidentally (if you can manage to assimilate this info as well), he was a man who also got pedicures. Three times a week.
“We gonna have a problem?”
“No, sir.”
“Heard you started down there in valet parking. I checked up on you. And the boys liked you. But don’t think you get a pass with me just because some valet parkers think you’re cool for a white boy. Don’t test me. And don’t let this suit fool you. Now, if you work hard and pay attention to detail, we ain’t gonna have problems.”
We were going to have problems.
As we toured the hotel from top to bottom, club level to first floor, entering dirty room after dirty room, I saw empty shopping bags, cold curly fries soaked in ketchup on the floor by the bed, a used condom that didn’t quite make it and hung sagging from the lip of the trash can, nasty dirty sheets, spilled bottles of beer leaking over the top of a minibar, a pile of bloody towels tucked shamefully behind a bathroom door, and all manner of garbage left by our upscale guests. As we passed cart after cart, we saw housekeeper after housekeeper kneeling in the far corner of the bathroom, scrubbing behind the toilet, gathering cold food and garbage, polishing mirrors, rewrapping hair dryer cords, vacuuming, and performing every single action that falls under the word “cleaning.”
I was soon to witness unique methods employed by these housekeepers. To put on a pillowcase, they would throw a solid karate chop right down the middle of the pillow and then shove it in, folded like a bun. This method was preferred to the civilian method of tucking it under your chin and pulling up the pillowcase like a pair of pants because these ladies had no interest in letting fifty pillows a day come into direct contact with their faces. In addition, you know what cleans the hell out of a mirror, and I’m talking no streaks? Windex? No. Furniture polish. Spray on a thick white base, rub it in, and you’ll be face-to-face with a spotless mirror, streak-free. However, I am not recommending you take this tip and apply it in your own home. Though using furniture polish is quick and effective, over time it causes a waxy buildup that requires a deep scrub. So, ladies were treating mirrors like furniture all over the building, but certainly not in front of Terrance. Catching a lady with Pledge in the bathroom was a lecture-inducing event. So they kept this move behind closed doors along with another dirty secret I didn’t uncover until much later: I walked in on ladies with Pledge in one hand and a minibar glass in the other. Certainly not all, but some of them were using furniture polish on the drinking glasses. Keeping those glasses clean “looking” was also part of the job. Do you see any dish soap on a housekeeping cart? Usually hot water and a face towel equals clean. But to be absolutely sure they won’t be singled out for spotty glasses, they might spray furniture polish all over them. So the next time you put a little tap water into the minibar glass and wonder to yourself why it has a pleasant lemon aftertaste, that’s because you just took a shot of Pledge. Honestly, furniture polish might be more sanitary than simple hot water and a wipe down using the (hopefully untouched) hand towel from the previous guest. Either way, sorry about that.
Be it the good, the bad, or the unsanitary, it was a tremendous amount to take in. I felt overwhelmed but proud. It was this swelling pride that kept my smile almost ever present, despite feeling as if I were sinking fast.
The following morning the reality and sheer size of my new department really smacked me on the ass. At 8:30 a.m. the housekeeping office, as large as a conference room, was packed with more than a hundred housekeepers yelling and laughing.
Besides the room attendants there are two other sub-positions within housekeeping. The housemen: Usually one or two per floor whose job includes helping the ladies “strip” the rooms, meaning pull off and drag out the dirty sheets. They keep the hallways clean and vacuumed, restock the supply closets, assist the ladies with whatever they need, such as refilling their cleaning bottles and restocking their carts with amenities, and, finally, handle most of the room deliveries. If you’ve ever called for an extra pair of slippers or asked to have a rollaway placed in your room, then you’ve met a houseman. In fact, speaking of slippers, when the houseman delivers them, drop a few dollar bills on him, and go ahead and ask for another five or ten pairs. Witness how quickly they are delivered. Those posh, hotel-logo, plastic-wrapped slippers make great gifts for people you really don’t give a shit about! Like your co-workers! Once you’ve dropped some money on a houseman, anything his department has to offer is yours for the taking. Yours for the packing in the suitcase and using later. Ten bottles of the lotion you love, an extra pillow to jam in your carry-on and use on the plane, Q-tips and cotton balls, travel lint rollers, a year’s supply of nail files, and everything else in the housekeeping storage closets. If word gets out that every time a houseman knocks on your door he gets a few dollars, those men will deliver bootleg DVDs if you ask them. And they have them, too.
The final subgroup is the lobby attendants. They are responsible for, obviously, cleaning the lobby but also all public areas not located on a floor with guest rooms, such as the conference rooms and public restrooms. Heart-of-the-house attendants are within that subgroup as well, ensuring that the back offices and hallways, employee bathrooms, and employee cafeteria are kept up to standard.
Heart-of-the-house attendants have the worst job. Guests can be disgusting, but employees are animals. Our bathrooms and locker rooms can look like train station toilets. We had two dedicated heart-of-the-house attendants, and both of them suffered from physical problems. The first was Charlie, surging well over six feet, 220, and built out of iron. He’d been a star quarterback for LSU, on the fast track to run the New Orleans Saints’ offense (so I was told discreetly in service elevators) until the night he’d driven his brother home to the Eighth Ward and the car was shot up by an AK-47, killing his brother, who was active in the drug game, and lodging several bullets into Charlie’s limbs and one more into his skull, and all that before the car even crashed. He never
played again. He had a scar down the right side of his skull as big as his smile, and he had a big smile; he was as kindhearted and gentle as you can imagine. Everyone still treated him like a star quarterback, launching rolls of toilet paper back and forth with him in the back hallways when Terrance wasn’t there to rip the roll out of midair and start a lecture on the cost of toilet paper and how it rolls off the dispenser funny once the cardboard tube has been compromised.
The second heart-of-the-house attendant was Roy, one of only two white housekeeping employees. He had cerebral palsy, his body asymmetric, movements strained and loping, but he was 100 percent upstairs. Roy was hard to understand, but once you got the hang of his speech, he was sharp and said some funny, funny shit. Terrance could never understand a word.
“How’s it going there, Roy?”
“Be going better if I was banging your wife instead of cleaning these toilets.”
Imagine that line is wet ink, smear your thumb over the whole of it, and then read it back. Most of us understood every syllable, though, and held our breaths.
“Well.” Terrance clenched his neck muscles in frustration. “See you at the Christmas party?”
“You bet. Bring your wife,” Roy said.
Roy had a tattoo of a pistol on his back with a bullet exploding out of the barrel.
Along with Roy, for a brief time, we had a second white employee, a housekeeper in fact. A little white wisp of a lady. An alcoholic. Too many bottles of gin from too many minibars from too many rooms on too many days. We sent her to the Employee Assistance Program, and she came back clean. Clean and dead. Her face was like a white paper bag, her eyes dry. She stopped talking to anyone, cleaned rooms slowly and poorly. Then one day she bounced in, her face full and radiant, smiling and ready to work. They let her go that afternoon: she was drunk.
But before I knew anyone, that very first morning, I was horribly overwhelmed. The housekeepers gathered every day at 8:30 a.m. to receive their “boards,” meaning their personal lists of rooms to be cleaned for the day. General instructions were given and small attempts to force down the company Kool-Aid, though you couldn’t quite get the ladies to care at all about corporate mottoes. Every morning Terrance would jabber on and on about attention to detail while domestically abusing his clipboard, relentlessly informing the staff their jobs were “Very. Easy.”
I said hello to Nancy, the little old lady on club level. She put her small hand on mine and told me not to be nervous about meeting all these new people. She said soon enough I’d learn everyone’s name.
Soon enough was not soon enough. A staff of 150, all dressed in uniforms, often losing and switching name tags, perhaps deliberately, just to fuck with me.
“Is this room going to be done by three, Donna?”
“Donna? I’m Debra, listen to this new manager—”
“Oh, sorry. You’re wearing Donna’s name tag?”
“Rasis. You rasis. You should be shamed of yourself, Tommy. Just kidding, baby. And you know what, you can have this room now. I’m finished.”
“Great. Thanks, Debra. A few Mardi Gras travel groups are already in the lobby waiting to check in.”
Mardi Gras was a different experience inside the rooms. A couple of guests rented the suite with a claw-footed tub, built a fire below it, and tried to turn the porcelain tub into a deep fryer. Most of the tubs were successfully converted into gigantic coolers and filled with beer. Housemen had no problem nipping a bottle or two and pounding them down in the storage closet. They also had no problem getting a beer from the minibar if nothing better was available.
Minibars. Most people are appalled at the prices. But it comes down to this: that is the cost of convenience. You aren’t at home, but you can pay handsomely to simulate the feeling. The high cost of convenience is one of hospitality’s master hustles. However, you never have to pay for the items in the minibar. I am going to say that again and, to really drive it home, utilize some serious italics: you never have to pay for a goddamn thing inside that tiny little fridge of joy. Why not? Minibar charges are, without question, the most disputed charges on any bill. That is because the process for applying those charges is horribly inexact. Why? Because it’s done by people. The traditional minibar, before they invented the sensored variety, is checked (maybe) once a day by a slow-moving gentleman or lady pushing a cart full of snacks. Unlike a housekeepers’ cart, often available for a smash and grab, you will never see a minibar cart without its attendant. You might never even see a minibar attendant. They are like mole people. They peer into the confusion of bottles and bags, looking for something that needs to be replaced, looking for something that is no longer there. They replace it and put a pen mark on their room chart. These marks are then, at some point in the lazy future, delivered to another fallible human who manually inputs them onto a guest account. Can everyone see the margin for error in this process? Because it’s HUGE. Maybe the attendant failed to notice the cashews were consumed Monday but catches it on Tuesday, and the charge is applied to your bill on Wednesday, even though you just checked in five minutes ago. Keystroke errors, delays in restocking, double stocking, and hundreds of other missteps make minibar charges the most voided item. Even before guests can manage to get through half of the “I never had these items” sentence, I have already removed the charges and am now simply waiting for them to wrap up their overly zealous denial so we can both move on with our lives. And this is why, essentially, you are able to eat and drink everything for free.
Give it a go. Pound a whiskey and ginger ale, then shove a Toblerone down your throat. Upon checkout, or if you feel more comfortable avoiding confrontation like most Americans (God bless us for being so timid), you can call down from the room phone to the front desk and explain that you checked your bill on-screen and noticed the charges are incorrect. It’s actually that simple. Don’t provide a goddamn alibi or offer to produce medical documentation proving your throat swells like a frog if you even touch an almond. Just say you never had it, and we will take it right off.
Never, ever will the hotel accuse you of lying. That is the absolute last stance hotel management wants to take. You think a respectable hotelier wants to go through your garbage looking for spent M&M’s wrappers? If a front desk agent does take it upon him- or herself to insinuate you are lying, then you are staying in a bad hotel. Or at least you have come into contact with a bad desk agent who’s getting his or her rocks off by treating you like garbage. We are the front desk: the minibar is not our fight. The hotel buys those items in crazy bulk and charges a crazy increase. And people pay it. But you don’t have to be one of those people.
You could be one of these people:
Here is the plan. Check in at the desk and make a strong request for a nonsmoking room, possibly mentioning allergies (but don’t go overboard and annoy the agent, please). Refuse help from the bellman (that shouldn’t be hard for your cheap ass), and go up to your room unaccompanied. Immediately open the minibar and shove every goddamn item into your suitcase. Take it all. Then smoke a cigarette on the bed and gaze out the window. Afterward, call down to the desk and complain about the heavy smoke smell in the room. Request to be moved. I mean, it smells like someone just smoked in here. The front desk will send a bellman up with your new keys, and—not that he has been informed, nor would he care—should he pop his head in, he too will smell the odor. Go to your new room, close the door, and get fat and salty and drunk on your suitcase of snacks. The hotel will never trace that minibar to you. Moving rooms in the system, when it’s done the same day you check in, leaves almost no trace, no overnight confirmation that you actually ever occupied that suite. Certainly nothing that allows the hotel to track down those five minutes when you stole five hundred dollars’ worth of individually wrapped snacks. The minibar attendant will check on the bar in your first room maybe today, probably tomorrow, and then just restock it, no questions asked.
Perhaps you think it would be strange for the attendant to find a completely
empty bar? No. Certain guests (alcoholics, the parents of kids without in-room chaperones, and tour managers for famous metal bands from the 1980s that no longer have a famous 1980s metal band budget) are always asking to completely empty out the bar. Just get rid of it all. In fact, on a side note, when a huge company books a block of rooms (a business that provides items often found in minibars, such as a soda or beer company), they will sometimes demand that all competitors’ brands be removed prior to the group’s arrival. Minibar moles hate this: having to remove Coca-Cola products from seventy-five rooms just because Pepsi people want to live under the delusion that they run the market.
What about sensored minibars, that brilliant invention designed to eliminate the human factor? Certainly, the great minibar caper described above should not be attempted with a sensored minibar. All of those charges would immediately fly onto your bill and follow your account when you moved rooms. But, speaking as someone who personally lived through the transformation from a human system to the world of sensors, I was ready for the “I never even touched the minibar …” complaints to dwindle, hopefully, to zero. They did not. I barely noticed a change. Sensors come with their own problems. Random electronic malfunctions are just the beginning. They are weight sensored and on a brief timer; therefore, if you simply take an item out to examine it, you might get charged, unless you replace it within the thirty-second time limit (or Indiana-Jones-it with a “bag of sand”; in this case pour the, I’m just assuming, booze into a minibar glass—or right into your mouth!—and then quickly submerge it into an ice bucket that you’ve prefilled with water—or tea if you’re Indiana-Jonesing whiskey—then screw back the cap and replace it with dramatic showmanship, carefully, slowly, with hands shaky and wet, sweat bubbling on your forehead, racing to get it done before the thirty-second time limit triggers). But don’t press it down too hard, or it’ll trigger. And don’t put anything, like a sandwich, on top, or it’ll trigger. And don’t take the items out to store your own items, or it’ll trigger. And don’t move any items around, or it’ll trigger. It will always fucking trigger, and that is why, should you ever wake up in terror with a mess of tiny empty bottles by the bedside phone, pistachio shells all over the pillow, and your mouth smeared with Hershey’s, never fear. Forgive yourself. Just tell the front desk you “never even touched the minibar,” and we will whisk away the charges. Or say you stored your own items and it must have charged you. Or say you took a few items out to look at them and it must have charged you. Get it? Say anything, anything at all, and we will make it go away.
