Concierge Confidential

by Fazio, Michael

  She never sensed my fear. She never growled and attacked me. I watched how the interns approached her. Dolores sat in her office with her chair turned around, facing away from the door. “Dolores?” the intern meekly asked. “Do you have a second?”

  The chair spun around so fast she should have gotten whiplash. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

  “I’m sorry…”

  “Are you blind? I am trying to read! How am I ever going to finish this script?”

  The next time it was a phone message. Instead of saying anything, the intern went into Dolores’s office as unobtrusively as possible and gingerly placed a message on the desk.

  Dolores wouldn’t even touch it. “What is this?” she yelled.

  “Uh … it’s a phone message.”

  “From whom? What do they want?”

  “Kevin Parker had a question for you. He was returning your call from this afternoon.”

  “So what did you tell him? Hello? I asked you a question! What am I supposed to do here?” The intern just stood there, because no matter what the girl said, it would just be adding fuel to the fire. I could tell that Dolores knew she was being mean, just like I could tell that her intention was to educate and encourage the intern to have more of a backbone. But the only thing that happened is that the poor girl sheepishly bowed her head and walked out of the office.

  As the intern walked past my desk near tears—again—I pulled her aside. “Hey, watch me. Deal with her like I do.”

  The girl nodded, still terrified.

  I strode right up to Dolores. “There’s a call on line three and they wanted to make sure that you read the script. I read it. Here are the notes I made for you.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll take the call. Where are the notes?”

  “Right here,” I replied, handing them to her. “I’ll put the call right through.”

  “Do me a favor,” she said. “The television trade show for syndication is going to be in Vegas next week. Call Diane at Warner Bros. and see if you can get me on one of their morning planes.”

  “Sure.”

  She was testing me. Dolores had a way of seizing opportunities, and the Warner Bros. jet was an opportunity.

  But still: The Warner Bros. jet? Really? I didn’t even know Diane, but Dolores did. Shouldn’t she be the one calling? Especially if she was kind of inviting herself. This was going to require stepping out of my comfort zone and letting go of my own personal hang-ups about pushing the envelope.

  I went back to my desk and called up Diane. I had witnessed enough of Dolores in action that I was able to conjure up her warm, positive, and familiar delivery. “Hey Diane, it’s Michael from Dolores’s. You guys are sending planes on Thursday, aren’t you?”

  “It’s looking that way, but I’m not sure who’s confirmed,” Diane said.

  “I’ll be taking the bus,” I said, pausing for her little chuckle, “but Dolores was hoping to get out in the morning. Not sure when you do your seating plan, but Dolores will be traveling alone if you have a spare seat.”

  “I’m probably going to have space if she can leave pretty early. Give Ms. D a kiss from me.”

  “Thanks so much!” I said, writing down the info. How easy was that? My tone was upbeat and I kept the conversation short. I asked specifically for what I needed, and I got exactly what I had asked for without any emotional obstacles. Warner Bros. had a beautiful, comfortable private jet for entertainment industry big shots—like Dolores. Rather than wait for an invitation that might never come, why not simply ask?

  I knew that she flew on the Warner Bros.’ private jet all the time, even though she was simply a talent manager. What did she belong on the Warner Bros.’ private jet for? I had thought it was because she was such a powerful person and because she was so feared. But now I wondered if she was just good at getting in there when she saw an opportunity. I hadn’t been afraid to ask and I knew how to ask. Just like that, Dolores was on a flight.

  When she was on those flights, she wasn’t the Dolores I witnessed with the interns. She was upbeat, positive, and never overstayed her welcome. She abided by the rules and wasn’t a bother. She didn’t show up with a camera crew or eating smelly food on the plane. She took up a seat but she didn’t take up space. Finding opportunities was a skill that she learned and perfected—and one that she taught me.

  * * *

  THE APPROACH

  You have to have nerve to get people to do things for you. It doesn’t mean you have to be obnoxious and pushy or assert some kind of authority. You do have to be bluntly honest and say exactly what you want. “Can I get a discount?” “What’s the chance of getting to try a suite?” It’s off-putting and people never do things like that. How do you respond to that sort of a question?

  As a concierge I’m in a lucky position, because I’m on both the giving and the taking sides. People ask me and they usually ask me incorrectly. It’s my job to get them what they want anyway—and I never ask on their behalf the way they’ve asked me. Otherwise, I’d never get what my clients want and I’d be out of a job.

  Before you ask for what you want, you have to establish some commonality. “I’m in your world now; what’s it look like?… What’s the climate over there?… So can you do this for me?” It’s set-up, and then the kill, and it’s important to use just enough jargon to appear like an insider. At a hotel, for instance, the conversation would be something like, “What’s your room rate?… What’s your occupancy rate?… What’s rack rate on a suite?… You know, I found it online for a hundred dollars less.” That leads up to the point where I can simply ask if I can have the room for a hundred dollars less. “Is there any chance that you can do better?” is so vague that it won’t work.

  Be honest. Everybody can respect that. It’s not about turning the tables and making the other person feel funny because of your bluntness. It’s more like putting it out there and seeing what happens. Nine times out of ten you’ll get something because you were honest. Ten times out of ten you’ll get “let me see what I can do,” because nobody in a service position wants to say no. It’s all in the delivery. It’s as simple as being in a department store and asking, “Is this going to go on sale tomorrow?” Ask verbatim but without an attitude of entitlement.

  Being honest also means not trying to be everyone’s best friend. You don’t want to call a restaurant saying, “Hi, who’s this?… How are you?… Oh, you know, Crystal is such a pretty name. Does your mother do meth?” It’s completely irrelevant and palpably phony, especially to someone in a service position. But if you’re like, “Hey Crystal, it’s Michael. Are you guys slammed tonight?” it’s a sense of familiarity and a respect for their position. Just because someone is serving you does not mean they are your servant. Quite the contrary.

  You’re not entitled to service; you want service. Fancy people often think that asking correctly is too much work. “Besides, isn’t that just their job?” The funny thing is, that never translates. It’s your job to win the case, Ms. Attorney. You don’t win all of them, do you? Yes, it’s the person’s job to provide service. But there’s a difference between them doing their job at the minimum and them going the extra mile—which is not their job. That’s the definition of “extra”: getting something you’re not otherwise entitled to. But that extra mile is what you want out of them.

  The only way to do that is to motivate. Money can be the motivator, as with tipping. It can also be pride, or acknowledgment. But you won’t get it by asserting power and you won’t get it by patronizing phony friendships. The waiter isn’t there to be your friend; he’s there to serve you food. He’s busy and doesn’t need the small talk. It doesn’t matter that his name is cute or is the same as your brother’s—he knows where you’re going with that.

  No matter what technique, remember that the mission isn’t complete when they say yes. Once you get what you want, you have to let them know that you’re glad they gave it to you. It’s as simple as sending a note to let t
hem know how great everything was. “Keep my contact information. I’d love the opportunity to return the favor if there’s anything I can do for you.”

  And no, you can’t have a discount.

  * * *

  As I started putting in fourteen-hour days with Dolores, I started to develop a comfort level with her. “Man,” I said, “the snapshot thing is really powerful”

  She giggled. “Yeah. It is a nice touch, isn’t it?” It was in the days before MySpace.

  Dolores would always carry a disposable camera around. She knew who the big players were even if she didn’t really know them that well … yet. She would flash that warm smile and extend a confident handshake. “Look how handsome you are,” she’d tell the target. “I don’t have any pictures of us.”

  Before it felt weird, he’d have his arm around her and the picture was snapped. When she got the film developed, she would mail the picture of the two of them together. The little Post-it would say “How cute are you???”

  “Does it ever not work?” I asked her.

  “No, because I do it right. Remember to keep it short and keep it amusing, just like when you’re talking to someone on the phone. Everyone is an egomaniac. No one wants to hear about me. It’s always about you, you, you.”

  It was also always you, you, you at the agency. I was the one who Wesley Snipes called to pick him up from the courthouse when the cops impounded his motorcycle. I was the one who had to go to Jason Patric’s house to pick up the mail—and let out his pet pig. When Dolores’s contact lens rolled back in her eye, I was so methodical in getting it out that you would’ve thought that I was an optician or an ophthalmologist. (Whichever is the appropriate option, that’s the one I had to pretend to be.)

  I was so tuned in to all the Dolores cues that I learned nothing was said as an accident. If she said something like, “I’m going to start eating oatmeal in the mornings before I go to the gym,” that meant I should make sure that there was a tray from room service waiting at her door by 7 A.M. To be safe, I would also need to make sure that a treadmill was reserved at 8 A.M. It didn’t matter that she was in Cannes, which was a nine-hour time difference from Los Angeles. I woke up in the middle of the night to call her hotel to make sure that she got what she wanted. It wasn’t as if she were being demanding. She couldn’t be demanding, because I would never let it get to that point. For me it was about service, and to me service was about competency and taking cues.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t my job to write and produce the movies that the client was going to be in, so I had to be good covering my piece of the process. If Wesley Snipes needed to be woken up at 6:00 A.M. in New York, which was 3:00 A.M. in L.A., I did it. In a way, I was more reliable than an alarm clock.

  It worked both ways. I could’ve called the hotel and told them I needed a wake-up call for Wesley’s room. But I honestly didn’t trust them. I’d rather wake up at three and call Wesley myself, so I would be absolutely positive that it got taken care of.

  And because I was so reliable, I was the poor soul who had to handle Rosie Perez.

  Everything with her was an incident, and every day with her there was something.

  Every. Single. Day.

  “Hi, Michael,” she said on the phone with her gilded accent. “Yeah, I didn’t get my pages for tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” I told her, “you did.”

  “No, I didn’t!”

  “Yes,” I insisted, “you did. Susan signed for them an hour ago.”

  “Where are they?”

  “I don’t know, Rosie. I’m not with you.”

  “Well, they’re not here.”

  “Hold on, let me find Susan.” I put down the receiver and looked around the office. “Hey, Susan. Did you sign for Rosie’s pages?”

  “Yeah,” Susan said. “I went and slid them under her door.”

  “Oh, there they are,” Rosie said, looking in the place where Susan slipped them the day before, and the day before that.

  If Rosie was staying at a hotel, the complaints changed a bit. “My car’s not here,” she called to let me know.

  “It is.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Where are you standing?” I asked her.

  “I’m in front of the hotel. I told you he’s not here. This is terrible! I can’t believe you did this!”

  Rosie the celebrity had her cell phone, but I of course did not. I called the dispatcher, who radioed to the driver for a description of the vehicle. “It’s a black car with a seventeen in the license plate.” That wasn’t cutting it; it wasn’t specific enough. “Do you see the car with the flashers on? Okay, the driver is holding his right arm up.”

  She wasn’t even embarrassed; she was too busy thinking of herself as the next Jessica Lange. But me? I was exhausted. The next time she had a shoot, I called my best friend at every hotel: the concierge. “Can you do me a favor?” I asked. “Could you describe the front of the hotel?”

  He didn’t even ask me why. “There’re six gray planters and they have little round boxwoods in them. Then there’s one big planter with a pine. Would you like me to draw you a picture and fax it to you?”

  With anyone else, it would have been sarcasm. With the concierge, it was simply good service. “That would be great. Thank you so much.”

  Sure enough, Rosie called again in the morning. “My car’s not here!”

  “Where are you standing?” I asked her.

  “I’m in front of the hotel and he’s not here.”

  “Are you in front of the round boxwoods or are you in front of the tall pine planter?”

  “I’m in front of the pine tree thing.”

  “Is your back to the hotel?”

  “Yes.”

  I knew from the dispatcher that there was a gray car, a maroon car, and then a black one—in that order. “Look to your right. It’s the first one.”

  “No, that one is black. You said it was gray.”

  “Now look to your, uh, other direction.” Silence. “You see it now? There it is.” I hung up the phone with Rosie and sat there.

  There had to be more to life than this.

  * * *

  GREAT MOMENTS IN HOLLYWOOD SERVICE HISTORY

  Batman (1939)—Alfred the butler sits silently by whilst Bruce Wayne studies and exercises excessively, instead of seeing a therapist to deal with his parents’ death. Wayne later grows up to lead Gotham City’s nascent dom/furry community.

  All About Eve (1950)—Eve Harrington moves into the upstairs bedroom to be the personal assistant to the famous Margo Channing, planning all the details of Margo’s husband’s homecoming—but making sure to get title credit.

  What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)—Baby Jane Hudson, who grew old but didn’t grow up, serves dinner in bed to her sister Blanche. The spoiled woman refuses the parakeet delicacy.

  Family Affair (1967)—Butler Mr. French convinces his boss to tell the kids the truth about where babies come from—and creepily looks on as the man does so.

  The Brady Bunch (1969)—Alice helps Carol Brady (née Tyler) cover up the murder of her first husband; he is never mentioned again.

  Return of the Jedi (1983)—Luke Skywalker uses an old Jedi mind trick on Bib Fortuna, Jabba the Hutt’s “weak-minded fool” of a majordomo. Skywalker thereupon burns down Jabba’s barge, while Jabba himself is strangled by Princess Leia.

  Dynasty (1983)—Joseph the majordomo helpfully tries to lock the former Mrs. Carrington in a burning cabin, not realizing he had locked the current Mrs. Carrington inside as well.

  The Golden Girls (1985)—Coco the gay houseboy is dismissed after one episode; the LGBTQ community instantly forgives and forgets the slight.

  Small Wonder (1985)—Ted Lawson constructs a robot servant, and attempts to pass her off as his daughter by programming her with a monotone voice and dressing her in the same 1890s pinafore every day.

  Mr. Belvedere (1988)—Butler Mr. Belvedere advises Wesley to go play in the woods so as not to
disturb the Owens’ party.

  The Simpsons (1994)—A teary-eyed Smithers helps Mr. Burns write a mash note to his girlfriend.

  Hotel Babylon (2006)—Tony Casemore, the hotel concierge, sacrifices time with his wife and family in hope of saving up enough in tips to retire at age forty-four.

  * * *

  4.

  A Hell of a Town

  I didn’t want to leave L.A.

  Even though I was just a go-to gopher for all these famous people, I felt like I was in with them. It was exciting, fun, and cozy—not like New York. New York was no bullshit. It was real. People weren’t friendly for the sake of being congenial, like they were on the West Coast.

  And yet I wanted to revisit my singing-songwriting aspirations and to do that I’d have to move. I was working with two girl rappers and it was making me crazy. Dolores had tried to throw me a bone by putting me in charge of them. I didn’t know that their song “40 Dog” was about large male genitalia, so it’s no wonder I wasn’t exactly prepared. Working with them just made me want to sing again like I did during college, because they were doing it all and making a lot of money in the process.

  My better half, Jeffrey, was originally from New York and we started traveling there more, visiting with his friends. “Maybe I could actually sing again,” I said to him one day. “I think I do want to be Baby Jane, after all. At the very least, I could manage theater people as a job. Their creativity is much more my vibe than the film people’s is.”