Concierge Confidential

by Fazio, Michael

  One of the guests put the ticket stubs on my desk. “Can you explain this to me?” he said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Why did you put a line through your name?”

  I tried to play dumb. “Huh? Oh, that? Yeah, sometimes we have to order on a credit card. I guess they printed my name on the card.”

  “Well, John at the box office said that a lot of times concierges will come the day of the show and they know that there is probably some last-minute availability. I want to know how you want to settle this, because you paid eighty dollars for these and you overcharged me. I would tip you, but you know this is not how it’s done.”

  Technically, that was how it was done. “I absolutely did not get these tickets today. We work with brokers, and it’s a gray market. We don’t really know how they get the tickets, but they do.”

  “Well, you know what? Whoever you need to sort this out with, please do. Let me know what you intend to do. I’ll speak with you tomorrow.”

  I called Abbie and we figured out a plan to put out the fire. The next day, I called the guest in his room. “I spoke to the broker who we got these from,” I said. “Apparently there was a glitch. I apologize, and want to make you feel good about this.” The paid-out was already on his room bill, so I went upstairs and counted out the money to him face-to-face. In a very classy move, he slid a hundred dollars back to me as a tip.

  Going forward, I actually did sometimes get desperate again and have to use my credit card. But I never tried to blur out my name, and I made sure to have a speech prepared if the guests noticed anyway. “I don’t know how brokers work exactly, but sometimes I think they have to just take my name. I’m not sure, since it’s a gray market. But were your seats good?”

  * * *

  THE OVERCHARGE

  No one thinks that tipping a waiter is really optional, even though that is what it looks like at face value. Things get trickier when you’re dealing with other service professionals. People often believe there is a big distinction between paying for service and paying for a product. Somehow, because you’re not physically making something, it’s not valid to seek a profit. And if you’re occasionally willing to do your job without getting a tip—as concierges are—to some, there’s no real need to tip at all.

  That’s what the overcharge compensates for. When the Citigroup meeting planner wanted to find something that cost $500, there’s nothing wrong with me doing all the work for him and saying that I found it for $300 and charged him $400 (at a profit of $100 to myself). If he wanted to go find it for $300, let him go spin his wheels. But in the end he saved $100, and no one got hurt. It’s not like this was a group of old ladies on a volunteer vacation to help inner city kids. For the Citigroup-type people, the thing that they wanted meant much more to them than a few hundred bucks—and a few hundred bucks meant much more to me than a ticket.

  Part of it is also a sort of Robin Hood syndrome. If someone is brazen enough to say that they need front row center, tonight—and the seats “had better be good,” then they’d better be prepared to step up with the cash. (As if the show was going to be horrible and insufferable from the second row, right?) Nickel-and-diming many of these affluent guests was almost insulting to them. They told you what they wanted; why were you haggling?

  But if people were looking for “decent” seats, it would always soften my approach. There were plenty of guests that used to come up and ask where the discount ticket booth was. I’d offer them the coupons and let them know that you could still see perfectly fine if you sat in the second mezzanine. I played to the crowd. All they had to do was ask me where the subway station was, and I knew what they needed. But if they came up and demanded “Service!”, then I put on a different show. I checked out their coat and checked out their watch. Then I set the price and charged them for service; there isn’t a concierge alive that doesn’t do that. If you have the nerve to snap your fingers, there’s a responsibility that goes with it.

  * * *

  9.

  The Keymaster

  The unions are very powerful in the hotel industry. It’s a closed shop, so certain positions have to be staffed with union employees only. The union then dictates their shift and other parameters of their job. The bellmen’s union is a good example of this. The hotel is only encouraged to hire so many bellmen, according to a formula based on the number of rooms. The union doesn’t like the hotel to “overstaff,” because it impedes on the bellmen’s revenue. What actually happens is that the bellmen are chronically understaffed. I don’t know if that’s the goal or if it’s just them being uninformed. What I do know is that we had four bellmen to cover over six hundred rooms—and there was never anybody standing at the bellman counter. The door right behind the counter would be locked, with all the luggage in there. People would just have to stand and wait their turn.

  The guests would often start to pile up, and it was embarrassing. Even though I wasn’t technically supposed to have one, I’d scammed a key to the bellman closet. Once, I decided to be the hero and save the day. The guests were lining up and I could feel their consternation. I walked around and opened the door. “What’s your ticket number?” I asked the first guest. It wasn’t rocket science. I gave the person their bags. When they tried to tip me, I refused. I still had the door open when the bellman finally came down. He and I had been friendly, but now I was standing between him and his meal ticket.

  It was the closest I ever came to being fired.

  His union representative contacted the hotel, and management let me know just what a big deal it was. Complaint cards and letters from annoyed guests were often met with a shrug. This was met with much wringing of hands.

  I never tried to “save the day” for the bellmen after that, believe you me.

  The U.S. Open was one of the groups that would always stay in the hotel. One day Anna Kournikova came down to leave for the day, and she needed things that she had in the bellman’s closet. She was gorgeous, and you couldn’t miss her long blond hair. Within a couple of minutes there were fans around her. In another couple of minutes, there were more people. She just stood there, looking around. “Where’s the bellman?” her handler asked me.

  I stood there, explaining the whole absurd situation. Skip, the ninety-three-year-old bellman, came pulling a cart. He was renowned for having the ability to fall asleep while standing up. As the place turned into an autograph session, he slowly shuffled his way across the gigantic lobby with no sense of urgency at all.

  When I explained the bellman situation to most people, they were irritated but understood that it wasn’t my fault. Sometimes people would argue with me about my inability to get in there. “There must be a way. Somebody has a key, right? What happens if there’s a fire in there? You’re telling me no one can get in? What happens if a woman’s giving birth?” If it got really bad I’d pick up the phone and pretend to be making a reservation, having long drawn-out conversations with the dial tone just to avoid the inevitable venting.

  Things reached a boiling point one day with a particular businessman. He kept hovering in my periphery, even though I was busy helping other people as a concierge. “This is crazy!” he huffed. “This is outrageous! I can’t believe you can’t just come out from there and get my bags!”

  I paused with the people I was helping. “I really wish I could help you. Is there somebody that I could call? Do you want me to get the manager to come and explain it to you? We don’t have the keys.”

  He kept shaking his head, getting more and more annoyed. “This is totally unacceptable and ridiculous.”

  I tried offering things to mitigate the situation. “Do you want to go sit at the bar? I’ll have someone bring you your things. Just leave your ticket with me.” To be fair, the man did have a point. It was ridiculous to pay $600 a night and not be able to get a bellman. But he was acting like I was part of the big amorphous “hotel problem,” rather than the person who was trying to make things better for him. He
really thought I was trying to spite him. Much like most people’s approach to service, his perception became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  I made a decision to disengage from the people I was helping. I gave them a few restaurant review clippings to flip through for a minute, so they could decide where they wanted to eat. Very calmly, I spoke to the man. “It’s not fair,” I told him. “I agree with you. But honest to God, if I could go in there, I would.”

  “So where are they?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “You mean to tell me that you have no idea where the bellmen are right now?”

  “No, I’m sorry. There’s no way for me to tell where they are.”

  He kept right on challenging me. “I can’t believe you don’t know where they are. What kind of system is this?”

  “Well, there are four of them, and there are six hundred rooms, and I imagine that—”

  “Don’t you have a record of who checked out last?” he interrupted. “Maybe they’re up in that room. Can’t somebody go up to that room?”

  I had to end it. He was forcing me to ignore the guests who were waiting in front of me at my desk. “We have not implanted the doormen with locating devices yet but when we do, I think we will have a much better handle on this.” I didn’t sound sarcastic, just totally businesslike. “Thank you for your input.”

  A few days later, I got called up to the manager’s office. “We’ve received a complaint from a Mr. Nader.”

  “That name doesn’t sound familiar,” I said. I hadn’t gotten the guy’s information—he was just standing there and complaining.

  “He’s a very important executive at AIG.”

  I hadn’t realized who I was talking to. A bigwig at a major corporate account was the worst-case scenario; losing a corporate account could have cost the hotel something like ten thousand rooms a year. We wouldn’t be losing one guest, but dozens or even hundreds. “What happened?” I said.

  “He sent in a comment card,” the manager told me.

  I relaxed, but only a little bit. A comment card was less poisonous than a letter to the hotel’s corporate hierarchy. “Oh?”

  “This is what he wrote.” The manager read, verbatim, my conversation with Mr. Nader. “I think it was a little outlandish what you said. You said we were going to put tracking devices on people?”

  “No, I can’t say I remember this. Tracking devices?”

  “He thought that you were being very sarcastic.”

  “Hm, I don’t know.” I didn’t want to pretend he had made the whole thing up, but I still wanted to cover my ass. “The only thing I could think is there was a man, maybe a week ago, who was very, very impatient and disruptive of my other guests. I explained to him that I wasn’t able to go into the luggage closet.”

  “Ah, of course. It just sounded too outlandish.”

  “Yeah, who would ever say a thing like that?”

  * * *

  HOW TO HANDLE BAD SERVICE

  In a perfect world, we’d all get good service all the time. But in real life, bad service is something that happens fairly often. There are people who are effective in getting a change in service—and people who aren’t. My friend Annette was at the Peninsula in Chicago, and asked the concierge what he thought of a certain restaurant that she’d been recommended. “Eh,” he said, “it’s okay.” That was the extent of their exchange. It rubbed Annette the wrong way because he was being dismissive of her suggestion. She gave the concierge a glaring look and walked off—and he let her walk off. The whole thing was unproductive, because Annette walked off without service and the concierge learned nothing.

  In situations like this, I find that the passive-aggressive approach works best. Asking them something like, “Do you really hate it?” gives them a cue to either snap to it—or dig themselves deeper in the hole. You can follow that question up with, “Because here’s how I feel.” In service, you don’t have to act contemptuous of the person’s suggestion. You can see what they’re going for, and try to steer them in the right direction without being a snot about it.

  It certainly works both ways. Some customers know everything and don’t let you do your job. If they wanted to sing the praises of T.G.I. Friday’s, I’d tell them it was a great choice and make reservations. It was pointless to try to educate them, and they robbed themselves of learning about Five Napkin Burger. They weren’t seeking advice; they were seeking validation.

  If you want to be vindictive and punish the service person you’re dealing with, it’s very difficult. The appearance of service is that you’re the boss. But you’re really not. The only time people get fired on the spot is in movies where the character needs a change in occupation. For a business to fire someone on the spot in front of a customer is to admit that they’re staffed with incompetents—not a very healthy image.

  If you want to just be a jerk, the best thing to do is to write a letter. But here’s the thing: Unless the bad service is grossly repetitive—and sometimes it is, and those people are clearly not in the right field—those letters do nothing except make you feel good. Letters do get to somebody’s eyes, and then there’s a whole chain of people that need to explain the issue. But there’s no way you know an employee better than their managers do, unless their manager is completely out of it—in which case they’re too stupid to take effective action anyway. Further, if someone has been consistently giving bad service for a long time, they’re probably entrenched in that position. You’re not going to be the tipping point to get them fired.

  Another alternative approach is the classic “Let me talk to your manager!” You will get your instant and ephemeral gratification, because human nature means that the manager will try to come in and save the day. You’ll get some modicum of submission, but the idea that you’ve somehow “fixed” this person is absurd. You and your power play will be quickly forgotten by all parties involved. The only way you will be remembered is in a bad way, if your attitude gets you a scarlet letter. Restaurants and hotels do it all the time, marking rude customers’ profiles with comments. Our special code for this was abbreviated to “PITA”—as in, Pain In The Ass—in case they saw the computer screen’s reflection in our glasses or something. Positive comments also got registered. A “BFT” was a Ben Franklin Tipper who dropped hundred-dollar bills.

  My personal approach is to try to educate the person. At first glance, it seems like a waste of time. But educating someone is actually a very good investment, because you instantly become memorable. Instead of being angry, act surprised. “All I did was come up here and ask you for a restaurant. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s kind of what you’re here to do.” It’s kind of like the Dog Whisperer. You snap them out of their bad-service mode and bring them back to earth. You’re no longer some amorphous guest, but a real person with real needs.

  Now that they’re listening, it’s important to frame the issue correctly. Service professionals are prepared to defend their company, but they’re not prepared to defend injustice. “This is unacceptable! This is not what your website looks like!” cries out for an explanation, not a remedy. You’ll get the excuses as to why it has to be acceptable. “I’m sorry we’re oversold this weekend,” they’ll tell you. “There’s nothing we can do.” But what does work is, “I booked this reservation two months ago. I know that the hotel is oversold but my room is horrible. This isn’t really fair. I was looking forward to a great weekend and I’m not going to be happy in there.” That cries out for a remedy. No one wants to be unfair.

  People who are very confrontational expect that they’re paving the way for their future. The idea is that if you try to assert your importance every time you walk in the door, then everyone will salute you. Machiavelli’s “it’s better to be feared than to be loved” is an adage that might work when you have real power—not the illusion of power that the service relationship actually is. With service, it’s just the opposite. It turns everyone off and creates stress. You’re not going to g
et good service from somebody who’s afraid of you. It’s the same reason people don’t keep porcupines as pets: Yes, there might be some upside. But the big downside is glaringly obvious, so it’s safest to simply minimize any interaction.

  * * *

  10.

  On the Case

  There is absolutely nothing wrong with coming to a big city and not being that good at finding your way around. That’s one of the main functions of a concierge: to help guests navigate the area. There is something wrong, however, with being a know-it-all when you’re actually a know-it-not.

  Many people that repeatedly visit New York feel like they’ve earned some imaginary, invisible badge. It’s usually awarded around the sixth visit, but I’ve encountered it with people who had been to the city only once before—or even on their first visit, but they’d “read a book.” They’d ask me a question, but they’d never ever let me finish a sentence. “We want to go downtown to Harlem,” was one that I heard.

  Harlem is downtown—if you’re on 175th Street. But since the hotel was on 48th Street, that would make it uptown. I never really knew how to respond. It was more them showing off than actually asking for information. But knowing the simple fact that Harlem exists is not exactly an impressive bit of trivia.

  Tourists loved to say that something was by “the river.” “Well, there’s the East River and the Hudson River,” I explained. “Which river are you talking about?”

  “You know. The river.”

  Thanks to Sleepless in Seattle, every concierge in New York has had to argue until he’s blue in the face that, no, there isn’t a restaurant at the top of the Empire State Building. It hasn’t closed recently and you didn’t eat there last time you were visiting New York. It doesn’t matter how certain you are and how much you swear up and down. It did not happen. That was a movie, not real life.