* * *
THE EXCHANGE
When you use the right tone, you’re on your way to receiving good service.
The guest himself wasn’t too nice to me from the beginning—but he wasn’t unfriendly, either. It was very much a business-to-business kind of relationship, which is what all service effectively comes down to. Some people are often uncomfortable being served, so their impulse is to be sickeningly sweet. “Hi, how are you? Listen, me and my friends are using my talking-to-a-dog voice. You’ve got to accommodate me, right?” That might work at Applebee’s. Those people are just happy to have somebody who’s not yelling. But once you leave the mall, service is different. Speaking that way to someone who is serving you is the same way Glen spoke to the guest in the wheelchair. Just because you’re standing and they’re sitting doesn’t mean they should be talked down to—or will be oblivious to it.
There’s nothing wrong with being “nice.” The niceness that works is creating some sort of cool and detached acknowledgment—but not aloofness. It can be going up to a bartender and asking “So, what time does this place get busy? Around six thirty, seven?” You’re making a statement and creating a conversation. If you want to pick up a girl, you don’t just walk up to her and ask her out. There needs to be some sort of icebreaker.
What always worked with me and what works when I do it to other people is to go to their world. If you know a little bit about their world, you’re subliminally getting the point across that you know a little bit about what they’re doing. Now, it’s “us” versus them. It’s implicitly saying, “Look at all of these people waiting for a table. Aren’t they ridiculous? What time am I getting in?”
If you don’t know anything about their world, there’s another technique you can use. People in service often have name tags, and people with name tags always hate the fact that they have to wear them. Everywhere I see that, from the bank to the airport, I immediately ask them what their last name is. It kind of breaks the wall and identifies them as a human being, not some faceless name-tag drone. I don’t do it in mid-dialogue; then it sounds like I’m going to report them. And I don’t bother using the last name, because it’s needlessly formal. But asking for that last name shows that you get the situation and are on their side—and people in service bend over backward for customers who get the situation and are on their side.
* * *
At my desk there was a big concierge sign. It was one of those fancy glass rectangles, like a transparent brick with a marble stand. That’s what told people that I was a concierge. What told people that I was a good concierge was how quickly I processed requests from guests who needed help.
The thing that I admired were the people who got it. Conversely, the thing that I loathed were the people who didn’t. Some were too chatty and fake-friendly, which I didn’t have time for. But the worst were the people who did not feel that they had to wait in line. All they had to do was use their logic and open their eyes. They could see how fast I was going. They should realize that my attention was seconds away.
The dinner hour was always a busy time. That’s when people had a tendency to say things like, “I just have a question…!”
“That’s what the other people in line here are for,” I’d say with a super-positive tone, gesturing at all the people queued up. “They all have questions. I’ve got to help them first.” I looked upon myself as kind of a service counselor, and I was too codependent for their approval to be nasty about it. (And I really was genuine about trying to enlighten them.)
Sometimes it got more out of hand. Instead of forming a line, people would form a cluster in front of the desk. There was no regard for allowing the person I was with to get the help they needed. “I just have a question … Where do you suggest I go for dinner?”
That was not “just” a question. The only questions where you can cut a line are ones you can ask in one word—and be answered in zero. “Bathroom?” “Phone?” “Elevator?” I would point and continue helping whoever was there first, without breaking out of the conversation.
Unless, of course, it wasn’t phrased in the form of a question. Alex Trebek, eat your heart out. “Bathroom.”
“Would you like to know where the bathroom is?” I always said, correcting them as subtly as possible. “It’s just around the corner to the left.”
One dinner hour, this woman in a mink stole who looked like Diahann Carroll tried to cut the line. I was already helping somebody and there were three or four people waiting ahead of her. She moved to the side of the line and kept trying to interject.
It didn’t work.
She started strumming her fingers on my desk, and it made a very distinctive sound because of the big ring she had on. But that didn’t work, either. She may have thought she invented strumming the desk with the big ring, but people did that a lot. In that environment, spoiled people snapping their fingers at me was not unusual at all. They’d even ring the bell, even when I was assisting somebody else.
I was always nice at first, no matter how rude the guest was being. “I’ll be right with you,” I told the strumming woman. “I just need to finish with these people since they came first.”
She just kept sighing and trying to chime in. The people I was helping started to get distracted by her. I made direct eye contact with the lady, painfully aware that the ring she was clacking against the desk was probably giving it a good scratching. “Do you have a quick question?” I said.
“Well, I’d like to get some help!” she snapped.
“Of course. If you could just give me a moment to take care of these nice people in line ahead of you, I will be very happy to help you. If you wish, perhaps someone at the front desk can help you. I can see there’s no line there.”
“This is crazy,” she yelled. “I can’t believe it!”
I knew very well how to keep the flow moving quickly. But the bitch in me couldn’t resist adding a tiny drop of fuel to her fire. The others in line had cameras, tour brochures, and copies of Where magazine. It was obvious that they didn’t exactly know how to process the tension she was creating. To them, it was a great New York moment like out of the movies—and they had front row seats.
Out popped my tour map and a Sharpie. The others in line gathered as I slowly detailed practically every sight to see in the city. “If you’re a chocolate lover, you must go to the third floor of Henri Bendel to Chocolate Bar. When you enter the store, you’ll want to take the elevator to three. When you get off, just look to the left past the evening gowns.”
Mere inches away from me, she just kept grunting and sighing in disgust. “These stupid tourists,” she muttered to herself.
My patience was extinguished and I snapped. I slammed my hands on the desk at her. “This is a line. These people were here first. This is how it works: I’m going to help them, and if you’d like to stand behind them, then your turn is coming next, that’s when you get all of my attention.”
“You bastard!” she yelled. She lifted up my heavy glass concierge sign and threw it at me. It clanked across my marble counter and bounced onto the floor. The glass broke, and the pieces scattered everywhere. Everyone in the lobby heard it. Shattering glass is not a quiet sound.
Then: silence. It seemed like a year passed before anyone reacted, including her and me. I was startled, and the adrenaline started kicking in.
Very sternly, I looked at her and said, “Look at what you just did. Is that how you behave? Are you proud of yourself? Everyone else had the decency to follow the rules. The rules are easy. You wait for two seconds and I’m going to help you.”
The people in line started to chime in with agreement. “Yeah, lady. We were here first.” From the lobby came a little spattering of applause and laughter. It wasn’t like where they started cheering in Norma Rae, but it was apparently enough to make her feel humiliated.
She started to cry, mink stole and all.
It wasn’t long after that I got called to speak to the manager. “S
he threw the sign at me!” I said. “I didn’t scold her. I simply told her that she’d have to wait for the next person.”
Nothing came of it in the hotel, but something came of it inside me. No matter what happens, some people are just not going get it. That woman must leave a trail of blood everywhere she goes. She must constantly have very bad experiences. She just needed to realize that it’s the service person who is in the driver’s seat. They can help you get to the destination that you want, or they can roadblock you.
But good service often means allowing for bad behavior. She might have broken my concierge sign, but it was the concierge desk that was beginning to break me.
* * *
THINGS RICH PEOPLE CAN’T DO FOR THEMSELVES
Remember if they like it: “Did I like Turks and Caicos?”
Take ownership of their demands: “We really need to make sure we get seats in the first five rows.”
Say “I don’t care what it costs”—and mean it: “I don’t care,” as long as it matches my unrealistic expectation of what I think a private jet charter should cost.
Book a dinner reservation: I have a job because of this.
1. Call the restaurant.
2. Say “yes” when the reservationist answers and immediately asks you to hold.
3. Don’t hang up and call right back.
4. Don’t watch your clock to see how long you are holding.
5. Don’t tell the reservationist how long you were holding.
6. Say hello to the reservationist when they pick up again.
7. Ask if they can accommodate your request for a table.
8. Allow them to respond with the perfunctory “we can take your party at five thirty or ten forty-five” even though you asked for eight thirty.
9. Remain cordial and sell yourself with all your heart, just like you would if you were interviewing for a job.
Interview for a job: What is this, a deposition? I’m not on trial!
Deal with a coach seat: Is first class sold out? Just book three coach seats all for yourself.
Enjoy a concert without meeting the star: Maybe we’re all just thirteen-year-old girls at heart, but I stay very busy scoring backstage passes for my clients, at thousands a pop.
Write love letters: If I had a nickel for every person who asked me to “just write something” to go with the flowers … Wait, I do. I have many, many nickels because of this.
Wait: I have people in my resource database who will stand in line for a fee. Time is money.
* * *
12.
New York Loves You Back
I was home watching the Today show when Jeffrey called me from Union Square. “A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center,” he told me.
“What?” A lot of other people thought the same thing that I did when they first heard the news: a little Cessna had hit one of the towers, and nothing would come of it. After all, one had flown into the White House not that long before, and it had done no real damage.
But then the Today show flashed on with the news. It was so weird that it took me a while to register. I got up and looked out of the window. On the street below there were all these people standing outside of their cars. I went downstairs to see what was going on; by this time the second plane had already hit.
I have to get to the hotel, I thought. I felt like there was a call to action. People were going to need transportation and people were going to need help. Not lifesaving help, obviously, but these were people who would be trapped in a foreign city. The alternative was for me to sit at home and freak out, and I wanted to be doing something.
I went back upstairs to get my work suit, and slung it over my shoulder. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be gone for. I walked the thirty blocks to work because the subways were shut down and traffic was insanity. When I stepped into the hotel, the lobby was a mob scene of frenetic energy. I’d never seen it like that before. There was a line around the concierge’s desk, and in front of the front desk was a crowd four people deep. The staff had brought down all of the televisions from the conference rooms on those high rolling carts. Everywhere you turned in the lobby, you saw the news right as it was happening. They had electrical tape holding down all the wires for the televisions and, between that and the noise, this fancy lobby looked like a construction zone.
I was living in Los Angeles when the earthquake hit in January of 1994. It was a scary period, and it had the effect of making everyone instantly nice. When I walked into the hotel, that was my fantasy. I expected to come into a place where it was groupthink. I was going to arrive, help everyone who needed help, and be the hero. But that fantasy was crushed very quickly. There wasn’t a lot of softness. For many of the people, this day was all about them and their problems. The only real difference between September 11 and September 10 was that now they were somehow inconvenienced. They found this hassle to be inexplicable and outrageous—while images were flashing in every direction they turned, while the news was blasting at full volume, and while the smell of death was literally in the air. Every New Yorker remembers what it smelled like that day; at least, those of us who paid any attention to begin with.
“What do you mean, I can’t get to the airport?” one man asked me. “How am I going to get out of here? You must know somebody that you can get on the phone with.”
People would sometimes get that way when the airport was shut during snowstorms, and I could understand where they were coming from. They felt like there must be one flight leaving, and the concierge had to find it for them. But this wasn’t exactly a snowstorm. I made a show of calling American Airlines on their behalf. All I got was a recording that said, “You’ve reached American Airlines. I’m sorry, but our lines are blocked and we can’t accept any more calls. Thank you, and good-bye.”
“I apologize,” I told the guest, “but they’re not taking calls.”
“Well, how am I going to get to Stamford for my presentation?” he asked me.
Buddy, nobody’s going to Stamford for your fucking presentation.
A young woman came in and sidled up to the desk. She was about thirty and really attractive. She looked expensive, like a Madison Avenue debutante. “Where are your banquet rooms?” she asked me, irritated that she’d had to wait for my attention.
I assumed she was there to attend some conference in the hotel. “There’s nothing going on,” I told her. “Everything’s canceled.”
“You’re not understanding me. I just need to look at the space. Just call someone who can show me the rooms,” she sighed.
“Can I just ask—did you have an appointment or something? What is it that you are interested in doing?”
“I’m looking for a wedding space.”
“I don’t think it’s probably going to happen today.”
“That’s ridiculous!” she said. She literally said it was ridiculous. “Why not?”
“I have a feeling that they are probably putting rollaway beds in the conference rooms right now, because all of the people that didn’t check out today are still here, and all of the people that got in today are here, and we need room.”
“Don’t you want my business?”
I just stared at her. “You know what? No, we don’t want your business.” That day, of all days, I had the ability to simply say no. Part of me even expected her to write a note, complaining. I came into your hotel to inquire about space for my wedding. It was September 11, about an hour after the second tower fell. I have never been treated so rudely in my life as I was by your concierge Michael!
The frenetic energy stayed like that for the next two days. Everybody was stuck, and not many people could get home. Our hotel was always packed, with practically every one of the almost seven hundred rooms occupied all the time. If there were three hundred checkouts, then there were three hundred check-ins—but now that meant that we were overbooked by three hundred. Every hotel in the city was like that; there were no rooms to be had. We moved cots into conference rooms,
and people just had to make do—though they didn’t like it. Guests could have given up their rooms, and slept on couches in their coworkers’ suites. But instead they chose to call down to the desk to complain about how long room service was taking.
It started to soften when the airports opened up, and there was a bit of an exodus. We suddenly had to struggle to make space and get rooms ready: the people from Cantor Fitzgerald were coming to stay with us. They had been headquartered at the top floors of One World Trade Center, and two-thirds of their workforce had been killed.
CEO Howard Lutnick came in with a whole crew from his company. They stood at the front desk, and from everywhere in the lobby you could hear them crying. They weren’t trying to hide it, sniffling into a handkerchief or something. These very successful people were just absolutely devastated. It’s not like they lost one friend or one family member; they lost their staff, everyone who they used to spend hours at the office with, day in and day out. Their emotions were so raw that I started to panic.
Suddenly things became real. All of the greediness and brattiness was gone. It was replaced by a somber, humble, and depressing energy. In a selfish way, that’s when I got scared. I realized our whole city is built on those people who snap their fingers and make demands. “Get it now! Get it now! I don’t care what it costs and I want more! More! Bigger! Closer to the stage! Louder!” That attitude that I sometimes resented was gone—but without people like that, who was I going to provide service for?
Over the following days, the hotel started to empty out and things became weird. We were only booked at around 50 percent capacity when it came to rooms. Every single person was calling to let us know they couldn’t get in, and wondering what to do about their theater tickets. I obviously wasn’t going to tell them that they had legally committed to the purchases, so every cancellation was money out of my pocket. It was just spiraling. Our concierge desk was very formal and old-fashioned. Instead of doing things in the computer, we had a big logbook with the ribbon down the middle to mark the page. Every sheet was filled with line after line as we crossed out the various reservations, one after another. I’m not going to have a job, I thought. Everything that had made me crazy about my job instantly faded away. I was into my work. I was a great concierge and things had been going well, and I mostly did love this business. I loved the air of power, I loved the mystique, and frankly I loved the money for doing it all.
Concierge Confidential Page 15
