Journals of a Hotel Manager

The guest in room 781 called the operator at 5am to complain about a leak. Engineers didn’t come to duty until 7am. So a security guard was called in to assess the damage. Sure enough, the walls of #781 had tiny rivers running down and the ceiling was bubbling from the water seepage. It was obvious that the leak came from upstairs, room 881.

Security guard called an Assistant Manager and together they went to #881. The carpet in the corridor was wet. No one answered the door. They couldn’t really bang on the door since it was still very early and the other guests would be disturbed. A phone call into the room was also unanswered. The AM produced her master key and went on to open the door. The carpet was soaking wet. There was a female guest sleeping in the bed. The bathroom door was ajar and the faucet was still on. A male guest was fast asleep in the bathtub with water overflowing and splashing onto the marble floor. Both guests were completely intoxicated and it took nearly 10 minutes to wake them up.

#881 turned out to be attending a conference at the hotel. The room had been paid for by the company. The wife probably tagged along for the shopping and the gala dinner. The damage assessment came to nearly $10k to replace the carpet, the wallpaper and repaint the ceiling in #781, not including two rooms have to be out of order for at least a week during a busy season. I told the credit manager to quickly charge it to their personal credit card. It didn’t come as a surprise when the card bounced. The guest did not pick up the phone or respond to any of our messages regarding the damage.

The conference group had only one day left at the hotel. #881 probably wanted to sneak out with the group. I ordered the room to be double-locked and surely enough at the end of the day the guest came down to the front desk fuming about his key not working. When the guest was asked to pay for the charges, he flatly refused. Instead he threatened to write to the head office to complain about the water pressure being too strong. Only after the conference organizer intervened did the guest write out a check for the damage.

About a month later, I received a letter from this guest. In it he inquired about a possible compensation on the damage of his computer bag. He had the audacity to include a photo showing the bottom of the computer bag with water damage.

As the state visit approached, we began to prepare for the room according to the requirement provided by the protocol office. The room would be occupied for only about 6 hours as a 4am departure was scheduled. The presidential suite was declined and a regular room was chosen. Fresh flowers were nixed probably to avoid biological germ attacks. A day prior to the arrival, secret service brought in an unusual amenity to be placed in the suite. It was a piece of glass, 8 ft long by 6ft tall, mounted on wheels. We watched as the secret service pushed it directly in front of the windows. Bullet-proof, it would be the ultimate protection from snipers stationed on other tall buildings in the area. Hence the reason a regular room instead of a suite - there were fewer windows to be worried about.

On the day of the arrival, the entire city was shut down from 8pm onwards. Staff were forbidden to enter or to leave the hotel until after the VIP arrival. Roads were blocked off to allow the motorcade an uninterrupted and swift drive from the airport directly into the loading dock. Our beautiful marble entrance was deemed too difficult to control. There was no welcome committee, no flower girl, only the hastily scrubbed loading ramp with just a hint of the garbage odor. The VIP was led quickly into the staff elevator by a group of hunky secret service agents who had scouted out the route days in advance.

Once in the safety of the room, we were allowed to roam freely in the back of the house or to go home. At 3:30am I left home to come to the hotel for the preparation of the departure. A select few of us were nominated to represent the hotel to say goodbye to the VIP. I lived 8 miles away from the hotel and it was an easy 20 minute drive on local streets. I was stopped by police squad cars stationed 3 miles away from the hotel. The police asked for my license and questioned me in a several different ways why I was driving to the hotel at this hour. After I had produced my business card and told them my service was required at the hotel, they were able to cross-check my name from a ‘safe list’ and allowed me to proceed.

Upon my arrival, I was not allowed to get into my own hotel. SWAT and secret service agents swarmed the loading dock in anticipation for the departure. We were told to standby in the pre-dawn cold so we could get a glimpse of the VIP. At 4:30am sharp, the VIP emerged from the staff elevator. Despite a few hours’ of rest he looked surprisingly fresh and alert. He was shadowed by 2 agents and quickly shook our hands while mumbling “thank you”. Without a moment’s lingering, he disappeared into a shiny limo and the darkness of the early morning. Another identical limo, with an identical license plate, immediately followed the first car. After the first roundabout, it was already difficult to deduce which limo was the diversion.

By the time other guests woke up, the SWAT had already left and all the last traces of a state visit were wiped clean including the massive bullet-proof glass panel. The hotel made a pretty good chunk of revenue for the 6-hour visit but the preparation took a lot of efforts and strain. I also felt sorry for the VIP. It must be constant anxiety for the head of a state to live with such pressure to think every single minute someone wanted his life.

It is not unusual for us at luxury hotels to host the head of a state. All employees must submit their social security number and go through thorough background checks. Floors were blocked off to accommodate just a few guests. The other rooms were kept empty by providing a protective layer above and below the room that was intended for the VIP. SWAT team and bomb squad were stationed at the hotel weeks prior to the arrival. Secret service dudes with their government issued black suit and earpieces paraded the area. Helicopters hovered above just to make sure no one was planting anything suspicious on the roof. And kids were getting arrested.

Come again?

The prelude to the big arrival was to have two children, 10 and 12, arrested. They were excited to see so many choppers circling around our property and pointed laser pens at the pilots. The pilots took the laser beams as laser guns and called in more choppers. The kids went wild as up to 5 choppers now circled their window. The SWAT and local police were notified. A couple of rooms were quickly isolated from the pilot’s observation and doors were banged down only to reveal two giggling boys playing laser pens by the window. Their father was on business in the city and the mother was later found out to be in the spa. There was no joking with the SWAT and the two boys were handcuffed and brought down to the police station.

This state visit certainly did not start well with us.

In the great state of California where plastic surgeons have offices right next to lawyers, anything is possible. Fernando was a 6-ft tall steward who worked quietly in the dishwashing area. He had a mane of thick black hair cropped short and general masculine good looks. Fernando was married and had two little girls and a small boy. During employee parties, he would introduce his family to us. Fernando was just a regular Hispanic guy.

No one paid much attention when Fernando began to grow his hair and shave his stubble several times a day. He had always been a gentle guy but his voice started to become softer. One day he announced to the HR director that Fernando was in the process of becoming a Fernanda.

California labor law is perhaps one of the strictest I have ever seen. Any discrimination in terms of racial, sexual, age, or disability will undoubtedly result in a lawsuit. There was no guideline against sex change in our company or in the state. We gave Fernando our blessings as long as the sex change did not affect his work performance. After all, Fernando’s job was in the back of the house so the guests would not be affected, no new uniform needed to be issued and life should go on as it was except that Fernando would become a woman.

Most of the staff accepted Fernando’s decision with a shrug. It was California with an ex-Terminator as a governor, nothing was too weird. Things went well for several months as Fernando began to wear feminine clothing after work in conjunction with the massive hormone therapy. As his breasts started to develop, however, staff became uncomfortable.

Male staff did not want a man with breasts in their locker room. Female staff certainly did not want a woman with a penis in their lock room. We decided to build a special locker room for Fernando so he could enjoy the benefits of any staff members such as taking a shower and changing into uniform at the hotel. It was an easy task comparing to the unknown repercussion should we choose to terminate a staff based on sex change process.

Fernando continued his work and life at our hotel. At employee parties, he still brought three children, only that he wore make-up and high heels and his wife no longer came.  The last I heard was that he was saving money to have the final operation to make him finally Fernanda. I wish him well.

I always respect the staff at the Laundry Department. They usually work in a stifling hot environment with relentless humming of the washing machines and banging of the dryers. Everyday they need to handle mountains of sheets and towels.  Also, they have to sift through various guests garments and sort into material and color to be properly laundered.

It is entirely another story when dealing with undergarments with dubious stains and unpleasant odor. Some of the staff wear plastic gloves for that purpose and I don’t blame them. Guests often complain about the price of $3 for a piece of underwear to be washed. I am quite certain that if I ask a guest to handle strangers’ panties or briefs with skid marks and hair stuck on them, he would think $3 a piece is totally not worth it.

Most laundry staff will handle skid marks from guests without repugnance especially since they cannot associate the undergarment with a face. All they know is the scrawling on the laundry list with the guest name and room number. But when it comes to the uniform from colleagues they know and have eaten at the cafeteria together, it is more difficult.

At my hotel in Southern CA such a complaint came all the way to me. It was reported that a sous chef liked to go commando while cooking. There was no policy against going commando at work and we all knew a popular doorwoman who was a star employee also had the same penchant. She was earning tips by the thousands that her salary rivaled mine - not because she wore no underwear I must say - guests often returned just so she could open the doors for them. But the sous chef had very poor hygiene standards. His pants, even after being washed, had stains therefore no one else would want to wear the same pair of pants. No laundry staff would want to touch his pants. He messed up the uniform par stock just by not wearing underwear.

It was a delicate issue for Pierre, the Executive Chef, to deal with. How would you tell a grown man to wipe his behind after going to the bathroom? Also, how would you bring up this topic in an environment like the kitchen?

At the end, the sous chef chose his freedom in the pants over a job at a top hotel. The doorwoman is still the star employee to this day - sans underwear. Just as with many hobbies, I guess this particular pursuit can either cost you or reward you.

During the recent sales trip a couple of weeks ago on the west coast I squeezed in 15 minutes to visit my former hotel in Southern California. The area is celebrated for the multi-million dollar mansions overlooking the Pacific, various pristine beaches and harbors paraded by 30-ft yachts. Needless to say, our guests were the rich and famous from both the west and the east coasts. Sadly, our hotel was not on the beach and ocean view was only available from 10th floor and above.

There were plenty of guests who couldn’t care less about the ocean view or the lack of it. We had at least five long-staying guests in house permanently. One guest occupied two suites on the top floor: one suite was converted entirely into a giant closet for his clothes. Another couple stayed at our hotel for nearly five months while waiting for their mansion to be completed. In the meantime, the GM at that time and the wife had taken a liking to each other. When the mansion was finished, so was the marriage. The GM and the lady have been together ever since.

One of the most remarkable long staying guests was the founding father of a popular household condiment. So I shall call them Mr. and Mrs. C. Mr. C was at least 85 years old when I met him. He was a pale, frail little man stuck in a wheelchair. Mrs. C fared slightly better as she could walk on her own with a walker. His children didn’t want to put them in a nursing home so he and his wife came to stay at our hotel. They occupied one of the largest suites. A full time nurse stayed in an adjacent room. Their monthly bill was at least $20k.

Three times a day room service was in charge of feeding the old couple. Due to their poor hearing and difficulty in movement, room service had the privilege of going into the room without knocking and set up the table with candles and flowers. This went on for seven days a week as clockwork, despite the hotel occupancy. Like clockwork, Mr. and Mrs. C would always complain about the food. The first complaint was always that the food was not hot enough although we had put in at least three burners in the hot box and the plates were searing hot. The second complaint was that the food was bland, even though the chef had spent hours with both of them and their children to draw up the monthly menu that was healthy and tasty. They were never vicious but they would constantly make these comments to the waiters, managers and even to me. Our sad conclusion was that their palates were so worn from their advanced age that they couldn’t taste or feel the temperature anymore. It was an ironic tragedy for someone who invented a famous condiment to lose the taste-buds.

While room service had their duties, the concierge had a different daily task and that was to wake Mr. C up. Every morning, a bellboy would enter the suite with his master key to deliver the daily newspaper. Mr. C was rather deaf and old folks tend to sleep quite deeply. The only way to awaken Mr. C was to tickle his feet. Bellboys had a set of gloves for that purpose alone as one can imagine what naked feet look or feel like on an octogenarian.

Every holiday the second generation of the condiment empire would converge at our hotel with the entire clan to visit the old couple. They spent a lot of money at the hotel and payment was always prompt. The daily complaints about the food and generic old folks incessant chattering notwithstanding, Mr. and Mrs. C were very easy to take care of. When I heard that Mrs. C eventually passed away I felt genuine grief for Mr. C. It must have been really lonely in that suite all by himself.

After a long day at work and a whole evening in my office trying to clear my 100million-th email, I came home to find a dark shadow running on the wall. I turned on the light to find a huge gecko in my room. I didn’t leave any window open so how the hell did it come inside? It was huge, must be 10 inches long, with a bulbous head and four large feet with bubble toes. It had beautiful coloring, I must admit, of bright green on dark brown.

I am not too afraid of the little lizards but I feel queasy about the geckos. They are certainly not as ferocious looking as the massive alu, but I have heard some pretty graphic stories about them.

It is said that geckos, despite their suction feet, tend to fall from trees sometimes. Once they fall on people, their first instinct is to bite onto whatever they land. We had an F&B guy, expat, here who had a gecko who bit into his neck after it had fallen down. Startled and obviously painful, he tried to pull the gecko off but the reptile latched on even more securely, resulting in a whole chunk of flesh missing and an ugly scar. Apparently the correct method is to splash cold water over the gecko to induce it to release its bite.

I was not about to suffer insomnia just to worry about if this gecko was going to fall on my face while I slept. So I rolled up a Condé Nast and tried to chase it out of the door. Surprisingly, this gecko was determined to make ‘mi casa su casa’. It ran further into the room and rested atop an air-conditioning unit, dangling its long tail provokingly on one side.

I got a bit upset so I found an umbrella and shoved it off its perch. Once on the tile floor, the gecko finally ran towards the door, but no! It went into my ficus pot. I ran to the plant and gave the terracotta pot a vicious kick, resulting in breaking the pot and spilling mud all over my living room. (Note to self: must call housekeeping and gardener to clean up and replace pot)

Now I was angry. I loved that pot and that ficus. It provided a soothing presence when I arrive home, unlike this creature on hand. I started to poke wildly into the dirt and surely enough the gecko couldn’t hide anymore. It crawled out, turned around and looked at me. I swear that it sneered at me and hissed. As I stomped my feet heavily on the ground - I was not about to squash it underfoot and have to scrape it up with Condé Nast - it eventually went through the door and back into the wild jungle night.

I shut the door and discovered that I had a sheen of cold sweat all over me. Time to get out of this xxxxing island. What’s next? In bed with a vegetarian crocodile?

I was invited to speak to the graduating class at the nearby hotel school. There are only two on the island and this is considered the better one since it’s government-run and sponsored by the UNDP. It is essentially a vocational school providing training to high school graduates.

The classroom was dim with low ceiling. Air-conditioning was nowhere to be found. When I entered a waft of stale sweat and adolescent hormones enveloped me. A room of more than 80 students awaited me. Curiously, more than half of them were girls. They ranged from 17 to 20 years of age and it was a refreshing sight to see so many young eager faces, in comparison to my general staff meeting with the average age of 48.

I began with an overview of what to expect when they go into the industry. I advised them not to expect to become a manager on Day One.

“We all had to start from the bottom. I worked as a waiter, a steward and an income auditor before I started to climb up the ladder,” I encouraged them, “If you are good at what you do, you WILL be promoted and eventually you will become a general manager! That’s what you want to become, right?”

Blank faces.

True, I thought, with the economy as such and hotels laying staff off everyday, where would these 80 young people go? Would they ever find just a job, let alone in the hospitality industry?

Or was I speaking too fast?

I shifted gear and asked several students what was their ideal job after graduation. Girls unanimously voted for reception. I can see why. Reception girls get the best looking uniform and if they are lucky they get a sitting job like behind the guest relations desk. And the job is considered a lot less dirty than, let’s say, a restaurant waiter who touches half chewed food, a housekeeper who cleans an unflushed toilet or the job no one wanted: dishwashing steward who never even gets to meet a guest.

Boys, on the other hand, mostly chose F&B. I can totally relate since when I was about twenty years old all I could think of was how not to feel hungry all the time, and to get my hands on as much alcohol as I could.

As the discussion got carried away we came to the topic of beverage cost control. I threw in some beverage theft examples just for the sake of telling a good story. They didn’t react when I mentioned how a bottle of Chateaux Lafite was nearly lifted by a waiter or when I gestured some outrageous serving size of a single malt whiskey.

“OK, who can tell me the difference between a white wine and a red wine?” I threw the question in just to see if they were still awake.

Seeing no response, I pointed to a boy with spiky hair and asked, “Can you tell me, then, why is the red wine red?”

“Uh, because the red wine is in the oven longer?” he answered with a question, hoping I would concur.

I could use a double shot of whiskey then. Yep, this bunch of graduates will have to start from the very bottom of the ladder, like, go to a real hotel school.

With the economy doing so poorly and Mr. Owner breathing down my neck about cost-cutting, I plan to hold a meeting with the union tomorrow to see if we could reduce some head count or hours. The union here controls every single member of staff, except for the expatriates. That’s right, even all my local division heads belong to the union.

Union meetings tend to be long and intense. Many of the union leaders happen to be line staff such as a dishwasher or a housekeeper. Their English is not fluent but their ideas are numerous. Sometimes the meetings go on for twice as long due to the back and forth translation so a buleh like me can be part of the negotiation.

Through gossiping I heard of two scary incidents between the union and expat general managers. One of them happened not far from our hotel. It was a small European based hotel. The GM somehow upset the union and the negotiation fell through. In broad daylight, the GM was jostled from the meeting room and pushed into the swimming pool, witnessed by his guests sunbathing on loungers. The poor guy tried to come ashore but every time his hands reached the edge of the pool a staff would push him back into the water. This lasted for over an hour until the exhausted GM agreed to the union’s demands.

Another true story happened in the capital city at a famous international hotel. Again the negotiation between management and union went sour. All the expats, the GM, the chef, and the F&B director etc. were herded into the executive office. The doors were boarded up and the expats were left in the executive office for six days. Luckily it was just before festive season. There were plenty of hampers in the office intended for top customers in the city. The expats lived off the cookies and fruits for those six days. Meanwhile, the rioting staff sent all the guests away and turned off the central power (just imagine the spoilage in the cooler and storage). They brought their families to camp out in the lobby, cooked fried rice on kerosene burners, gambled the entire time away, and basically trashed the lobby in an insane party.

The GM managed to contact the embassy of his home country from a cell phone and reported his unhappy misfortune. That didn’t really help since the embassy had no jurisdiction over a private property in their host country. But after pulling some strings and seeing the situation was not to be resolved, the local police stormed the hotel one night and chased the campers out. Needless to say, the riot leaders were dismissed, union demands thrown out, and the expats were released from their temporary prison with no physical injury.

An even more bizarre postscript to this sad story was that one staff member who took the failure of this union negotiation too seriously jumped off the hotel building in protest.

I know my staff are not that extreme and I have full confidence that I will not end up in a pool or imprisoned in my own office. But it is sometimes challenging for me, at the end of a head-splitting union meeting of 8 hours, to smile in agreement with guests, “Yes, aren’t the staff here wonderful?”

I love technology. I am not a tech-snob who goes after the latest phone or computer at any cost. As long as the gadget works and gets things done, I am happy with it.

This cannot be said with our in-house fire alarm system. The hotel was not built to accommodate the latest technological demands. During the most recent renovation, about 10 years ago, all the guest rooms were wired to the central PBX system should a fire breaks out. Once an alarm is triggered, the PBX will send out a CODE RED signal to all users. In the beginning it was via pagers - remember those little black boxes? Now it is via BlackBerry or text messaging. The trigger is not very reliable but we tend to react accordingly rather than be sorry later.

Yesterday when I was luxuriating at home in my shorts I received a CODE RED at room #136. All the rooms that start with #100 series are ocean-view rooms, hence the furthest away from the lobby and where I live. I hastily stepped into a pair of pants and ran out of the door while pulling an old T-shirt over my head. I couldn’t care less about my appearance should my hotel burn to the ground.

I ran through the back corridors and incredibly I did not run into one single staff. They must have all gone to #136 and it appeared the fire was legitimate, I thought. I sniffed the air as I ran along.

Strangely, when I arrived at #136, puffing and huffing (which reminded me that I should have gone to the gym instead of just wallowing in bed), there was no one there.

Acting quickly, I crouched down and gingerly touched the door with the back of my hand, as I had been taught - there was no heat from behind the door. I sniffed the air again - no smoke. What’s happening?

Just as I scratched my head while sitting on my haunches, a housekeeping staff emerged from the adjacent room. We locked eyes for a second and he gave me a big smile.

“Fire alarm?” asked he.

“You also got CODE RED?”

“Oh you are too late. It was yesterday. False alarm anyway,” he shrugged and walked away.

10 minutes later, I flopped back into bed as I could neither figure out why I received the CODE RED today, nor why I didn’t receive it yesterday.

I hate it when technology fails on such a simple task, especially when I look like a fool in front of my staff.