Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality

by Jacob Tomsky

  Copyright © 2012 by Jacob Tomsky

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.doubleday.com

  DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Bell illustration by Randy Miller Design

  Jacket design by Emily Mahon

  Jacket photograph © Scott Nobles

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Tomsky, Jacob.

  Heads in beds : a reckless memoir of hotels, hustles, and so-called hospitality /

  Jacob Tomsky. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Tomsky, Jacob—Anecdotes. 2. Hotel clerks—United States—Biography. 3. Hotels—Employees—Biography. 4. Hotels—United States—Humor. I. Title.

  TX911.3.F75T66 2012

  647.94092—dc23

  [B] 2012007859

  eISBN: 978-0-385-53564-9

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Appendixes

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  To protect the guilty and the innocent alike, I have deconstructed all hotels and rebuilt them into personal properties, changed all names, and shredded all personalities and reattached them to shreds from other personalities, creating a book of amalgams that, working together, establish, essentially, a world of truth. I mean, damn, I even change my own name.

  “WELCOME TO THE FRONT DESK: CHECKING IN?”

  I’ve worked in hotels for more than a decade. I’ve checked you in, checked you out, oriented you to the property, served you a beverage, separated your white panties from the white bedsheets, parked your car, tasted your room service (before and, sadly, after), cleaned your toilet, denied you a late checkout, given you a wake-up call, eaten M&M’s out of your minibar, laughed at your jokes, and taken your money. I have been on the front lines, and by that I mean the front desk, of upscale hotels for years, and I’ve seen it all firsthand.

  How does one fall into the pit of hospitality? How is it that nearly every dollar I’ve ever earned came from a paycheck with a name of a hotel written on it somewhere (or of course in the form of cash from the hand of a generous hotel guest)? Call it an accident, like catching a train with the plan to go across town, but as the platforms smear by one after the other, you come to realize you’ve broken city limits, the train is not stopping, and you’re just going to have to ride this life until the doors open. Or until the conductor stops the train and throws you out on your ass.

  After a certain amount of years in the hotel business (and I’ll go ahead and mention this up front), you’re just too useless and used up to do anything else.

  I grew up military: navy mother, marine father. When I was a child, it was two years maximum in any given city, and then we’d be on the move again, changing schools, checking into a hotel in L.A., a hotel in Jacksonville, a hotel in Asheville, a hotel in San Pedro, looking for a new “permanent” residence. I grew up like a spun top, and, released into adulthood, I continued spinning, moving, relocating.

  Those two-year episodes of my childhood left me feeling rootless, lost in the world; perhaps that’s why I stubbornly pursued a degree in philosophy. I cannot explain the idiocy behind my choice of major. Shit, if I had chosen business, I might be in business right now. Perhaps you’d think one main goal within the philosophy degree itself would be the ability to argue unequivocally why a philosophy degree is not a complete waste of time. I never learned that argument. Garbage. My degree was garbage stuffed inside a trash can of student loans.

  So someone, some asshole, suggested I earn some money in hospitality. Hotels were willing to ignore my dubious degree and offer great starting pay, and I will say this: it’s an ideal career for the traveler. I love travel in every way: new people, new sounds, new environments, the ability to pick up and disappear. (My top is, even now, spinning, and though it’s digging a nice divot into Brooklyn, the balance is beginning to lean, and once that tip finds traction, it’s going to rocket me off the continent.) Plus, hotels are everywhere: kidnap me, duct tape my face, drop me out of a plane, and I promise you I will land in a parking lot adjacent to a hotel and in less than a day I’ll be wearing a suit, assisting guests, earning a nice check, and making friends at the local bar.

  Hotels are methadone clinics for the travel addicted. Maybe the only way I can even keep a home is to hold down a job surrounded by constant change. If I’m addicted to relocating, then how about I rest a minute, in a lobby echoing with eternal hellos and good-byes, and let the world move around me?

  And that is exactly what I did. From New Orleans to New York, I played by hotel rules and, in the process, learned every aspect of the industry. Due to the fact I just don’t care anymore, here is one of my objectives: I will offer easy and, up till now, never publicized tips and tricks. Want a late checkout? Want an upgrade? Guess what! There are simple ways (and most of them are legal ways!) to get what you need from a hotel without any hassle whatsoever. It’s all in the details—in what you need done, whom you ask to do it, how you ask them, and how much you should tip them for doing it. Need to cancel the day of arrival with no penalty? No problem. Maybe you just want to be treated with care and respect? I understand, dear guest. Come on, now, calm down, you fragile thing … take my hand … good … okay, now put some money in it … very good … thank you. Now, that’s a proper hospitality business transaction.

  And when all is said and done, you will understand the hotel life, what we do, and how we do it. Though why we continue to do it may be harder to grasp. All of this will be beneficial to you because the next time you check in with me (and believe me, I get around; I’ve probably checked you in a couple of times already), the next time we meet, a comforting, bright light of total understanding will be shining in your eyes, and I will help you and you will help me, and reading this book will give you the knowledge you need to get the very best service from any hotel or property, from any business that makes its money from putting “heads in beds.” Or, at the very least, it will keep me from taking your luggage into the camera-free back office and stomping the shit out of it.

  As a hotelier, I am everywhere. I am nowhere. I am nameless … except for the goddamn name tag.

  But first, let’s talk about names. Let’s talk about changing the names to protect the innocent. Let’s talk about how innocent I am and how much I need protecting.

  My name is Jacob Tomsky. But in the hotel world we are all registered with our last name first. Jacob Tomsky becomes Tomsky, Jacob. So, in the spirit of self-preservation, Tomsky, Jacob—for the purposes of this book—becomes Thomas Jacobs.

  Good luck, little Tommy Jacobs.

  I am standing on St. Charles Avenue, uptown New Orleans, a few months out of college and a few weeks into summer. It’s already extremely hot in the fu
ll sun. Which is where I have to stand: in the sun. Next to the valet box. All day.

  I took a valet-parking job at Copeland’s restaurant to shake off my college-loan laziness, to climb out of the educational womb and stand on my own two feet as a moneymaking, career-pursuing adult. Educated in the useless and inapplicable field of philosophy, I quickly deduced that my degree looked slightly comical on my already light-on-the-work-experience résumé. Perhaps it was even off-putting. To a certain eye, hell, it probably made me look like a prick. But I had to start somewhere. So I started at the bottom.

  This job is not good enough. Why not? First of all, I’m parking cars. Second, we have to turn in all our tips. I imagined I’d get off the first night with a pocketful of ones to take to the French Quarter, not that you need much money in New Orleans. As it turned out, however, attached to the valet box that houses the car keys, like a wooden tumor, is a separate slot for us to jimmy in our folded tips. All of them. Attached to that box, like a human tumor, is the shift boss, back in the shade at a vacant umbrella table, sipping a noontime drink that most definitely contains alcohol. It also has chipped ice and is sweating in his hand, sweating in a much different way than I am sweating.

  A lunch customer hands me his ticket. I find his keys easily in the box and take off at an impressive run. His car is not easy to find: the valet company has not rented a nearby lot to service the restaurant, and so we, certainly unbeknownst to the clients, just drive around the area and try to parallel park the vehicles as close to Copeland’s as possible. Once the vehicle has been parked, it’s up to the valet to draw a silly treasure map on the back of the ticket so another valet can locate it. My co-worker Chip draws every treasure map like this: #*. Every single one. And finding the car is never easy. But I bring it back and slide up to the curb, holding the door open, the car’s AC pouring like ice water on my feet, and receive a neatly folded bill from the customer.

  “It’s damn hot out here, son. This is for you running like that.”

  It’s a twenty-dollar bill. Chip, now back and posted by the valet box, holds a salute against his brow, trying like hell to make out the bill. I walk up to the tip tumor and start to wiggle it in when Chip says, “No. No! What are you doing, Tommy? Don’t you keep a dollar handy to swap it out with? Please don’t put that twenty in there. Please. It’s for you. That dude told you it was for you.”

  “Actually, it’s for Copeland’s Valet Parking Corporation,” the human tumor says, setting his drink down wet on the valet box.

  “Are you seriously drinking a mudslide?” Chip asks.

  I use a car key from the box to vanish the bill completely and post up next to Chip. Back in the sun. The shift boss sinks back into the shade.

  “I am way too old for this. Sharing tips? Forty percent to management leaves 60 percent of the tips to us, divided over twenty runners, on a check, with taxes taken out, and guess who’s running the math, guess who’s counting up the tips? A grown man drinking a goddamn mudslide.” He must have been talking to himself previously because now Chip turned to me: “You think he’s gonna turn in that twenty? Or just keep it for himself? We never get good tips out here. You know what I heard? There’s a new hotel opening up downtown. You heard that? It’s supposed to be luxury.” He said the word as if it were mystical and perhaps too good for his own tongue: “luxury.” “And they’re looking for parkers. Copeland’s customers don’t tip for shit.”

  Chip, with a wide smile, accepts a claim check from an emerging lunch customer and locates the keys in the box. “It’s a fucking Mazda, dude,” he says quietly to me. And then to the customer: “You won’t be long in this heat, sir! I will run for your vehicle!” Then he takes off sprinting: it’s almost vaudevillian how he tears ass around the corner, his body at full tilt.

  Chip cruises the Mazda back in record time, gliding up to the curb. “AC running and classic rock on low for you, sir.”

  The customer drops something into his cupped palm. Something that makes Chip’s face contort.

  Chip stands upright, essentially blocking the customer from entering his own vehicle, and spreads open his palm to let the two-quarter tip flash in the sun.

  With a voice strained and tight, as if he were suffering intense physical pain, he says, “Why, thank you so very much, sir.”

  Then he pivots slightly and extends his hand, palm flat, quarters in the sun again.

  Then he drop-kicks both coins. Kicks the shit out of them into the street.

  They arc over the road and land on the rough grass of the neutral ground, settling in before a streetcar rocks by.

  I can see the shock on the customer’s face—the confusion, the horror. Chip just walks off with determination, crossing St. Charles and onto the neutral ground. After picking the quarters out of the grass, he crosses the tracks to the far side of the street and starts bearing down Napoleon Avenue, toward Mid-City: the job, the restaurant, the shift boss, me, all of us in his rearview mirror.

  I finished my shift. Then I took his advice about the hotel job.

  Whether I knew it yet or not, it was one hell of an important moment for me, watching Chip snap at what seemed like such a minor affront, seeing that much emotion applied to a single low-quality tip. And then watching him bend down, fish the quarters out of the dirt, and take them with him. I didn’t understand any of it. Not yet.

  Here we go.

  Hotel orientation. Human resources pretty much hired everyone. Everyone who passed the drug test.

  I passed, thank you.

  Chip did not.

  The River Hotel, connected to a brand known for luxury, known for being out of almost everyone’s price range, was being built right there on Chartres Street, in downtown New Orleans. It was three weeks from opening and still under construction. Yet they hired us all, tailored our uniforms, and started paying us. A week ago I was earning money and giving it to an idiot who pounds mudslides. Now I wasn’t even working, but I was collecting a check. A good check. And no one had even said the word “valet” yet.

  Not that our new managers weren’t saying any words. Honestly, they couldn’t stop saying some words: “Service.” “Luxury.” “Honesty.” “Loyalty.” “Opulence.” And mid-length phrases such as “Customer Feedback” and “Anticipating Needs.” And then longer, million-dollar phrases like “Fifteen-Hundred-Thread-Count Egyptian Linen Duvet Covers.”

  Management ran classes every day on service, administered in the completed conference rooms, the tables draped with what we assumed to be Egyptian fabric and adorned with iced carafes of water, which we poured into crystal goblets to wash down the huge piles of pastries they fed us. They were hell-bent on teaching us how to identify something called “a guest’s unmentioned needs.”

  “A man needs his car, he don’t need to speak a word. Get that claim check out. Get that dollar out, feel me?”

  That came from the back of class. I turned my head to get a look at who I assumed were to be my co-workers: three black guys not really adhering to the “business casual” mandate for these orientation classes.

  “Tommy, can you give me an example of a guest’s unmentioned need?”

  I wasn’t even wearing a name badge: these hospitality maniacs had actually learned everyone’s name.

  “Well, ma’am—”

  “You can call me Trish. I’m the front office manager.”

  “Well, ah, Trish …” That got a low laugh from the back of class. “Maybe they pull in a car, it’s dirty from the drive, and we could get it washed?”

  “Perfect example.”

  “Wait up. You want I should drive the car back to my driveway in the Ninth Ward to wash it? Or bring in quarters from home?”

  “Perry; correct?”

  “Yeah, Perry.”

  “Perry. You come to me anytime, and I’ll give you hotel money to wash a car, change a tire, or buy them a CD you know they’d like for the drive home. Anything you think of, you can come to me.”

  “Well, goddamn.”
>
  The day before the grand opening the hotel closed off a block of Chartres Street (pronounced “Chart-ers,” by the way, completely disregarding the obvious Frenchness of the word; we also pronounce the street Calliope like “Cal-e-ope”; Burgundy comes out not like the color but “Ber-GUN-dy,” and just try to stutter out Tchoupitoulas Street or Natchitoches even close to correctly). We were collected into parade groups, our new managers holding up large, well-made signs indicating our departments. Front desk. Valet. Laundry. Sales and marketing. Bellmen. Doormen. Food and beverage. And housekeeping of course, by far the largest group, about 150 black ladies dressed as if they were going to a club. The valets hung together in a small clot, not saying much to each other, looking up at the finished, renovated hotel.

  The vibe was celebratory and overwhelmingly positive. We were let in, one department after the other, and we hustled up a stairwell lined with managers clapping and cheering as if we were the goddamn New Orleans Saints. They threw confetti, smacked us on the back, and screamed in an orgy of goodwill and excitement. By the time we crested the third floor and poured into the grand banquet hall, every single one of us had huge, marvelously sincere smiles stuck hard on our faces. And we held those smiles as we took turns shaking the general manager’s hand, who, no shit, wore a crown of laurel leaves. As a joke, I suppose.

  “I’m Charles Daniels. Please, call me Chuck.”

  “All right, then, Chuck,” Perry said in front of me and waited while Mr. Daniels located the gold-plated name tag that read “Perry” from the banquet table beside him.

  Mr. Daniels didn’t go so far as to pin on the name tag, anoint us, as it were. But we were in such a rapturous state during the event I believe we would have readily kneeled before him and let him pin it to our naked flesh.

  And then there was an open bar. Not sure where they shipped in this opening team from; they certainly weren’t locals. Neither was I, but I’d spent my young life traveling, moving so often I’d learned the skill (and believe me it is an incredibly useful skill) of assimilating into any new culture, whatever that culture may be. I am a shape-shifter in that way. And as I approached my four-year anniversary in Louisiana, just about my longest stretch anywhere, New Orleans had already become the closest thing to a home I’d ever had. And the open bar was a nod to this town, a town that runs on alcohol, and much appreciated. This is a city where you can find drink specials on Christmas morning. Not that you could find me on Bourbon Street Christmas morning; I didn’t drink at the time. I stayed sober all through college while pursuing my degree and hadn’t had a drop since I was fifteen and used to take shots of Jack Daniel’s in my basement during school lunch. But an open bar in New Orleans? People got tore up. Housekeeping got tore up.