Having a working knowledge of the hospitality-business lexicon really helps as well. It disarms them. Suddenly you’re not one putz, but a potential hotel expert. So you never have a “problem”; you have a “service failure,” which requires a “service recovery.” Once they hear terms like that, they know they are dealing with a pro. You’re a seasoned traveler or someone who is in the business. It scares the shit out of them. “Managing expectations” is another phrase that helps to tighten their sphincters. If they didn’t “manage or meet your expectations”—and even if they did—they need to pay up. “Transparency” also strikes fear in their hearts. I had the upper echelons of a hotel in Tokyo almost hara-kiri when I informed them they had not been “transparent” when it came to my expected window view of Mount Fuji and they should be ashamed of themselves. They eventually put me in a room that was so large it had its own business center that I didn’t even find until my third day in there. Easily one of the most exclusive and expensive suites on the planet. Just because I dropped “transparency” into the conversation (and made them feel traditional Japanese shame).
Likewise, a working knowledge of the important job titles is essential. These tend to change from hotel to hotel, though the chain of command is usually the same. There should be some sort of directory in the room, where you can get the general manager’s name and the titles of his underlings. Top dogs love splashing their signature all over everything. If you can’t find the directory for some reason, just call and ask. Make up some bullshit about you wondering how best to reach out to the general manager to compliment a member of his staff. Find the most empowered weakest link. Know the pecking order and use it to your advantage.
And if you start to feel bad about all these cost analyses and free martinis, don’t forget, they are in the business of thoroughly bottom-line fucking you. Like any business, they want to fuck you and take your money. All you are doing is lightly penetrating them back. No one is dying here. The Hiltons are not boarding up the windows tomorrow. We’ve gone through a global financial meltdown of historic proportions. Do you remember any hotel chains going out of business? Of course not! Hospitality is a beautiful fucking racket! Lots of their staff are on minimum wage, and as long as there’s a clean towel and no dead hookers in the beds, most people are happy. So don’t feel sorry for faceless corporations.
Now I’m so used to pulling this sort of shit, I’ve started to get creative. And by creative, I mean freaky. For instance, I like to raid the minibar, as any healthy, red-bloodied American does. Which is why I always travel with a clear nail polish (to reseal vodka bottles once they’ve been emptied out and refilled with water) and a lighter (to do the same if they have plastic seals that can be warmed and molded).
But I also enjoy leaving my calling card. I take the hideously overpriced, oversized Nestlé Crunch bar from the fridge, slide off the paper sleeve, delicately peel back the foil, take an X-Acto knife or razor blade, and carve away the center of the chocolate, to leave a frame of Crunch that I can refoil and then slide back into the wrapper, making it look like there’s a complete bar in there. The next drunk dumbass that is desperate for some sugar will find their candy has been chewed away seemingly by termites. It might appear lightly demented, but consider it an ode to situational comedy. Like my hero, Frank Abagnale, you leave something behind.
If you are staying at a place where you have zero status, a total hit-and-run joint you never expect to bother again, you can have a whole new level of fun. By which I mean you can go completely fucking nuts. Which leads us to Operation First-Class Glass.
First-Class Glass
Not everything you do has to be a skillfully manipulated or a masterly contrived plan that Machiavelli would be happy to scrapbook later. Sometimes you just need to get down and dirty. And this little maneuver is definitely both.
You approach the no-name hotel that you will never visit again (I can’t stress that enough). You check in. You say nothing. You don’t try anything. You’re just staying there in your role as a normal human being with no obvious defects or agenda. You go up to your room. You wait twenty minutes. Then you unwrap the ziplock baggie of broken glass that you brought with you. Sprinkle a few small but potentially damaging shards beside and slightly under your bed. Then you call down to the front desk.
“I need the front-office manager up in my room right now. This is an emergency. This is a code-red grievance . . .” Etcetera, etcetera.
Don’t tell them what the problem is. Just make sure they know there is a problem. And that you are pissed.
When they arrive, you’ll be on the phone. You’ll be talking about your situation to an unknown caller, but not to them. As far as they are concerned, you could be yakking to your lawyer or the press or the TripAdvisor hotline. They don’t know. But they will be hearing the details of your disaster as you emotionally reel them off to this unknown quantity, making them aware that you’ve found glass all over the carpet and your foot could have been shredded like coleslaw at a particularly uninspiring wedding buffet. An artery might have been breached. Nerve damage. Tetanus. You could easily have died.
Then you hang up and turn to them. You demand to know how this could have happened. You wonder what kind of two-bit fleabag of a shithole you’ve landed in. You make it abundantly clear how appalled you are and how ashamed they should be. How dare they? How dare they send you to your inevitable doom in this way? Yes, you lay it on thick. And they will be terrified. This is the last thing in the world they want. In most hotels, people suck it up. They absorb their problems and never say a word. And they get nothing as a consequence. But you make your feelings clear. Then you start to make your demands.
Obviously a new room for starters. Not just a similar room—a better room. A vastly better room. A room without glass or other life-threatening substances scattered all over the place. (You’re allowed to be a little condescending after the trauma you have just encountered.) And possibly a few free drinks to calm your nerves. Or a bottle of champagne to celebrate the fact that you are still alive. You need to gauge your gouging by the desperate expressions on the faces of the staff before you. If they look like they are about to cry or throw up, you can push it a little further.
I pulled the glass trick at some fairly luxurious place in Michigan. Why was I in Michigan? I have absolutely no fucking idea. Maybe I lost a bet or murdered a nun in a former life. But there I was, knowing I’d never ever ever go to this particular hotel again, so it was the ideal venue to try the glass trick. Which I did and wangled a massive suite, plus a $300 F&B credit, and had the entire staff by the pussy hairs for the rest of my stay. If I’d wanted my ass wiped, I would just have to look at the reception staff in the right way and they’d come running with a rag.
All of this for the price of a few shards of broken glass. Now, I know people try similar things with condoms full of moisturizer and shit like that. But they’ve copped to it. Plus, unless you suddenly start guzzling on that stranger’s jizz, there’s not much bodily damage that can occur from a used condom. But broken glass can have a far more dramatic effect on your body and their Yelp rating.
Now, I know exactly what you pussies are thinking. “Oh, the poor minimum-wage salt-of-the-earth people who scrimp and scrub all their lives only to have a prick wander up, start hurling chunks of glass around, and get them hurled onto the scrap heap of life.” Look, I’m interested in fist-fucking the Hiltons (some of them are used to it) and their ilk. I’m engaged in a psychic war against any corporation that would insult their guests with a “resort fee.” But I don’t want to damage civilians. Collateral damage should be avoided at all costs. That’s why you always confess.
Again, I can’t make it clearer: you don’t pull this shit at any establishment that you’re ever planning to return to or have any level of status at. These are places you can walk away from while flipping the bird and screaming various fuck-yous at any sundry staff. So you own up to your little trick. But you do it in your own way. Firstly
, when you check in, don’t give these dildos your credit card details. That can easily be traced back to you, and once they have a means of getting at your cash, they will get at your cash. Just make up some shit about your card being stolen or your being Amish or something like that, and then offer to give them a cash deposit instead. They might look at you like you’re some sort of deviant, but they will usually be happy to take your shekels.
Then, once you’ve glassed and upgraded and gleaned anything else that’s coming your way and you are about to leave, you write a letter and address it to the head of housekeeping or similar. Leave it on the nightstand (or mail it from a safe distance if you’re nervous), and flee, grabbing your cash deposit on the way out. In the letter you say some dumb shit like “Look, I fucked up. I realized afterward I’d broken the glass myself; something splintered in my luggage, and I didn’t realize until later, and I was too embarrassed to say anything . . .” Get Conchita off the hook, leave her a big tip, and you’ll be able to sleep soundly at night.
I appreciate it’s not a sophisticated swindle suitable for use as the plot to The Sting 3, but it gets you where you are going. Remember, never leave a penny on the table. You leave with as much cash as you arrived with. And sometimes you have to act like an asshole to achieve that. Some of us find that easier to accomplish than others.
CHAPTER 7
BJS, DJS, CHAMPAGNE,
AND SLUTS: SKIPPING
THE VELVET ROPE
The two dirtiest words in the nightclub business are not, as you’d expect, “bathroom whore,” but rather “revenue customer.”
It must be the only industry on the planet where people who actually spend money are considered the enemy. But they are. They are seen as schmucks who are completely exploitable and so completely worthless. No one should pay seventeen dollars for a watered-down vodka soda in a small, sweaty room where it’s impossible to breathe or conduct a conversation, civilized or otherwise, but they do. They’re happy to pay an extortionate entrance fee and even more extortionate bar prices while the pros laugh in their faces. Fuck knows why, but the idiots keep coming back for more. And that makes them a target. They are the fodder of the nightclub world, leeched upon by bar staff, dance-floor skanks, and assholes like me.
I can see him now. The perfect mark. Overweight, sweaty, desperate. Wearing clothes that cost a shitload of money but exuded no style at all. Like everyone, this guy was there to fuck or get fucked. That’s what nightclubs are all about. There’s no romance to it. No hidden agenda. They are not designed for music fans or cocktail aficionados. They exist solely for the purpose of fucking. For people to meet and shtupp or at least have the chance that eventually shtupping will occur. So individuals who are completely incapable of hooking up with vaguely attractive women can hopefully facilitate hooking up with vaguely attractive women.
In that state, these people are vulnerable and easy to manipulate. It’s not nice, but they’re not nice. If they had a shred of decency within them, they wouldn’t be in this grim situation, buying their spot at the best table in the club, blowing thousands of dollars on bottles of liquor, and attracting hot girls like puke attracts a hungry dog.
On this particular evening, I had just spotted the ultimate revenue customer. My quintessential vision of a mark, conspicuously perched at a table in the middle of Pink Elephant. He caught my eye the second I entered. Other guys look around the room for hot girls to home in on as they enter a nightclub. I look for the putzes. And this putz had a really good table. Prime real estate. Which means he must have dropped a lot of dough already. You don’t get a table like that through chance. They won’t allow it. The only way someone who looks like that gets a decent table in a club like that is by throwing down some heavy-duty cash. He was wearing a dark shirt that was already starting to stain at the pits, a suit that was too small for him, and a dumb tie dragged halfway across his neck. I fucking hate ties. That might be the reason I chose to rip this fucker apart like a shark through a stoned surfer. Something about him really irked me. So I decided to irk him back.
My guess was he was in finance and he had got lucky. Or some computer nerd who had off-loaded an algorithm for an eight-figure sum. Whatever he was, he had no idea how to deal with women. The typical club girls who were already hanging off him looked vaguely bored and were talking to each other while he grinned at them like a masturbating chimp.
I make a habit of qualifying guys such as this for fuel. Paying for my drinks, allowing me access to women, finding me a nice seat. It is all too easy to get inside their heads, befriend them, and convince them it is worth their while to be in your intimate circle. All you need is an in. Usually I use a female. Some smoking-hot piece of tail who can rub up against them and get their attention. They chat to this douche bag, introduce me, and away we go. Within seconds I’ll be working him like a Muppet.
But that night I was working alone and had a much better piece of ammunition to use. Someone I knew who would impress the fuck out of this poor, unfortunate turd and have him eating out of my palm. Three words that would get me a place at his well-positioned table and the opportunity to begin emptying his bottles.
Sammy fucking Sosa.
How did I know Sammy Sosa? How the fuck do I know anyone? He was a club rat like me. Considering he was supposed to be a professional athlete, he spent a lot of time out late and in the dark. I knew all the owners and the promoters, and he did, too. We moved in the same circles, got introduced a few times, and I kept him in my back pocket. I didn’t give a shit about sports and had to Google him the first time we met, but knowing someone like that is always going to pay off. He’s the perfect guy to whip out in this sort of situation and impress some no-name with too much money and a glandular problem.
So I wandered over to Sammy and screamed a few words of greeting, as is the way in this environment. We chatted, and then I told him, “There’s a guy I’d love you to meet.” Sammy was accommodating. He gets that kind of shit all the time. I dragged him over to my intended victim, who was currently being ignored by a tableful of hot girls, and said, “Hey! I’d love you to meet Sammy Sosa.”
Obviously this guy was stunned. And wasted. Which helped him accept that a complete stranger was offering him Sammy Sosa’s hand to shake. And Sammy, of course, is used to meeting drunken assholes on a fairly regular basis and chatted up this prick like a pro. They exchanged twenty words or so, took a picture together. Sammy shook my hand, left us, and then I smiled.
“Sammy fucking Sosa. Can you believe it?”
He couldn’t, and we started talking about the unbelievable fact that I’d just introduced them. We laughed and shook our heads and smirked like idiots, and then this dunderhead offered me a drink.
Bingo, I was in. And once I was there, situated at his table, a fifty-dollar cocktail floating in front of me, I really started to go to work. I wanted to grind this guy’s table into dust. And the best way to do that is through pussy. As newer, hotter girls walked into the club and by our table, I’d drag them over to join us. I knew them all, of course, and we all knew we were there to be used in one way or another. It’s part of the game.
So more and more girls were joining us, each hotter than the last. Models, actresses, trust-funders, heiresses, airheads. Every fucking stratum of slut was making an appearance. And this guy’s eyes started popping out of his head, even as he was slowly being edged to the far end of the table. In fact, soon he wasn’t even at the table. He was on a chair near the table as I held court, ordering bottle after bottle of vodka or champagne or whatever these bitches wanted and charging it all to this guy. It was amazing. Soon he was silent and overwhelmed, unable to act as this insane Jew ran up his tab to NASA-like levels.
So what kept him hanging on? There was one girl there he was transfixed by. A brunette. Stunning. I’d banged her, obviously. She was fine—nothing to write home about. But this guy couldn’t take his eyes off her. He kept leaning over, trying to say a few words to her. She was playing along. Sh
e was a pro and knew he was the breadwinner. And I’m sure she would have gone home with him if I’d allowed it. But I wasn’t feeling charitable.
As the night reached its inevitable conclusion, I waited until he got the tab. And that is a joyous feeling, seeing some loser hand over his gold Amex and spend twenty grand or whatever it was on my night out. But that wasn’t quite enough.
As he stuck his card into the slot, I grabbed the bitch he had the hots for and dragged her out of the club, right in front of him. He looked like he’d opened his Christmas stocking and found a severed foot inside it.
“Nice meeting you,” I said with the utmost formality, and I took his fantasy girl out of his life forever. It was a dick move. I’m a dick.
There’s another thing I love in these types of situations. It’s the expression on my doorman’s face as I bring some smoking-hot girl into the building at five in the morning for the fifth time that week. Despite his doorman’s oath, he couldn’t help but laugh out loud and shake his head at my utter fucking decadence. He’d seen me leave at midnight. Back at five with a skank. Like clockwork. Yeah, that makes me feel good, too.
The nightclub world has a complex, delicately layered infrastructure that revolves solely around pussy. Especially in New York. Nowhere is like Manhattan when it comes to clubs. It’s like a perfect storm of debauchery. You have the money, you have the models, you have the late-night licenses, and you have the locality. Compared to many places, it’s relatively tourist-free and pretty fucking incestuous. It’s not a fucking cartoon like Vegas or Los Angeles. It has a history, a culture, and a personality. Although these clubs spring up and then die with alarming regularity, the same characters haunt them. Bouncers, doormen, waitresses, bar staff, bathroom attendants—they stay in the pool forever, moving on to the next place when their current employer bites the dust.
Don't You Know Who I Think I Am?: Confessions of a First-Class Asshole Page 11