Concierge Confidential

by Fazio, Michael

  They also never, ever tip. When I get a free meal, I plan on spending at least half of what it would have otherwise cost me. The Four Seasons always invites us for dinner, which is around $150 per person. You don’t go in there, have a $300 dinner, and leave without taking care of somebody. A tourist might not know any better—but it is a concierge’s job to know the system, and to respect it.

  On the flip side of that, there are businesses who aggressively market to the concierges and give everything away. They explicitly let us know that we can come in for free any time we want. It’s like when you work at a radio station and you end up drowning in CDs. If I get one more spa gift certificate for a free manicure, my fingers might just fall off.

  Some of these concierge events are held in nontraditional spaces as well. I once went to an event at Bloomingdale’s, which they had for us one evening after regular store hours. Already it was kind of cool being in that huge landmark establishment when it was closed to everyone else. Even though I knew I was welcome, it still felt like we were trespassing. I was very careful of their stuff—but there was still the temptation to just run and knock the clothes off the racks.

  They sent us on a scavenger hunt, which was a very clever way to get us to know all of the different components of Bloomingdale’s: the personal shopping, which is called At Your Service; the fur salon; the wedding gowns. I didn’t know about those things. I didn’t know that they had a visitor center, where anybody with a foreign passport and a hotel key gets 15 percent off for the whole day.

  After the scavenger hunt they brought in a little riser and had a private fashion show for us. They were treating us as though we knew all about fashion, even though concierges don’t really deal with it. We’re just service people. But, at the same time, waiters and personal assistants don’t get private fashion shows at Bloomingdale’s.

  The woman from Bloomie’s came out, and she addressed us as though we were a group of experts. She spoke to us as though we truly were tastemakers and influencers. I felt like an imposter, but all my colleagues seemed to own that cloak of importance. I was so afraid of being the type of concierge who’s pretentious that maybe I undervalued the influence that we do have. I always do try my best to make my recommendations person-appropriate. I didn’t want to be like my colleague who sent the German guests to see The Producers. If I wasn’t making good recommendations, I would be out of work.

  * * *

  “I’m going to put you in touch with Solomon,” the guy told me. “He owns the building and will probably be receptive.”

  Immediately, I called Solomon up and gave him the same pitch.

  “Can you meet me in an hour?” he asked, in his really thick Middle Eastern accent.

  “Sure!” I told him.

  I called Abbie. We frantically got ready and went to meet Solomon. He had a beautiful cashmere trench coat, and out front he had a black Mercedes with a driver. It was totally that real-estate, Donald Trump vibe. He took us inside and gave us the tour, showing us all the amenities that the building had to offer. It was one of the first times I had been in a recently completed building like that, and it really did have that same smell as a new car. It was gorgeous, with every possible fancy convenience.

  “Come!” he said. “I want to talk about business!” He took us next door to a little Turkish kabob place. I didn’t really understand what we were doing, but I wasn’t about to argue with the man.

  “Let me tell you about what services we provide,” I began.

  “Can you help people with dry cleaning?” he interrupted.

  “Of course,” I told him.

  “We can get dinner reservations and theater tickets,” Abbie told him. “If they have guests coming into town, we can book the hotels and tours.”

  “The people want their dry cleaning,” he reiterated.

  We finished our food, and went back to the building. Solomon took us around by the elevator, where there was a Dutch door. He opened both halves and pointed to the room behind it, all eight-by-four feet of it. It was unfinished, and had a folding table in it. It was not really a room; it was a supply closet.

  “This is your office,” Solomon said. “Don’t disappoint me.” He was acting like he was giving us a break—but it sure wasn’t feeling like a break. Even Hannibal Lecter eventually got a window.

  “Let’s explore this,” I said. “We’ll see what we can do.”

  “Today is Friday,” he answered. “When can you start?”

  “We’ll have to get back to you,” Abbie said. “And we’re going to have to run some numbers and make sure.”

  “If you can start Monday, yes. If not, forget it.”

  Monday it is! Monday, just like we said!

  As soon as we left, Abbie and I discussed the logistics. “We have to put our mark on that room,” I said. “We just have to fluff it up with some paint and a few sleek accessories. We’ll dress it up.” We’d been given a beautiful building—and been thrown into the toilet. The least we could do was make the water sparkle.

  We went to IKEA and worked all weekend putting everything together. I didn’t get a chance to sleep before our debut. As Abbie and I prepared to open for business, we could hear the tenants gathering outside. It was our first day, and we were excited. I opened the top half of our Mr. Ed door, and saw that there were four people standing there already.

  “Hi!” I said. “Can I help you with something?”

  “Is this where I’m supposed to leave my clothes?” the woman grunted.

  “Yes!” Our experience with dry cleaning was from the hotel. Guests would put their dirty clothes in a bag, and attach a slip with their room number. The dry cleaner would pick it up and bring it back, and everything was fine. As far as I was concerned, it might as well have been handled by elves.

  I looked at the women with an armful of clothes, and saw that the other three tenants had clothes for us as well. I looked around the room for a second, knowing that we didn’t think to have bags prepared for this. Abbie pulled out some garbage bags, and we put the clothes into them. “Can I get your apartment number?” she asked the woman.

  “Twenty-four twelve.”

  I wrote down the apartment number and put it in the bag. “So,” I asked her, “do you have dinner plans for the evening?”

  She looked at me like I was asking her out or something. “Yes…”

  “Well, we can provide that service for you in the future.” By the time it was nine o’clock, over thirty people came around with their clothes—but we gave our sales pitch to every one of them. We even got a few nice comments about our fancy little space. Abbie and I realized that people very much loved the concept, but nobody had heard about something like this before.

  The more people thought about it, the more they saw how useful it was. “So you can also book a car to the airport for me?” they asked. “Or do personal shopping?”

  Because of how receptive everyone was being, we were feeling really great. Then, at five o’clock, the dry cleaning truck came back with two hundred pieces of clothing. To them, it was just one pickup location so they’d mixed everything together—and Abbie and I tried desperately to remember who “2412” was and what he or she had brought. Like a game of Memory, we tried to match the outfits with the faces. We were mortified, but we still laughed at how farcical it was. Fortunately we charmed our way out of any problems and spoke to the dry cleaner. Before the end of the week, we had a whole system down with duplicate tickets and everything.

  Instantly, business started to pick up. Within a month we started to make around $1,000 per week, which quickly grew to $2,000 and to $3,000 and to $5,000. Rather than spend all this time trying to get corporate accounts, we realized that we should just go get twenty more buildings. But the only way we could manage that is if we hired staff, and I was there full time.

  Leaving the hotel was not that difficult of a decision. They’d changed management a couple of weeks before, so I didn’t feel embarrassed giving them short not
ice. There was kind of a whole new regime that I wasn’t really invested in—and I wasn’t going to invest. There were no stakes anymore. What should have been a ceremonial moment felt kind of melancholy. I was literally handing back the keys after years at the desk. The movie was ending with me walking off into the sunset and everything looking good.

  But the people who formed my experience at the hotel weren’t there anymore. Ian, who had first suggested that I become concierge, was long gone. Glen, the general manager/barfly, had left—as had Rupert the engineer. The institutions that had made the hotel quirky and crazy and interesting to me weren’t there anymore. There was nobody to wave me off, wishing me good luck and letting me know that they were proud.

  I fantasized that all of the bad guests would be staying at the hotel my last week, the people who were demanding in a mean way and those who were downright unruly. It was going to be my time to say, “You know what? I’ve given you such amazing service, and you’re despicable. You don’t even know what bad service is, but now you’re going to. You’re never going to have anybody jump through hoops like me. And, plus, you really are evil, and you make people unhappy, and I’m smart and strong. You don’t bother me, but I want you to know that you’re going to have the worst karma because you do bother people.”

  I was working the night shift, and I was working it alone. Everything went off without a hitch. Nobody needed to fill a bathtub with chocolate. Nobody needed confidential VD treatment. In a way it was anticlimactic because I was just waiting for one last bit of drama. Every reservation was attainable, and every ticket was the best. When I called hot restaurants, they told me to send the guests right over. I almost wanted to ask them if they were sure.

  It happened to be a good money week, too. I did all my paid-outs with all the singles and five-dollar bills. I was struck one last time by the smell of money, how my hands smelled of it after counting so much cash. I locked our drawer, and I made the envelopes for everybody. I walked into the manager’s office and put the key in their desk.

  I went to the locker room and I took my work suit off. I wadded it up in a ball and I threw it in the laundry without my bag; it didn’t need to come back to me anymore. I yanked my name tag off and threw it away. I walked through the lobby in my street clothes and right out the front door. The entrance in the back was for hotel employees.

  There were no fireworks going on. “Pomp and Circumstance” didn’t suddenly play from the speakers. I just went home and woke up bright and early the next day, ready to provide service for the people who lived in our new building.

  * * *

  HOW TO TELL A SERVICE NATURAL FROM A SERVICE NIGHTMARE

  There are two major kinds of people who are not good at service. The first is blatantly obvious and doesn’t require much insight to spot. They’re disengaged and they don’t seem to have any kind of connection to the fact that they’re in a position to bring professionalism and spirit to their job. You can see it from a mile away; they will treat you as an intrusion when you approach. Just visit any post office.

  But someone who is enthusiastic and engaged is easily mistaken for a service natural. I once stayed at a hotel and the person who checked me in was very outgoing and bubbly—but everything with the encounter was wrong because it became about her. “I’m going put you in this room,” she told me, “because I just love this room.” It became uncomfortable because I didn’t really care. She didn’t ask me if I loved the room or what I was looking for in a room. What people in service sometimes don’t understand is that it’s really all about the person getting served.

  These service nightmares can be very engaging—for a minute. At first you think that it’s great. But they’re just trying to show off, rather than actually working to do things for you. They’ll tell you all about the great restaurant and how you’ll be treated and what the experience will be like. But they want validation from you more than they want to serve you. They’re living for that moment when they can watch your face get all excited—and then, they’re pretty much done. What happens is that they overpromise, underdeliver, and take up way too much time and attention. They don’t understand that the preview isn’t as important as the actual movie.

  Service naturals are easy to overlook because they might not be the most gregarious, smiley, bubbly people—but neither is a really great stockbroker. I generally try to look for people who are not engaging, but who look focused. They’re not unfriendly. I was never unfriendly at my job, but I was much more focused on what people really wanted than on chitchat about how they were doing this fine spring morning.

  We’re instinctively drawn to people who are cute, young, and bubbly. Yet those people are usually just passing through the service world. They often don’t have real power or anything invested. I always look for the oldest, least glamorous person. They might not be nice, but they rule the roost—and they don’t usually get any validation, so you’ll get a lot more mileage.

  Here’s an easy way to tell the difference: Per Se is a quiet restaurant, and Applebee’s is loud. When I ate at Per Se, they weren’t really that receptive to when I tried to be chummy and fun—but they weren’t cold, either. “That’s very funny,” they said, “but how’s your meal?” Meanwhile, if you went to Applebee’s, you’d have a very different experience. The service is boisterous. They tell you where they’re from. Everything about it is screaming about what a fun place it is to be. Where would you like me to make your reservation?

  * * *

  15.

  Bands of Gold

  Everything Abbie and I did was operating under the hotel mentality. But when we reached out to our hotel connections for new hires, we weren’t looked upon too kindly. We were wild cards. Whether it was jealousy or whether they were upholding the credo of conciergedom, people were expecting us to come crawling back to the hotel fold. They didn’t want us in the associations; they didn’t want us accredited by Clefs d’Or. Concierge meant hotel, period.

  We managed to find a girl named Missy who had worked at a hotel spa. She was an itsy-bitsy girl with a little chipmunk voice who reminded me of an Olympic gymnast. Missy was somewhat nice, but somewhat uncooperative as well.

  I was in the “office” with her one day when a tenant came down with some dry cleaning. “Here,” Missy said, handing him a bag. “Can you put your clothes in there for me?”

  The man looked at her sideways, but did as she asked and didn’t say anything.

  I waited until he left. “What was that?” I asked her. “That’s not very customer service–focused. You can just take his clothes and bag them yourself.”

  “I can’t touch his gross clothing,” she said. “That’s disgusting!”

  “Missy, these are fancy people. It’s not like he was handing you his dirty underwear. Those were dress shirts and a Canali suit.”

  “Well,” she said, crossing her arms, “I’m not comfortable doing that. Would it be all right with you if we compromised?”

  “Sure,” I said. “What’s the compromise?”

  “I’ll do it if you let me wear sanitary gloves.”

  “Fine. But you’re paying for the gloves.”

  She left the company not too long after that. To be fair, it was an environment that demanded a very specific type of personality. If you didn’t own our supply closet/office, it could have felt pretty repressive. There was no window, and the air got full of the Clean Crisp White Votivo candle scent. I loved my lilies, but I also changed the water every day. If I left for two or three days, the vase would stink rancidly. The whole ambience backfired because it took maintenance, and other people didn’t maintain it.

  We decided to try to expand our search from just the hotel world. “Let’s just put it out in the Village Voice,” I suggested, “and get some young, collegey kids.” Our ad emphasized the hospitality aspect—and we got people who were really only tangentially from the hospitality field, like former employees of YMCAs in the Bronx. We booked four hours’ worth of interviews at
the W Union Square, and we had every conceivable type of person come through the door. It was like American Idol. The good ones we did get ran in the other direction when they saw our little closet workspace. We tried a couple of people, but they didn’t work out because they weren’t scrappy enough.

  The next time around we just knew we had to keep it real. In a way, it had been just as difficult to explain what we did to a potential employee as it had been to explain it to a potential client. It was innovative and people were confused; a concierge without a hotel was like an astronaut without a spaceship. We just took all the sex appeal out of the job description in our next ad: You take dry cleaning. You book housekeeping. You walk people’s dogs.

  That’s how we found Teddy. Teddy was super-effeminate, with a voice that was higher pitched than any soprano I had ever heard. He spoke faster than speed-readers go through books, to the point where you couldn’t even follow him sometimes. If somebody told him that they wanted their apartment cleaned, his response was frantically long winded. “Oh, it’s no problem. Is it a one-bedroom or a two-bedroom or a three-bedroom? Do you want coffee started or should we just do the bathroom and the kitchen? Would you like to go out for dinner? Because you know we also book car service for you.” But he had such a spirit that I thought he was going to be great.

  One day Teddy screwed something up with dry cleaning. But he was also smart and very industrious, so he discovered that another tenant had picked up the clothing by mistake. By tracing the receipts, he knew that Mrs. Yates had Mr. Fishbach’s clothes. Unfortunately, Mrs. Yates was a miserable and confrontational person. Innocently, he called her up to get the matter straightened out. “I think I messed up,” he told her, “and I think that we gave you Mr. Fishbach’s cleaning.”