Saturday's Passage Of The Week

In my upcoming book, Service IS The Business (Working Title) I share a behind-the-desk perspective of what it is like to work at a real San Francisco hotel concierge desk.

Enjoy this brief segment from the second chapter.

The first hotel I worked in

The best part of my job was that it was a union job, and the union insured that I got paid extra for certain duties. For instance, occasionally some rooms were occupied by VIP or frequent guests, and they received a newspaper – either the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, or both. For each paper I delivered, I got a dollar on my paycheck, so delivering 30 or 40 a day would add up. If a large group like a bus tour, or convention-attendees for a large company, had reserved a block of rooms, I received an extra fee called porterage for moving their luggage.

Traditionally, when these groups booked a block of rooms in a hotel, they often had to pay certain fees that individual guests didn’t. So, for example, for a group of 30, with two bags each, the bellmen have to stop what they’re doing and get those 60 bags to their rooms as soon as possible. For this the group pays porterage. And if you’re the only bellman on duty, you have to move all 60 bags by yourself . . . but you get paid extra for each bag.

My union in those days, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Local 2 also mandated that a hotel of a certain size had to provide meals to their employees. Since I worked the 11:00 pm to 7:00 am shift, the meals from the day before were kept in a large refrigerator in the employee break room, and all I had to do was help myself. This was great for a starving student: an hourly wage, tips, porterage, and free meals! As I started to learn the pattern of the job, I became friendlier with the few people who maintain the hotel overnight.

The graveyard team consisted of three night auditors, a houseman, a PBX operator, and a security officer. The night auditors served as accountants, tallying up the charges from the day before. They also had to fill in as front desk agents if there were late check-ins or early check-outs. A houseman is a janitor who would perform all the overnight cleaning that couldn’t be done during the daytime, such as polishing the marble floor in the lobby. If a guest needed towels or an extra pillow in the middle of the night, it was the houseman’s job to bring what was requested to the room. PBX is short for Private Branch Exchange.

If you remember Lily Tomlin’s character, Ernestine the operator, PBX was something like that. These days phone systems in hotels are mostly digital and calls can be transferred from the front desk. When I started at the Vacation Suites, a little old lady who chain-smoked worked the PBX system overnight. This was not a job just anyone could do. The PBX system looked something akin to the keyboard of a large pipe organ with three different levels of keys. Certain keys had to be pressed down in the right order to transfer calls, so when many calls came in at the same time, this little old lady looked like a concert pianist.

If you like this passage please hit like and follow us. You can also follow us at www.sfhotelstories.com

SFHotelStories.com is looking for contributors: writers, videographers, and photographers. Contact us at SFHotelStories@gmail.com, Subject: Contributors.