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.

Dwight brought a flourish of whimsy to the job, never violating company protocol, but coming close to it. In the end, the general manager didn’t really care about that. He had a binary mode of thinking: Will this increase profit, or not? If he didn’t think profit was affected, then we were free to carry on. Everyone, from the general manager to the guests to the staff, really liked Dwight. He was (and is) one of those guys who always has a smile or a positive affirmation.

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When I said rapport, I mean we were very good at picking up on each other’s signals. If I happen to be stuck with a chatty guest who would not leave my desk, I would begin rocking on my heels, back and forth. I call these kinds of guests Barnacles, because they stick to your desk like the hull of a ship and they are difficult to remove. More on that later.

Once Dwight saw my heel-rocking and the Barnacles, he would ring the bell on the front desk, which allowed me the saving grace to politely extricate myself from a long-winded guest. When the bell rang, I could simply say, “Sorry, but I’m needed at the reception desk.” Dwight had a signal for me as well. When I saw he was trapped by a chatty patron, I would go around the corner and use the house phone to call the front desk. This gave him license to stop the guest from continuing so he could answer the phone.

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