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 third chapter.

A guest sat down at the concierge desk and requested my assistance in helping him obtain a statue of an eagle. He didn’t want a stuffed eagle, a toy eagle, or an eagle made by a taxidermist. He needed a life-sized statue of an eagle.

I went through a variety of sources (sculpture studios, gift shops, craft stores, etc.) to find an eagle statue, but was having no luck. I ran it by Bernie, who said to me, “If you are a guest in a hotel, and you have a question, who would you turn to?”

I answered, “A concierge, naturally.”

Calmly he said, “Why don’t you ask a concierge. But not me, because I don’t know where you can buy a statue of an eagle. But I bet some concierge does.”

I called a few concierge desks at different hotels to see if they had any ideas on how to obtain such an odd item. Most did not; however, many of them welcomed the challenge of fulfilling such an unusual request.

Most of the concierges I spoke with were also ultimately unsuccessful. However, one did mention that she had seen an eagle carving in wood at the Muir Woods National Monument gift shop. I called the gift shop at Muir Woods and they did indeed confirm they had the item in question. I asked if they could put it aside for a couple of hours, and then I contacted the guest and informed him of what I had found. He was not only amazed that I had worked so hard to look for one, but that I had actually found one.

He headed to the Muir Woods gift shop where they were holding the life-sized carved eagle, and later told me it was just what he’d been looking for.

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