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.

As the ad-hoc-defacto-impromptu-emergency concierge of the Franklyn Hotel (as I also liked to refer to myself, although I was technically just a bellman), I had to deal with other demands as well. Traditionally, if a guest called down for some reason, the request would go to the proper department.

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If it were a maintenance request (burnt-out light bulb, etc.), the engineers would follow it up. If it were a housekeeping request like a cup of spilled coffee, the houseman or housekeepers would follow up. For everything else, they called me.

In the evenings the crew consisted of the front desk agent, the bellman, and the houseman. Felix didn’t really like the houseman going into the rooms. He was probably 70, moved slowly, had missing teeth, and spoke very broken English. Make no mistake, this guy had the commitment and work ethic of a pack mule. But if a call came down for the houseman, Felix would send me up first to assess the situation.

As the Franklyn was a popular stop for the group bus tours, we often welcomed many people at a time from the same country. One day a fire alarm went off, and I was sent to the room to investigate. Unofficially, I’d say 99% of the time the alarm was set off by someone smoking in their room, but this time it was a pair of English women who seemed a bit perplexed as to why I was knocking on their door. I explained that we saw the fire alarm go off in this room, and I came to see that everything was alright. They couldn’t figure out what would set off the fire alarm.

After listening to them retrace their steps, I figured out that one of the ladies indulged in using copious amounts of hairspray. Because so much was in the air and the bathroom door was closed, the sensors mistook the chemicals for smoke, and thus lit up our panel behind the front desk. The English brand of hairspray in question she was using was called On Fire. We all got a good laugh out of that.

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