It is a confusing situation to be in when entering an establishment in the hospitality industry that your first point of contact with another human being is often as hospitable and pleasant as wearing a sandpaper suit with barbed wire braces. Getting past some reception desks is like climbing the old Berlin Wall. It can be done, but it takes a brave and ingenious individual. My diary has legions of examples of bloody- minded, obstreperous and downright mendacious desk clerks. But this one will do. It was a bleak winter night in the Mid-West, and way gone midnight. I had two flights, a long wait at Denver for my connection and a 120 mile car ride through a howling blizzard behind me. I just wanted a hot shower and bed. The Zombie looking male night-shift receptionist at one of those household name hotel chains greets me with a soundless and effortlessly phoney smile. I hand him the faxed confirmation pulled off my machine in Los Angeles what seems like three million light years ago. He takes it and squints. He’s not short-sighted. The squint means trouble. The squint means, “If he thinks this makes one iota of difference to what I’ve got in store for him, the guy is a bigger Limey geek than he looks.” He pretends to tap into the computer.
“We have no record of your reservation sir.” I point at the hotel fax on their headed notepaper. On it is my name, my credit card number, the date, and ‘guaranteed for late arrival.’ He hands it back as though he’s been scrutinising a soiled diaper. “Must be some mistake. We’re fully booked. Have been since Tuesday” He waits. Presumably for me to walk heroically out into the swirling snow and sub-zero temperatures like brave Captain Oates going for his short but terminal walk. Mr. Night Desk Man doesn’t know that I know the secret of the Number One scam in the Hotel Black Book of Traveller Cons. Unscrupulous reception staff will sometimes keep a few rooms back for themselves and colleagues so they can enjoy on-the-job love trysts – if you’ll pardon the double-entendre. And if necessary they’ll send a bona fide traveller out into the night room-less. Not this one. I tell him that he does have rooms, and I am not leaving the hotel until he checks me into one. This fazes him. But he recovers. “Sir…” Important to understand that in the United States people with a little power only first address you as ‘Sir’ when they’re about to be unpleasant. “Sir I request that you leave the hotel or I shall have security eject you.” I take this opportunity to point out that, being in the Home of the Lawsuit and Land of the Litigious, I’d get my Beverly Hills lawyer to sue not only Mr. Nightshift’s own sorry ass, but the hotel chain as well. Then I sat on my suitcase and yawned loudly.
He taps again into the computer. This time it looks like he actually used a real sequence of keys! He squints, but this is the good squint. The squint of discovery like an archaeologist finding a long buried Mesopotamian artefact. “Hey, well, yeh, it seems you were booked in by mistake for tomorrow night, that’s why I couldn’t find you. You’re in 206.” He hands me the key card. I can’t resist it. “But the hotel is full.” Well this boy got the Hamlet Thespian Award at the hotel school’s equivalent of RADA. He gives me the Full-On Receptionist Smile’n’Lie that comes with the sincerity of a Bob Monkhouse smirk. “I just discovered we had someone cancel on us.” A wonder the lad’s pants weren’t on fire.
But I forgot a basic fact of Business Travel Life. Messing with hotel staff can seriously damage your travel plans. The next morning when I get my bill at checkout, I discover I’ve apparently watched 4 porn movies and made $180 worth of telephone calls. Strange thing to do in one’s sleep! It takes me almost forty-five minutes – ten in the manager’s office – to get that one sorted out. But I miss my plane. And somewhere tucked up in the frozen town of Portage, Wisconsin, Mr Nightshift was smiling in his sleep.
To contact Stuart White email stuartwhite383@btinternet.com
