One of my nightly duties is to deliver the USAToday to all of the rooms that have been rented in the hotel. Each paper is put into a black burlap bag decorated with "SH" in white scripted letters, and hung on the door handle of each room.
Normally, the bags are the biggest problem I have each morning. As the maids clean the rooms, they are supposed to gather the bags and send them downstairs to the housekeeping department in the basement, where they will be gathered in bulk and taken to the bellcloset on the 1st floor. Since they do not have the code for the door lock, either security or one of the bellmen will let them in, where they can put the bags on the large roll-around spindle, thus making it easy for me to gather as many as I need to make my deliveries the next morning. This rarely happens.
Instead, I find them piled on the floor, on the shelves, on the spare bellstand--and that's if they make it to the bellcloset at all. Otherwise, they'll be in the basement piled on the laundry box in housekeeping, or on any other flat surface that's handy, or hanging from various protrusions of the housekeeping carts and machinery that happen to be around. Last week, I found 11 of them in the trash.
If they never made it to the basement, they're frequently in one pile or another on the service elevator landing of each of the guest floors, or hanging on some door handle. If I have time, I'll ask security to loan me the passkey so that I can raid the (23) maids closets,where I will find them still hanging on the maids carts, or just tossed in with the towels and linens.
Guests contribute to the problem, too. Stayover guests leave the Do Not Disturb signs on their doors, so the maids don't clean their rooms, and therefore do not have an opportunity to retrieve the bag. During conventions, this forces me to go down to the dungeoun for more, even when I know there are sufficient quantities in circulation already. Also, a lot of guests think that the bags are souvenirs, and take them home, not realizing that they are actually stealing them. Often the bellman or front desk clerk will catch them on the way out, which is why I also find bags in the office.
But the bags are only one problem I have to solve to do this job. Two days in advance, the night auditor is supposed to order enough newspapers to cover every occupied room. For reasons that have not been sufficiently explained, this doesn't always happen, and I get fewer than I need. In that case, I have to deliver to all Hilton Honors members (a contractual obligation), and the rest of the papers are brought back to the lobby for whoever else wants one. If I'm a few short on the number needed for the HH guests, I can use some of the other papers we carry.
But this morning, there is no paper delivery at all. We have 211 rooms occupied, 151 of which are HH members, and I got 75 newspapers. Being shorted by 76 papers for a minimum delivery, there is no way to deliver them equitably, and therefore all papers will be kept downstairs. Somebody will get yelled at today, and it won't be me.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Okay, here's the real scoop (but don't tell anyone.)
Ever since the Knicks told the press that they'd lost their game to the Thunder because the ghosts in the hotel had kept them awake all night, interest in the ghost stories at our hotel has gone up considerably. I personally get asked about them a lot, and I've decided that it would make a good blog post, so here goes.
The NBA teams usually come in pretty late, and they have a lot of equipment and personal luggage, so on those nights a couple of the daytime guys will come in and help out. On this particular night, the Knicks were arriving right at shift change, right at the beginning of my shift, so Bossman and a couple of other guys were there to take care of them while I took care of the other arriving guests. I actually got very busy.
Since it was still relatively early, a couple of the players decided they wanted to go out to one of the bars in Bricktown. They were waiting out on the front sidewalk for a taxi as I came out running to go get someone's car. I was halfway down the front sidewalk on the way to the parking garage when one of them shouted "Hey!"
I turned around and came back to them. "Yessir?"
"Is this place really haunted?"
I'm to busy at this time to start telling stories, so I just said, "We're not allowed to talk about it." They stiffened up and their eyes got real big. The taxi pulled up just at that moment, and I turned around and continued my run to the garage.
It actually is true that we're not supposed to talk about the ghost stories. AFOM used to keep a journal of things that have happened since the hotel re-opened, but the GM confiscated it, telling him, "This cannot exist." Now AFOM keeps a new journal at home.
The taxi drivers, however, are the worst about telling ghost stories. Not only do they love doing it, but the stories have nothing to do with the things that actually happen here. And now these two basketball players have a taxi taking them to get drinks. This can't be good.
Two nights later, a former co-worker sends me a newspaper article via Facebook about the Knicks blaming their loss on the ghosts in the hotel. Then, minutes later, I saw a promo for the news saying they'd be talking about the same thing. I called my dad. "Hey Dad! Watch channel four tonight. There's going to be a funny story about the hotel."
When I got to work that night, I told the security guys, "We were on channel four tonight."
They said, "We were on every channel tonight."
I walked out front and found Bossman at the counter. I said, "We made the local news tonight."
He said, "We made the national news tonight."
Now this can be good news or bad news. On the one hand, lots of people think its fun and exciting to stay in a haunted hotel, and we could get a lot of business from it. On the other hand, NBA players are very superstitious, and we don't want to lose a lucrative contract.
The reason Bossman was there was because the Spurs were coming in. (You know, the team with the gorgeous redhead.) We weren't busy otherwise, so I actually got to help this time. The Knicks' coach had tripped over the tiny little step at the west entrance, so it was my job to say "Good evening. Welcome. Watch your step" to these towering men who kept asking me, "Is this place really haunted?"
Our VIP liason is a tiny little thing, half as tall as the guys surrounding her. As she was passing out the keys they kept asking her, "Is this place haunted?", to which she emphatically replied, "Don't worry. I don't have any of you on that floor."
There is no "that" floor. Stuff happens on every floor. But only for people who have no clue that there might possibly be ghosts in the hotel.
Over the next few nights I found out more stuff about the Knicks' stay. One of the security guys told me that one of the guys complaining to the press about the ghosts was only on the court for three minutes, the other was on the bench all night. He also said that if the team had gone to bed the night before the game instead of staying up with the women, the beer, and the 4am chicken wings from room service, they might have won.
But the funniest part was that the coach, knowing that he had a nervous player on his team, had hired one of our morning bellmen to go up to that player's room and move his furniture.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I went down to HR one Thursday morning and told HRBossette that I thought the Thunder would do pretty well against the Lakers that night.
"Oh?"
"Yeah, I went up and down the halls with a tape recording of a baby crying last night."
She gave me a look of abject horror.
"I'm just kidding."
She grabbed her chest and started huffing as if she'd just survived a heart attack. Though her concern was real, we did have a good laugh over my little joke. (She and I have always had a good rapport. Fortunately. As evidenced by the fact that I still have my job.)
http//fr-fr.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150109154117366
The NBA teams usually come in pretty late, and they have a lot of equipment and personal luggage, so on those nights a couple of the daytime guys will come in and help out. On this particular night, the Knicks were arriving right at shift change, right at the beginning of my shift, so Bossman and a couple of other guys were there to take care of them while I took care of the other arriving guests. I actually got very busy.
Since it was still relatively early, a couple of the players decided they wanted to go out to one of the bars in Bricktown. They were waiting out on the front sidewalk for a taxi as I came out running to go get someone's car. I was halfway down the front sidewalk on the way to the parking garage when one of them shouted "Hey!"
I turned around and came back to them. "Yessir?"
"Is this place really haunted?"
I'm to busy at this time to start telling stories, so I just said, "We're not allowed to talk about it." They stiffened up and their eyes got real big. The taxi pulled up just at that moment, and I turned around and continued my run to the garage.
It actually is true that we're not supposed to talk about the ghost stories. AFOM used to keep a journal of things that have happened since the hotel re-opened, but the GM confiscated it, telling him, "This cannot exist." Now AFOM keeps a new journal at home.
The taxi drivers, however, are the worst about telling ghost stories. Not only do they love doing it, but the stories have nothing to do with the things that actually happen here. And now these two basketball players have a taxi taking them to get drinks. This can't be good.
Two nights later, a former co-worker sends me a newspaper article via Facebook about the Knicks blaming their loss on the ghosts in the hotel. Then, minutes later, I saw a promo for the news saying they'd be talking about the same thing. I called my dad. "Hey Dad! Watch channel four tonight. There's going to be a funny story about the hotel."
When I got to work that night, I told the security guys, "We were on channel four tonight."
They said, "We were on every channel tonight."
I walked out front and found Bossman at the counter. I said, "We made the local news tonight."
He said, "We made the national news tonight."
Now this can be good news or bad news. On the one hand, lots of people think its fun and exciting to stay in a haunted hotel, and we could get a lot of business from it. On the other hand, NBA players are very superstitious, and we don't want to lose a lucrative contract.
The reason Bossman was there was because the Spurs were coming in. (You know, the team with the gorgeous redhead.) We weren't busy otherwise, so I actually got to help this time. The Knicks' coach had tripped over the tiny little step at the west entrance, so it was my job to say "Good evening. Welcome. Watch your step" to these towering men who kept asking me, "Is this place really haunted?"
Our VIP liason is a tiny little thing, half as tall as the guys surrounding her. As she was passing out the keys they kept asking her, "Is this place haunted?", to which she emphatically replied, "Don't worry. I don't have any of you on that floor."
There is no "that" floor. Stuff happens on every floor. But only for people who have no clue that there might possibly be ghosts in the hotel.
Over the next few nights I found out more stuff about the Knicks' stay. One of the security guys told me that one of the guys complaining to the press about the ghosts was only on the court for three minutes, the other was on the bench all night. He also said that if the team had gone to bed the night before the game instead of staying up with the women, the beer, and the 4am chicken wings from room service, they might have won.
But the funniest part was that the coach, knowing that he had a nervous player on his team, had hired one of our morning bellmen to go up to that player's room and move his furniture.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I went down to HR one Thursday morning and told HRBossette that I thought the Thunder would do pretty well against the Lakers that night.
"Oh?"
"Yeah, I went up and down the halls with a tape recording of a baby crying last night."
She gave me a look of abject horror.
"I'm just kidding."
She grabbed her chest and started huffing as if she'd just survived a heart attack. Though her concern was real, we did have a good laugh over my little joke. (She and I have always had a good rapport. Fortunately. As evidenced by the fact that I still have my job.)
http//fr-fr.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150109154117366
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