Hotel Front Desk
Los Angeles, CA
Male, 27
For the past two years I've worked the front desk at a boutique luxury beachfront hotel in Southern California. My job can range from simply checking guests in & out to many other duties, including: pretending I work in different departments so that behind-the-scenes chaos is never seen by a guest, shielding guests from stalkers that come looking for them, and picking up used drug paraphernalia from a trashed room. Ask me anything.
Sure, it's their job, but what they are paid as a base wage is typically factoring in that they are going to offset that wage by receiving gratuity. Room service attendants, door and bellmen (and women) can make a decent amount in gratuity if their hotel is busy and/or consistently frequented by affluent guests. However, just as many people on average do NOT tip as do, it's very hard to predict. My thought process is, if you tip, you will often see a return the NEXT time you call. Remember, if you are super-cheap AND a jerk, the staff will talk amongst themselves and you likely will not get speedy service the next time you ask for it. If you just so happen to not have cash on you, no problem, it's just $2-ish, we understand, just offset THAT by being nice and thanking for good service instead.
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This is the cheap internet searchable answer: "They are placed there by a group called a non-profit Christian organization called the Gideons. The Gideons are not preachers, but businessmen who feel called to help with this ministry. They raise money from churches and individuals and use this money to print and distribute Bibles to many places--wherever they are allowed to put them--such as hospitals, prisons, and motel rooms. Through feedback and letters they receive, they have learned of many people who picked up one of their Bibles in a desperate moment and found the faith to turn their lives around. All Marriott hotels have Book of Mormon, too, because Mr. Marriott is/was (don't know if he is still living or not) a Mormon." We don't have them at our property, so it must be an aging habit among hotel owners. Wouldn't it be cool to start a different trend, like placing a box of legos or something cooler in there? I guess whatever floats your boat...
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It's so hard to point out one specific incident, but I would say the phone call from someone that makes me jump through dozens of hoops to get them a specific type of reservation (for some callers, this process takes weeks of back and forth), who then cancels for no apparent reason. I mean this is someone who's had me also book them a car service, massages, dinner reservations, made me go to my Director of Sales to see if I can get them a rock-bottom rate, and I work so hard for so long out of the goodness of my heart, and then...sorry! Cancelled. Second place to that would be guests of guests being the hardest ones to deal with, asking for things that the hotel would and should never actually provide as a service, when they're not even the ones paying for the room! That to me is crazy.
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I wish i could have answered your question earlier Jerilyn, because it sounds like you may have needed the answer in the moment, but in any event, you should be fine to visit a hotel room and knock on the door if ever you feel there is a legitimate reason. Even with a Do Not Disturb Sign on the door, you still have the right to ask a question of a guest if you feel that his or her safety, or the safety of others, is in jeopardy. It's often a good idea to bring another staff member with you so that if the situation into which you're entering is sensitive, you have a witness that can later prove that you did the right thing, if it comes to that. I would just follow procedure, and do what you know is legally and morally right, and you'll be fine.
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Probably gunshot wound to the foot of a John in the lobby being attended to by his hooker at midnight. Kind of tops it all, I think.
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Hotel laundry services are mroe expensive because of how many levels of service they encompass. Compare, say, taking your own laundry to the dry cleaners and picking it up. You're on the time schedule, say 2-3 days on average, of the cleaner, you're doing the leg work of taking it there and picking it up, etc. With a hotel you literally do nothing except drop the laundry in a bag and in many instances never even have to take it out of your room, so the extra costs are associated with the door-to-door services and all the steps in between that cost the cleaners, and in turn, the hotel extra money. Most of the guests that pay for it are the business travelers that can expense the cost, or on occasion someone who has the extra money around but is too busy to take care of it their selves. That type of guest is able to spend on laundry but also valet and all of the other usual extra services.
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Staff can enter the room even if a DND sign is displayed if for some reason they believe that a person or the hotel is in grave danger or a law is in the act of being broken. Think: Fire, Flood, or Blood. If a sink above your room is known to be flooding with the only access to a shutoff being in a ceiling panel above YOUR room's sink, we're going in. However, standard practice would be to knock loudly prior to entry and with the door slightly ajar, loudly announce that hotel staff need to enter the room, and why. After waiting a few moments, one would enter the room slowly and in stages, continuing to repeat a loud announcement of who is entering. In all situations we would try to avoid entering, but a DND sign is unfortunately not a guarantee of airtight privacy, as there are exceptions to when it will be heeded. Two staff members will always enter for emergencies unless the property is literally running on a skeleton crew. The reason for this is to have a witness, hopefully one from the security department or from a different department, to prove that the intent was honest and to testify to what was done after entering, should contrary and contradicting stories develop from the guest(s) afterward.
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