When you are a guest in a luxury
hotel, the staff members call you by name and might even remember your
children’s and pets’ names. They offer to deliver tea to your room or draw a
bath for you. At breakfast, they whip up the special hazelnut butter you like
before you even ask for it. In an emergency, they lend you the shoes off their
feet. All the while, they smile as if their only goal in life is to fulfill your
every need.
It is hard not to wonder if they are merely putting on a front.
They know, after all, that you are spending more on one night than they earn in
a week.
I looked into that question during the year I spent conducting
field research in two luxury hotels located in a large U.S. city. Although the
staffers knew I was a sociologist, I worked as one of them, mainly in
face-to-face jobs such as concierge, front desk agent, reservation agent,
telephone operator and bellperson. I saw that workers find many ways to gain the
upper hand, sometimes only symbolically, but nevertheless in ways that can
affect a guest’s comfort.
According to an unspoken contract, guests should treat workers
with respect, say please and thank you, and tip appropriately ($5 to $50 to
the concierge, $5 to $10 to the bellperson and doorman for carrying luggage, $2
to the doorman for a taxi). In my experience, guests generally fulfilled their
end of the bargain. Sometimes they even brought workers small gifts, such as a
bottle of wine or a baseball hat. Staff members often went out of their way for
"nice" frequent guests, sending them special treats from room service or letting
parking charges slide.
But workers took subtle revenge against guests who failed to
show appreciation or acknowledge the workers’ presence. In these cases, workers
acted what they called "fake nice," while rolling their eyes behind the guest’s
back. They also found barely perceptible ways to give inferior service: They
might put a guest on hold for no reason; doormen would send the guest’s car to
the garage rather than leaving it at the curb.
My favorite story of revenge concerns a guest who arrived
before check-in time and was angry because his room was not ready. He
practically threw the registration card at Annie, the front desk agent on duty.
What he never knew was that before his arrival, he had been upgraded to a nicer
room. Annie just smiled and gave him the room he had originally booked, which
was available. He hated the room and ended up paying $100 more for the room he
was supposed to get as a complimentary upgrade.
Workers were likely to make fun of guests who were rude and
pass judgment on their intelligence, attractiveness, cultural sophistication and
morality. Guests were known as "Ms. Face-Lift" or "Dr. Crazy"; more than one was
referred to as "trailer trash." An assistant manager told me that "the more
money they have, the less common sense they have."
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