Jacob Tomsky - Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality

Copyright 2012 by Jacob Tomsky

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.doubleday.com

DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Bell illustration by Randy Miller Design
Jacket design by Emily Mahon
Jacket photograph Scott Nobles

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tomsky, Jacob.
Heads in beds : a reckless memoir of hotels, hustles, and so-called hospitality /
Jacob Tomsky. 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Tomsky, JacobAnecdotes. 2. Hotel clerksUnited StatesBiography. 3. HotelsEmployeesBiography. 4. HotelsUnited StatesHumor. I. Title.
TX911.3.F75T66 2012
647.94092dc23
[B] 2012007859

eISBN: 978-0-385-53564-9

v3.1

Contents

Authors Note

To protect the guilty and the innocent alike, I have deconstructed all hotels and rebuilt them into personal properties, changed all names, and shredded all personalities and reattached them to shreds from other personalities, creating a book of amalgams that, working together, establish, essentially, a world of truth. I mean, damn , I even change my own name.

I ve worked in hotels for more than a decade. Ive checked you in, checked you out, oriented you to the property, served you a beverage, separated your white panties from the white bedsheets, parked your car, tasted your room service (before and, sadly, after), cleaned your toilet, denied you a late checkout, given you a wake-up call, eaten M&Ms out of your minibar, laughed at your jokes, and taken your money. I have been on the front lines, and by that I mean the front desk, of upscale hotels for years, and Ive seen it all firsthand.

How does one fall into the pit of hospitality? How is it that nearly every dollar Ive ever earned came from a paycheck with a name of a hotel written on it somewhere (or of course in the form of cash from the hand of a generous hotel guest)? Call it an accident, like catching a train with the plan to go across town, but as the platforms smear by one after the other, you come to realize youve broken city limits, the train is not stopping, and youre just going to have to ride this life until the doors open. Or until the conductor stops the train and throws you out on your ass.

After a certain amount of years in the hotel business (and Ill go ahead and mention this up front), youre just too useless and used up to do anything else.

I grew up military: navy mother, marine father. When I was a child, it was two years maximum in any given city, and then wed be on the move again, changing schools, checking into a hotel in L.A., a hotel in Jacksonville, a hotel in Asheville, a hotel in San Pedro, looking for a new permanent residence. I grew up like a spun top, and, released into adulthood, I continued spinning, moving, relocating.

Those two-year episodes of my childhood left me feeling rootless, lost in the world; perhaps thats why I stubbornly pursued a degree in philosophy. I cannot explain the idiocy behind my choice of major. Shit, if I had chosen business, I might be in business right now. Perhaps youd think one main goal within the philosophy degree itself would be the ability to argue unequivocally why a philosophy degree is not a complete waste of time. I never learned that argument. Garbage. My degree was garbage stuffed inside a trash can of student loans.

So someone, some asshole, suggested I earn some money in hospitality. Hotels were willing to ignore my dubious degree and offer great starting pay, and I will say this: its an ideal career for the traveler. I love travel in every way: new people, new sounds, new environments, the ability to pick up and disappear. (My top is, even now, spinning, and though its digging a nice divot into Brooklyn, the balance is beginning to lean, and once that tip finds traction, its going to rocket me off the continent.) Plus, hotels are everywhere: kidnap me, duct tape my face, drop me out of a plane, and I promise you I will land in a parking lot adjacent to a hotel and in less than a day Ill be wearing a suit, assisting guests, earning a nice check, and making friends at the local bar.

Hotels are methadone clinics for the travel addicted. Maybe the only way I can even keep a home is to hold down a job surrounded by constant change. If Im addicted to relocating, then how about I rest a minute, in a lobby echoing with eternal hellos and good-byes, and let the world move around me?

And that is exactly what I did. From New Orleans to New York, I played by hotel rules and, in the process, learned every aspect of the industry. Due to the fact I just dont care anymore, here is one of my objectives: I will offer easy and, up till now, never publicized tips and tricks. Want a late checkout? Want an upgrade? Guess what! There are simple ways (and most of them are legal ways!) to get what you need from a hotel without any hassle whatsoever. Its all in the detailsin what you need done, whom you ask to do it, how you ask them, and how much you should tip them for doing it. Need to cancel the day of arrival with no penalty? No problem. Maybe you just want to be treated with care and respect? I understand, dear guest. Come on, now, calm down, you fragile thing take my hand good okay, now put some money in it very good thank you. Now, thats a proper hospitality business transaction.

And when all is said and done, you will understand the hotel life, what we do, and how we do it. Though why we continue to do it may be harder to grasp. All of this will be beneficial to you because the next time you check in with me (and believe me, I get around; Ive probably checked you in a couple of times already), the next time we meet, a comforting, bright light of total understanding will be shining in your eyes, and I will help you and you will help me, and reading this book will give you the knowledge you need to get the very best service from any hotel or property, from any business that makes its money from putting heads in beds. Or, at the very least , it will keep me from taking your luggage into the camera-free back office and stomping the shit out of it.

As a hotelier, I am everywhere. I am nowhere. I am nameless except for the goddamn name tag.

But first, lets talk about names. Lets talk about changing the names to protect the innocent. Lets talk about how innocent I am and how much I need protecting.

My name is Jacob Tomsky. But in the hotel world we are all registered with our last name first. Jacob Tomsky becomes Tomsky, Jacob. So, in the spirit of self-preservation, Tomsky, Jacobfor the purposes of this bookbecomes Thomas Jacobs.

Good luck, little Tommy Jacobs.

I am standing on St. Charles Avenue, uptown New Orleans, a few months out of college and a few weeks into summer. Its already extremely hot in the full sun. Which is where I have to stand: in the sun. Next to the valet box. All day.

I took a valet-parking job at Copelands restaurant to shake off my college-loan laziness, to climb out of the educational womb and stand on my own two feet as a moneymaking, career-pursuing adult. Educated in the useless and inapplicable field of philosophy, I quickly deduced that my degree looked slightly comical on my already light-on-the-work-experience rsum. Perhaps it was even off-putting . To a certain eye, hell, it probably made me look like a prick. But I had to start somewhere. So I started at the bottom.