Portland Hospitality, Part One: Holiday Inn

 

When I moved to Portland, Oregon in mid-July 2004, just like any other intelligent person I made the move with no job waiting for me. I figured I’d get a job when I needed one – basically, when I’d burned through my savings – and it wouldn’t be much of a task. Indeed, finding a job when the time came would have been easy had I’d been doing massage at the time. Alas, I was not. There was also the matter of having met my future wife my second day in the City of Roses, aka Rip Town, aka Stumptown, aka Bridgetown, aka Portlandia, aka PDX. Far more important than securing a job were late night escapades with mi amor in the vibrant new city. Like Death, though, the taxman cometh eventually.

 

As it turns out, my savings didn’t last long in an actual city when you’re dating, so getting a job ya bum became a priority sooner rather than later. It turned out to be no small task to the point I answered an intriguing job posting on Craigslist. A ‘prominent’ hotel in downtown was looking for a night auditor, a job I was otherwise unqualified for having never worked in hospitality and being bad at math. But, having been in the army, I was good at staying up through the night. I was called quickly after submitting my resume and secured an interview at the Holiday Inn Convention Center stat.

 

The assistant manager, an attractive, blonde, 40-something woman named Sydney interviewed me in the hotel bar. Everything seemed to go well until she excused herself mid-conversation, stating she needed to talk to the GM for a moment, which seemed odd. When she came back, she enthusiastically offered me the job and stated I could start training in a few days. Having had trouble getting a job up until this point, I felt the interview had gone a little too smoothly but I wasn’t in a position to turn her down. I took the offer and had always wondered what made her hire me given my lack of qualifications. My first guess was that I was the only person to answer the ad willing to work graveyards, that is until reports of Sydney’s inclination to bed her younger male staff came rolling in. On one hand I thought, Oh, so that’s why I got the job, which would have been flattering except that she never once made a pass at me that I noticed. Just as well as I was in a great relationship and she was, how do you say, married?

 

Training was unexpectedly tough the first month or so but I eventually settled into a rhythm and was usually able to finish my night audits by around 2am. It was once I felt confident that I knew my job and had time to notice the world around me that the underbelly of the hospitality world began to expose itself. First up, coworkers.

 

It takes a special breed to work in hospitality, which is to say that the average hotel employee would flunk a psyche eval and land somewhere on the sociopath spectrum if not worse. Seth, a security guard, a stocky white rapper with a bad attitude from the bad side of the bad side of town, might’ve been a good example except that he was known to mercilessly kick a drunkard who’d passed out outside their hotel room simply because he was bored. (“Dude, why’d you do that?” I’d ask. “Killing time,” he’d reply casually.) So, more of a psychopath. He also drove the pick-up van for incoming American Airline staff whom he’d like to fuck with by saying, “Allah akbar,” when they tipped him, what with 9/11 still being fresh in everyone’s mind. He took no shit from no one and didn’t hesitate to put a cranky guest in their place with ‘crazy eyes.’ With Seth on duty all the staff felt safe. He was fucking nuts, and except for the chain-smoking, I loved him like a brother.

 

The other security guard was Darin, a black gentleman who was the most non-pastoring pastor I’ve ever met and whose mother managed the front desk and housekeeping. (Gwen, the only sane person I worked with during my entire tenure at the hotel.) Darin could be quick with a Bible verse when the situation called for it, for instance when he was trying to stop himself from flirting with a guest when he had a ‘good girl at home,’ which always ended with him slipping someone his number at the very least. (I’d say I never knew what happened during his floor checks, except he’d always tell me if something inappropriate occurred.)

 

One of the regular van drivers was Caleb, an immigrant from Romania who spoke perfect English, allegedly learned by carefully studying Bay Watch. His dream was to become Britney Spears’ hairstylist which I found funny since he was bald. I don’t know if he ever made that dream come true but I know he attended hair school at least for a little while. How far he got in school I don’t know but he at least got to the point where he learned to cut men’s hair in the style of The Fonz. I know as I was a victim of his sick practice more than once. Even after asking him not to give me The Fonz, I still got The Fonz. Now that I think about it, having obtained his dream would explain why Britney wound up shaving her own head.

 

Another van driver was Emilio, also an immigrant, this time from Honduras, a country he’d fled after being on the wrong side of a coup attempt, or something like that. A gentle man upon initial impressions, he trusted me enough one night to confess he’d killed seven people in his home country, a fact he deemed ‘unfortunate.’ Emilio didn’t drink and was steadfastly against alcohol consumption. I don’t know if that means he killed those people sober or drunk, a part of his history he didn’t share. A mysterious man by any measure, I think he enjoyed people thinking of him that way, that you just didn’t know if this otherwise calm man would explode.

 

The other night auditor was Thomas, a self-proclaimed good Christian boy who liked to watch porn on the computers in the business center. I would sometimes work security during his night audit shifts and being the stealthy ninja I am caught him red-handed (?) more than a handful of times. Thomas was eventually fired for it after opening an ‘attachment’ a ‘friend’ emailed him which infected all the computers in the hotel with a virus. I lacked sympathy for Thomas, mostly because of his constant insistence that he was a good and proper person. Darin the pastor, by comparison, never made such a claim.

 

Talking about a hotel’s staff wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the bartenders. There was Mary, the smallest, cutest thing who was terribly insecure about her looks when she should have been more concerned about not having the confidence to man a hotel bar. Hotel bar regulars tend to be the dregs of humanity and treated her poorly, so it was astounding to me she kept her job as long as she did; I guess even a little bit of money talks. Maria was nothing like that, assertive and attractive but with two visible scars on her face which Seth thought was hot because, “Scars tell a story. Most tattoos don’t, def not some chick’s mandala tramp-stamp.” We thought she might've been in a gang once and so never messed with her and I imagine she liked that about us as Seth and I were the only ones she didn't cop an attitude with. But my favorite bartender was Randy, a quiet gay gentleman who was just so polite it was suspicious, like maybe he was a big jerk underneath a façade. I found this to be untrue when I snuck up behind him one night in the back office as he was counting his til and yelled, “Randy, what are you doing?!” Dollars and coins literally flew everywhere and Randy collapsed on the ground clutching his chest. “Why would you do that?” he cried, “I have a heart condition,” which I didn’t know. Still, it makes me the villain of the story and sounds like a night auditor jealous of Emilio’s body count. My momentary lack of compassion – or perhaps I was bored – cost me an hour of my time as I had to find all the money and count it while Randy convalesced. I was glad I didn’t kill the lad but I remember thinking I was three cents off and worrying more about that. Understandably, Randy never had a conversation with me again.

 

Front desk staff is notorious for its turnover rate and they came and went. Chad, a surfer, always called in sick if there was a swell coming in on the coastline and he eventually infected Todd with his surfer mentality. I remember Todd distinctly for two things: One, he was a white boy’s white boy and big Decemberists fan, a band whose music resembled pirate songs gone awry and whose lead singer sounded like Papa Smurf. Two, he was fired for embezzling after working his way up to assistant desk manager. Before becoming a surfer, Todd was such a typical Portland hipster douche almost no one liked him, though he was reportedly bedded by Sydney and in a relationship with a young black woman who was so far out of his league I have no idea how that came about. That woman – Melissa – was also a front desk agent and she was so embarrassed by Todd’s firing she quit.

 

As is usually the case no matter where you go in the hospitality industry, management left something to be desired. I remember meeting the GM, Michael, only once and the impression was that he was an alcoholic though I didn’t smell alcohol on him. For all intents and purposes, Sydney was on duty so often she might as well have been the real GM. But even she had no control over the campaigns head office in Bumfuck, Egypt would come up with from time to time in an effort to drive more guests into the hotel and make more money, which is what I suppose any good company is supposed to do. The approach at Holiday Inn, however, was often questionable.

 

One such questionable campaign was the Everyday Heroes campaign. There was a big ol’ mandatory meeting for all staff members regardless of shift or dying grandmother in which headquarters insisted everyone on staff treat every single person walking through the lobby doors like a hero returning from war. Why? Because so-and-so guest is a banker and gets up at 8:00am to be at work by nine so his family of four have food on their table. Because this gal over here stocks the aisles at the local supermarket so the banker can find the food his family needs. Because guest C is the supermarket gal’s boyfriend and he helped her through a tough time during which she wasn’t talking to her parents. In other words, because average people were doing normal things to help make the world go ‘round and therefore this makes them heroes. Wtf? If the top brass had just said, “Let’s be nicer to guests and it will probably result in greater revenue,” we might’ve respected that even if we wouldn’t have played along. Us real soldiers on the ground knew the reality out on the front lines.

 

For example, that same night after the Big Meeting, I was talking to Seth at the front desk when a belligerent drunk woman came out of the bar and walked towards the elevators. She reached for the buttons, missed entirely, and fell flat on her face. Unconcerned, Seth slowly turned his head towards me, “Everyday heroes.” He eventually helped her but not without prodding. “Look, we both know who the real heroes are around here,” I told him, which made him chuckle and lightened him up enough to lend the woman a hand. Other such heroes to walk through our lobby doors were couples who would check-in, knock out a quickie, then come back downstair to say they were checking out and not paying for the room because make up a reason. Then there’d be the family of eight who’d insist on checking into a room for four maximum occupants and demand we squeeze four roll-away beds into a double queen room free of charge. Then there’d be all the teenagers during prom season whose parents fronted them rooms. During these nights it wouldn’t be unusual for the cops to chase some drunken 17-year-old lad through the lobby and actually catch the drunk little shit by the banquet rooms which was essentially a dead-end being that the emergency exit (of all things) wasn’t obvious down that way. The cops would beat the bastard down pretty good and drag him off to the drunk tank while their girlfriends screamed in horror, “What did he do?!” Public urination was usually the offense. If there were actually any heroes here, it would be the cops.

 

Not every ‘hero’ who walked through the door was a nuisance. The crowds that accompanied the Women’s Bible-Fest and Hairstylists Convention were rather amusing in that both groups were equally, frequently horny and this made Seth and Darin salivate. Sure, the women would occasionally flirt with me, too, but I’m a professional and also not impressed by people who will sleep with anyone. (I mean, how can that be flattering?) Otherwise, both groups were well-behaved compared to other gaggles of guests, such as teams visiting to play ‘professional’ American soccer (any given team’s star player, completely unknown outside their small world, was always a tool). And don’t even get me started on the doctors attending medical conventions. They were always sure to let us know how much our rooms sucked while they were too cheap to book the slightly better Hyatt half-a-mile away. Do you want to super-close to the convention center or not? Are you crippled? Do you have polio? Maybe you should see a doctor about that. Twats.

 

Besides the occasional once-famous ‘celebrities,’ I fail to recall any particular guests in detail, save two lovely sex-workers that stayed at the hotel for several weeks. The house they’d just bought in Portland was being renovated, so the story goes, and needed a place to stay but had no friends or family in town. Although young, 23 and 28 respectively, they were discreet in bringing johns through the lobby – which wasn’t frequent and always late at night – always paid in advance with cash, never drunk or high, and tipped well. When they had time on their hands or just couldn’t sleep, they would bug Seth and I at the front desk in the dead of night for conversation, finding my renditions of the morning news in a tawdry voice particularly funny. We never discussed the particulars of their work or mine once it was understood that ultimately, we all wanted to be doing other things. I had more respect for sex-workers after knowing them, understanding that they were really as normal as anyone else and in this case, perhaps a bit saner compared to the average guest.

 

Oh yeah, the ‘celebrities.’ I know there were more but only two stood out enough to recall off the top of my head. The first was the Godfather of Funk, George Clinton. He came back from a show one night with a fly-girl on his arm and was eating a slice of pizza. Taking bites, he walked towards me at the front desk, mumbled something incomprehensible about love and peace through his bloodshot eyes, and left the crust of the pizza in front me when he walked away. And yes, of course he smelled like weed. Like, A LOT of weed. I probably got a contact high as I recall wondering if he wanted the crust back or if I should eat it.

 

The other ‘celebrity’ was this short, rail-thin guy who looked like your average 80’s rocker from L.A. though vaguely familiar. All else I knew about the guy before looking up his room number (I’ll get to that in a bit) was that he was a rock band promoter. Well, he comes down from his room around 1am and rummages through our gift shop looking for something to eat. He finds a frozen burrito and asks me if I can heat it up since his room doesn’t have a microwave. I tell him, sure, actually you can come with me to the employee break room. We end up talking about guitars and 80’s rock for about half an hour until Darin radios to say I’m needed at the desk. So cool guy goes back to his room and me back to work. This guy returns to the gift shop about an hour later, collects our several buckets of Red Vines on display and brings them to the desk. “Can I charge these to the room, man?” he asks. Of course, so I ask him for his room number while thinking, Fuck, this guy really digs Red Vines. Holy cow! It’s the singer Stephen Pearcy from the 80’s hair band, Ratt! I saw this guy on tour in Germany 13 years prior. So there you have it; Stephen Pearcy of Ratt really likes Red Vines. Who knew?

 

Despite the star-studded shenanigans of one of America’s greatest hotel chains, I was growing restless. It's not that I didn’t like working at Holiday Inn – by that time referred to as Horror Day Inn – but it was the graveyards, general low quality of guests, and over an hour by train commute that had me looking for a better option. (Oh, god, when it snowed and the trains were delayed and I couldn’t get home to sleep…oh, that burned me up. Ask my wife about Angry Johnny.) A better option became available when a boutique hotel just across the river with a whole 20-minute reduction in commute time announced a need for a night auditor, a job I landed so quickly I didn’t have time to leave Holiday Inn with any fanfare, not that I would have received any. Caleb, the van driver, was the only one who seemed upset by my sudden two-week’s notice since I think I’m the only person that thought he was funny. I like to think Seth would’ve been upset, too, had he not left before me, after which we quickly fell out of touch undoubtably because he was too busy and tired from beating people up working as a bouncer somewhere. I’ll always tell you to play to your strengths.

 

It wasn’t long before I had the new auditor who smelled like poo trained so I could be on my merry way. I couldn’t have predicted that not a whole lot would change at my new ritzier venue, though. It’s true what they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. But that’s a story for another late night shift.

 

To be continued…