5 Things You Learn About Rich People Working at a Nice Hotel

What do you think would happen to you if you were caught looking like a bag full of illegal drugs had exploded in your car? Here's what happens if you're a rich person staying at a fancy hotel: An employee (me) carefully gathers up your drugs, puts them back in the bag, and hustles them up to your room. When I told a security guard about it later, he asked if I had taken any of the drugs from them. I told him no, of course not. He informed me that I should have, because, hey, free drugs.

Another time, a valet driver (not me) saw a man get out of his car and drop a small bag full of white powder. Again, the valet quickly ran and grabbed it, then found the man inside the bar. He told him to check his pockets, and said if something was missing he should meet him in the bathroom. The man did as requested and hurried to the bathroom to retrieve his, I'm assuming here, laundry detergent.

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That's just the way it works -- you accommodate the guests, and at that income level, it means you stay out of the way of whatever they want to do. When a car full of female escorts pulls up, you go and assist them. It isn't illegal prostitution when rich people do it -- it's just a "private party."

On another occasion, I went to collect bags from a guest, and when I was let in, the room was in shambles. The windows had been taped. Not just a little tape on the window, either -- the entire window was covered. I was completely taken aback. It looked like the meth house from Breaking Bad (pick one), but the guest walked out in a suit, spoke like a completely normal person, and had all of his teeth. He never once acknowledged the mess other than to mention he needed housekeeping. I asked the housekeeper about him later and she just shrugged and said he tipped well.

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That's the other thing -- management never cared about destroyed rooms, because the guests tended to have the money to cover it, so at worst the room was out of commission for a night or two while we replaced everything with the stash of extra room items we had on hand for this exact reason.

If all of this sounds very amusing, imagine yourself in this situation: I got a call one night to go make a guest's bed but was told I would need gloves because a mess had been made on the sheets. As I approached the door I heard a lady tell her husband to "blame it on the dog." When I got to the room I found that: A) the sheets were covered in smeared fecal matter, and B) there was no dog.

My creepiest encounter was with a woman who was going through a divorce, who sob-storied her way into a huge discount in order to afford a stay at the hotel. The other staff treated her somewhat poorly, and I took offense, thinking that they treated her this way because she was poorer than our usual guests and wouldn't tip as well. (I found out later it was because she was racist and had called a co-worker a racial slur.)

I spent a decent amount of time with her that night, talking and just being nice because I felt bad. She asked me to get something out of her truck and bring it to her room. Upon entering her room, she offered me an assortment of pills and pot as a tip. I politely declined. Before I could leave, she asked me if I was shy. I thought it was an odd question but answered that in fact I was not shy. She then stripped down and asked me to rub lotion on her back. Seeing as how I had to do what the guest wanted (and she wasn't too bad on the eyes), I did it.

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The whole time she stood facing away, and grinding her backside into me. And if you think this is going to lead to a clearly fake sex story borrowed from a porno, don't worry -- after I rubbed the lotion on, she promptly put her clothes back on and said thanks. To be clear, I wouldn't have done anything with this obviously crazy woman. It just would've been nice to have the opportunity to say no.

Specifically, the ones who have been rich long enough that they don't really have any concept of the value of money. Sure, they'll pay attention to how much they paid for a house or a sports franchise, but they don't do their own shopping and they don't see their own bills -- other people take care of that stuff. This is never more obvious than when you see them try to figure out how to tip the husky bellman who's just schlepped eight pieces of luggage from car to room.

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They seriously just hand you random bills. I was once tipped more than $100 for showing a guest a cab that was on the front drive. Another time I spent an hour showing a room to a guest and unloading two cars worth of luggage, only to get tipped $5 in ones. It wasn't that I did a poor job or that the guest was a miser -- it was the fact that in his mind, he just handed me five bills and that was a lot. It was a foreign concept to him; it'd be like if you went to some primitive country that used beans as currency. You'd just give people handfuls of the stuff until they seemed satisfied.

If at this point you're wondering if famous people ever stayed at the hotel, the answer is yes, but ...

Another time, a drunk woman cornered me while walking through the hotel and thanked me for my years of service. I don't know if she thought I was a veteran (I'm not) or if she just really liked the way I carried luggage. She then proceeded to tell me, for 30 long minutes, about how she actually ghost wrote the movie Independence Day. I asked if she wrote the Bill Pullman speech, and she said she didn't. It was one of the most significant bummers of my hotel career.

Almost as much of a bummer as Pullman's career after that movie.

The best visit had to have been from Bill Cosby -- when he came in, he pulled a very grandfatherly bouquet of plastic flowers out of his trunk and gave them to the female security officer. On the way up to his room, he doled out folksy wisdom and cracked dad jokes to the delight of his two-person audience. I guess this would have made for a more interesting story if he had, I don't know, pulled a switchblade on me or something. But he just seemed to really care about making people happy.

If I'm making it sound like being rich and powerful is a pretty sweet deal, well, it probably is. But then you run into the people who have to constantly surround themselves with a small army to avoid being murdered.

We once had a vice president stay at the hotel. It may have been a secret, or they just forgot to tell the night staff. When I pulled in to park in the employee lot, a man wearing a suit (no uniform, no badge, and no visible gun) raised his arm and told me to stop. My brain immediately turned to Hollywood memories of tantalizingly European terrorists kidnapping rich people. Well I wasn't about to be a pawn in that game.

20th Century Fox

I high-tailed it out of there and drove to the rear of the building to the employee entrance, to see what was going on. Before I could park to go inside, three men were at my car, guns drawn, telling me to step out of the vehicle. I told them I worked at the hotel and showed them my badge. They let me go but told me that every car had to be sniffed for bombs before parking. After a change of clothes and a shower, I endured the most boring night of my life, because apparently no one wants to go to a restaurant or bar and have to wait in line to have their car searched by Secret Service.

We had another high-level political official check in with a complement of Secret Service and local police. I went for a break with the overnight chef out back of the hotel, and we started bullshitting about the insane level of security. I wondered aloud if they were possibly listening to us while we were outside. Our question was answered when the chef innocently mused that it would be horrible if that night was the night a bomb went off in the hotel. I was shocked that she would say this. The agents in the unmarked car across the street must have thought it was hilarious, however, because we could hear them laughing.

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But by far the most security we've ever had was for big oil executives. We shut down two entire floors for them that only a select few hotel employees were allowed on. I was not one of those employees. Unlike the Secret Service dudes, rich people private security is as twitchy and heavily armed as every single character in a Michael Bay movie. That didn't stop my manager from sending me to their floor to pick up luggage, though, because all the most exciting gambling is done with other people's lives.

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I was a sweaty, nervous wreck as I entered the elevator. All night I had been surrounded by extremely armed security and had been told over and over I wasn't allowed on their floors. As the elevator doors opened, my mouth started working without permission from my brain, and I pulled out my ID card and yelled, "Management sent me here to pick up bags!"

The security officer (with two visible guns on her person) instructed me to wait for the bags to be brought to me. My brain still hadn't caught up, and I showed every guard that passed my ID and loudly told them why I was there. They all had a good laugh at me, but the joke was on them because nobody shot me.

For more insider stories, check out 5 Terrifying Things Only Truckers Know About the Highway and 6 Disturbing Things I Learned Writing Your Textbooks.

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