The Hospitality Industry Is In My Blood - I Live to Serve

The other day Alan and I were standing on the corner of State and Madison and we were talking about the block. It has a lot of history for me.

The new building on the northeast corner of Dearborn and Madison used to hold First Federal Savings and Loan, a bank I started to work at when I was in my last days of pledging Delta - yes, that was a pretty long time ago. Most of the people who worked there didn't look like me, but there were a few, and they were extremely nice and mentoring. It was a college job, but it paid well and gave me a steady income and enough money to go on my first trip to New York and see "Dreamgirls" on Broadway. If you haven't heard Jennifer Holliday sing " And I Am Telling You, I'm Not Going" live and in person - you actually haven't lived. No disrespect to Jennifer Hudson, but the movie doesn't touch Broadway. Since First Federal was sucked up by Citigroup, the location was closed and the building was torn down a few years ago.

A few feet east of that building was the first location I went to find something to fill my time while I was job hunting for a full time job - I went to Olsten Temporaries at 7 West Madison - and met with BJ.

At that time Olsten was the biggest temp service in Chicago. They had offices all over downtown and River North. BJ was the head of the place and he interviewed all of the applicants personally. When he interviewed me, he let me know that he was sending me to his best client. I didn't realize at the time that everyone was his best client, it would be a few years before I found out how temp services operated. He sent me to the Park Hyatt on Michigan Avenue to help the General Manager get organized.

The Park Hyatt was the place where all roads led at that point. Other than the Ritz Carlton, there weren't many more exclusive hotels. The Park Hyatt was the preferred hotel of people looking for complete luxury. I got introduced to the concept of a Concierge at the Park Hyatt.

Working at a hotel is very different from a regular office job. You might come in at 8:00 am and leave at 5:00 pm, but there is a group of people who got there long before you and another who are leaving long after you. Hotels never close and the drama, and the stream of information go on forever. You have to get a briefing before you start your day - you have to give a briefing before you leave. A briefing is a synopsis of what you took care of , what you need to start with and what the person taking over for you or working in your area needs to know about what you did in case there is a question while you're at home. This ensures that everyone is on the same page and guests, as well as other employees, know how to proceed and don't have to reinvent the wheel.

When I get to the Hyatt, the General Manager is a tall, slender, slightly older man with dark hair and graying temples. I don't remember his name, but I do remember what he told me about working at a luxury hotel. Working in the hotel industry means your job is to make them feel as welcome and as comfortable as your best friend when they come over to spend the night. You're there to anticipate their needs and carry them out before they even ask you. If you welcome them when they come, find out what kind of room they like before you check them in, ask them about their plans for their visit, and what they'd like to do while in Chicago, you can prepare a list of suggestions that will work for them before they've even unpacked. When is the last time you got that kind of service from your hotel? Every full service hotel should offer that kind of service, and once you've had it, you won't be able to go back to the other stuff.

I was only there to organize an exhaustive list of former guests and their preferences but I made the most of my time there. I got to learn how to serve people who are some of the most well known in the country. Before "The Devil Wears Prada", I was getting my own tutorial in dealing with unusual demands and how to get people to do things they never thought they would do. It was a job in the beginning, but before it was over - it was a calling.

It was fascinating to see people you had read about, watched on the big screen or on TV come into the hotel and get treated to a level of luxury you seldom see. We took their messages, we made their dinner arrangements, we ordered their limos, we delivered breakfast. There was literally no limit to what a day in my life might entail.

Working in a hotel (at that time) means you come in early through a side door. It's part of the fantasy world of a hotel - you just appear before the guests like a fairy godmother and solve their problems. Since I worked during the day I got to eat a monstrous breakfast that was made to my specifications every morning. Think omelettes with mushrooms, onions, and sausage on a bed of fresh hash browns and real fresh squeezed orange juice. If I got tired of that, how about waffles and maple syrup and thick patty link sausages. Lunch was the thickest, richest cheeseburger, fish and chips, or a Cobb salad smothered in meat and cheese with a rich blue cheese dressing. Good food, nice people, thinking ahead of the curve and making things happen so that guests would be blown away as soon as they stepped on the property - not bad. It was actually fun.

I guess I did a good job - when my assignment was finished the General Manage of the Park Hyatt referred me to the Employment Manager at the Palmer House. A couple of weeks later, on July 3, the night of the fireworks, my mother was dogging fireworks watchers to drop me off for the first of many midnight shifts at the Palmer House Hilton. That's where my real career in the hotel biz began. At that point, I was just a trainee, but I was tossed in at the deep end at the Palmer House. Working with stars like BB King, Maze, and the Gap Band, I handled communications and guest services. Working at a hotel as an employee rather than a temp meant that I could count on at least two squares a day - prepared by a chef, free health insurance and dental care, and a free or discounted hotel room at any Hilton location. General Managers set aside the best possible rooms for hotel employees visiting their property - again, it's like inviting your best friend to spend time with you. They roll out the red carpet and make sure you get the best room in the place they can offer you. Another perk is discounted dry cleaning.

You haven't been tested until a star stays at your hotel after a big concert. Working the midnight shift you get exposed to call girls on the regular anyway - yes, they really exist, yes, they don't take no for an answer, and no, you can't always spot them right away. They work as hard at their job as you do at yours. Only thing is my job is legal, and my job is to make sure the Vice Squad doesn't raid the hotel on my shift and cause some embarrassing pictures to appear on the cover of the Tribune as your General Manager wakes up to his breakfast in bed.

The concert is over and people were after Maze. The lobby was filled with photographers and groupies in an unhealthy quantity. Guests stay under assumed names and a security guard takes them to their floor to make sure they aren't followed. One thing about the Palmer House is that they have an unlimited quantity of elevators so we can get people where they need to go. The group was great - gave me free cassettes and autographs - I didn't even ask for anything. It was heaven. If only I could have watched Frankie Beverly sing in the lobby while the kitchen poured tea down his throat. I used to sing in the choir, so I know that a good pot of hot tea after a night of singing is good for the pipes. Thinking ahead, that's my job!

As it happened, I was dealing with an airline pilot who needed to squeeze six hours of sleep into the four hours he had left and he was trying to see if he had enough time to get the required sleep he needed before he took off for his next stop. I only had a couple of rooms left, but I couldn't get confirmation that one was clean and ready to be sold. Here's a solution I'd have to brief someone on - I gave the pilot a suite to sleep in. He looked like he was dead on his feet, and after all, who wants to fly with a sleepy pilot? I know I don't! So I left the General Manager a note that I was giving the pilot a suite instead of one of those rooms the size of closets we usually give them. The pilot was ecstatic, but if Housekeeping didn't clean the suite before tomorrow's guests came, I'd be getting a shoe tossed at me!

So I made the Head Housekeeper promise to clean that suite first, and I left a message on a pile of never ending messages to my manager briefing him on my executive decision. He didn't come downstairs from his in hotel apartment until 9:00 am and I left at 7am on the dot for a quick breakfast and a quicker ride against traffic to my home and a waiting bed. It's all in a day's work, but it is nice to get that little letter of thanks from the group - along with a ticket to the concert and a commendation from United, who I learned later pays us quite handsomely to make sure their pilots and flight attendants get to sleep as soon as they arrive. My reward for thinking on my feet? I got the stars and the flight crews and handled their wake up calls myself. No United flights fell out of the sky while I was on duty, and that's how I started earning my living making other people happy first.

Bring Back Wendy Ward's Charm School

I was cleaning out my closet and I had some books stored away - one was my Wendy Ward Charm book:

In addition to selling clothes, appliances and electronics, Montgomery Ward used to offer a charm school at their location in Evergreen Plaza (yes, this really was a while ago) and my cousin and I were dispatched there so that when we finally hit the real world, we wouldn't reduce the rest of our family to shaking their head and making them wonder where they went wrong....

But where is a service like that for today's pre-teens? Where are my nieces going to go for training the likes of which you'll only see in "Gigi"?

At the time I thought it was a little silly - I was already walking and talking so didn't I obviously know how to do it?? I thought that I was sitting in chairs just fine until I was corrected on the art of holding one's knees together, sitting easily rather than falling or collapsing, and the importance of shaking hands and looking people in the eye.

You take these things for granted at your own peril.

I spend hours every week working with young people who are trying to find a summer job, and about a quarter of the time is spent reminding them to smile - we aren't trying to kill them, just ask if they have reliable transportation and see if they can work with the public long enough to get their money and make them want to come back the next day.

Everybody needs to know how to shake hands confidently, walk without slumping, look people in the eye without getting self conscious and speak without mumbling. My work with teen-agers is as much about that as it is about anything else, but we can't do it alone.

The classes about how far apart your eyebrows should be and how to select a dress that won't make your grandparents blush - priceless!

Learning how to accept a date and a compliment with giggling uncontrollably and how to be honest but not brutally so (OK, I might have slept through that session actually)is more important that reading "How to Win Friends and Influence People" which is a little further up the scale, but takes for granted that you already mastered the fundamentals.

We need more fundamentals here - maybe that's why people are falling in the customer service department.