back door girl

Saturday was a record breaker here in Portland, with reports of temperatures over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. It’s not surprising, then, that The Motel was hopping busy with troglodytes from all over the city checking in to escape the heat. Early afternoon was pretty quiet, however, other than this incident.

I was sitting at the desk, quietly reading a Neil Gaiman omnibus and enjoying the not one, but TWO air conditioners blasting away, when with my peripheral vision, I saw a red, Eighties hesher-type car (something t-topped, like a Firebird) drive up. Sighing, I got up to wait for a soon to be guest to walk in to the lobby, and was unsurprised when a hooker came in, barely dressed for the heat, while a mustachioed guy remained sitting in the driver’s seat outside. This was no ordinary transaction, however.

She came in saying, “Please help me get away from this creep; just stand here and talk to me for a minute until my friend gets here to pick me up.”
While she quickly phoned her friend, I obliged. After hanging up, she repeated that she just wanted to escape the creep in the car. I made conversation and got her a cup of water while she called her friend again (I’m thinking pimp, more likely).
“He’ll be here any minute, I swear,” she told me. Too impatient to wait, she asked whether we had a back way out of the lobby, something a lot of people assume we have, but all that’s attached to it is a conference room cum storage area and employee bathroom and the manager’s apartment. But, I have a lot of sympathy for these ladies of the night (as one of my co-workers enjoys referring to them), so instead of saying no, I told her, “There’s no door, but the back window opens onto the alley back there; I’m pretty sure you can get back onto the street that way, and he wouldn’t see you.”
“Could I really? Please?”
“Yeah, no problem,” I told her as I locked the cash drawer and led her over to the back room door.
“You rock, Schatzi!” she said gratefully.

I uncovered and unlocked the back window for the anxious hooker, as she cast apprehensive glances over her shoulder. We popped the screen off, she clambered through it, and skedaddled off, calling, “You’re the best! Thank you so much!”

I quickly locked it back up and covered it, then returned to the office, where I sat down to resume my reading after peeking gleefully at the unsuspecting hasher. Sure enough, he came in after another ten minutes of waiting.

“Could you call my friend and tell her I’m still waiting down here?”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.”
“What do you mean? Just call her up for me. Tell her I’m down here.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t do that.”
With braggadocio: “Oh, I think you can.”
“No, I won’t, sir. And I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Aggressively: “Where’s your manager? Let me talk to him!”
“He’s not here today, sir, and you need to leave.”
Flustered: “You need to call the cops! She tells me she’s going to sell me pot and just leaves! Where is she?”
“Sir, if you feel you’ve been robbed, I suggest YOU call the cops to report the transaction, but you’ll have to do it somewhere else, because I’m asking you to leave. Now.”

He stomped out muttering, then peeled out. And I enjoyed a certain amount of satisfaction.

[Note: You might ask why I would possibly abet a crime (possible solicitation or drug dealing). Well, for the latter, while it was possible that the young lady had promised to sell him weed and had ditched him, I definitely felt the hooker vibe from her, and you develop quite a nose for it after long enough. Also, much like many of the cops I talk to when working, I empathize more strongly with the prostitutes who come here than with the pimps and johns.]

all things to all people

A girl was enraged last night because I could not cash out her Scratch-It ticket.

Could not, or would not?

where, oh where has my little crack rock gone?

A very interesting woman left belongings here yesterday (I'll tell you about that later), but apparently forgot a thing or two because she just called.

Guest: I left some of my things there yesterday. I got most of them, but I'm missing a few things.
Schatzi: What's that?
Guest: My phone charger--
Schatzi: That was with your backpack; I remember putting it on top of it myself. But I'll check the Lost and Found to see if it's there. What else?
Guest: My dog's medicine. I left it on the bed, and he'll die if he doesn't get it.
Schatzi: Well, that's not good. What was it? What did it look like?
Guest: I left it on the bed in a small plastic bag, maybe 4x4?
Schatzi: I see. Well, if it looked like garbage, the housekeepers probably threw it out if they found it.
Guest: It's real important that I get it. Can you check the Lost and Found? It's white, and looks like little rocks.
Schatzi: Uh-huh.

I actually took her phone number down. The charger was indeed left in the Lost and Found, but sadly for her dog, the crack was not.

ghost in the motel

Though our housekeepers aren’t perfect, they do a pretty good job and are fairly thorough (but I must admit that those 20/20 or Dateline-style exposes on the cleanliness of hotel rooms are pretty spot-on; only the sheets and towels are changed daily), so when we had a wave of complaints about dirty rooms, we wondered just what exactly was going on. Invariably, the complaint was that although the room appeared to have been cleaned, the bed seemed used, there were occasionally damp towels in the bathroom, and without exception, there was a used condom and wrapper, plus baby wipes in the otherwise empty trashcan. That is not the typical MO of a lazy or forgetful housekeeper, for if they do make a mistake, they will generally forget to bring back linens and make up the bed, or simply skip the room entirely. The other usual reason for a dirty room showing as clean on the computer is that a forgetful desk clerk moved a guest from one room to another, but neglected to adjust the computer to match. Something else was odd about those dirty rooms; the ones generating the complaints were all in one area, very near the central stairs, an area largely not screened by our security cameras. Curiouser and curiouser.

The situation had been going on for about two weeks when a housekeeper returned to a freshly cleaned room one afternoon to discover that it had already been sullied! The day girl, A, kept a vigilant eye out, and sure enough, saw a girl who had been a regular until the incidents walking through the parking lot. When A asked what she was doing on the property, the girl responded, “Oh, I’m staying here,” and kept going. A car followed, parking off camera behind the stairs, a man got out, and the two disappeared. Six minutes later (I kid you not), the two reappeared. By then, A had gotten a hold of our boss, M, and as the culprits tried to leave, he ran after them, shouting. The man took off for his car and drove out like he was on fire. M grabbed the girl, demanded compensation for the room, and once he had it, threw her off the property, promptly adding her to our DNR (Do Not Rent list).

Once that had gone down, it was easy enough to go back through the security footage and see that the girl—a known prostitute—had been doing the same thing nearly every day for two weeks: walking onto the property where she was familiar as a guest, followed by a john who would park, then surreptitiously follow her to one of the earmarked rooms. The shortest incident we caught on tape was four minutes; the longest was twelve. Since the housekeepers leave the doors of vacant rooms open until they are finished with a section, once the hooker figured out which rooms were off camera, she had herself a nice little scam.

It’s a bad old world.

complaining about work on the Internets

I just came across this old tidbit from shortly after I first began working here.

Schatzi: man, the cops who come to my work talk to me like I am the most sheltered white girl in the universe.
Phill: haha
Schatzi: talking about a hooker: "she's accused of robbing her, well, uh, we call her customers 'johns.'"
Schatzi: DUH!
Phill: haha
Phill: i think they don't wish to offend
Schatzi: it gets worse--
Schatzi: "this vehicle we think is connected to someone who is doing bad things in our area."
Schatzi: BAD THINGS?
Schatzi: a cop fucking sez "BAD THINGS?"
electrocutioner: haha
Schatzi: I'm not four
electrocutioner: did they ask you to show on the dolly where the bad man touched you?
Phill: hahahahahaha