18.

It was a weird, wild and wonderful world that I had walked into, the luxury hotel life of the Roaring Twenties. It was a world which typified rugged individualism at its best-or worst, a world whose urbane countenance revealed nothing of the seething and sinister turmoil of its innards, a world whose one rule.was that you did nothing you could not get away with.

There was no pity in that world. The usual laws governing rewards and punishments did not obtain. It was not what you did that mattered, but how you did it.

Nominally, there were strictly enforced rules against such things as getting drunk on duty, intimacy with lady guests and forcing tips from the stingy. But the management could have knowledge that you were guilty of all those crimes, and as long as you did them in such a way as not to give rise to complaints or disturb the routine of the hotel, nothing would be done. Rather, you would be regarded as a boy who knew his way around and was on his toes.

And this att.i.tude, I suppose, was not nearly so strange as it seems.

It was the bellboy who was always in the closest contact with this hurly-burly world, a world always populated by strangers of unknown background and unpredictable behavior. Alone and on his own, with no one to turn to for advice or help, he had to please and appease those strangers: the eccentric, the belligerent, the morbidly depressed. He had to spot the potential suicide and soothe the fighting drunk and satisfy the whims of those who were determined not to be satisfied. And always, no matter how he felt, he had to do those things swiftly and un.o.btrusively.

Briefly, he had to be nervy and quick-thinking. He had to be adequate to any emergency. And a boy who was inadequate in his own emergencies was also apt to be so in those concerning the hotel. In a word, he wasn't "sharp." He didn't "know his way around," and thus, axiomatically, did not belong around.

In the indictments lodged against bellboys in the hotel "growler," the rough equivalent of a ship's log, one word appeared over and over-caught. A boy was fired or fined or turned over to the police because he had been caught in an offense, not merely because he had committed one.

There was no day off in the hotel world. The night shift worked seven days a week, from eleven at night until seven in the morning. The day shifts were also on the job seven days, but their hours were adjusted to the then universal long-day, short-day of the hotel world. One of the two shifts came on at seven in the morning, quit at noon, returned at six and worked until eleven at night. The following day it came to work at noon and quit at six P.M., the other shift working the double-watch long-day.

One night, when there was an unexpected flurry of business, a day boy was held over onto the night shift. It was his second holdover of the day, and he had been on duty since seven in the morning. So, after the business had been taken care of, he claimed the "late" boy's privilege of a room, and fell exhausted into bed.

Unfortunately, he had not rid himself of his cigarette before going to sleep. When he awakened a couple of hours later he was on the point of being incinerated and asphyxiated. Almost strangled, he got the windows open. Then he dragged the mattress and bedclothes into the bathroom and put them under the shower.

Scorched, but not seriously harmed, he got the fire out. But the expensive blankets, spread and box-mattress were ruined. Being caught in a mess like this would bring down the direst punishment which the hotel could devise.

The boy considered every angle of the seemingly hopeless situation. Then, he went downstairs, confessed his crime to the night clerk, and proposed a way of extricating himself with honor and profit. All he needed, he said, was the use of the emergency key (used in opening doors locked from the inside) and the a.s.sistance of one of the lobby porters.

Being exceedingly sharp himself, the night clerk flatly refused. Under no circ.u.mstances would he involve himself in the matter.

"I'm going into the coffee shop for a bite to eat," he said. "And I had better not hear of you using the emergency key or the porters while I am gone."

"I understand," the boy nodded. "I see what you mean."

Now, one of the more or less regular residents of the hotel was a more-than-regular drinkei a man who pa.s.sed out early and stayed pa.s.sed out. It was his misfortune to be a guest of the hotel on this particular night.

He burst into consciousness from his stupor with his room filled with acrid fumes and his bed and himself literally floating in water. He did not need to ask the a.s.sembled company-which included the porter, clerk and bellboy- the cause of his plight. That was all too obvious. All he could do was thank them for saving his unworthy life, and offer recompense for the damage.

He tipped everyone handsomely. He distributed additional gratuities (without knowing it) when he paid the clerk's claim for damages. Then, because he had been so tractable in a trying situation, he was transferred to another room at no charge.

"It'll have to be one that's been slept in," the clerk explained. "But I know the former occupant quite well, and I a.s.sure you-"

"Not at all," the man protested. "Very kind of you."

So they took him down to the other room and put him to bed on a mattress and under bedclothes that were still warm with his own body.

News of this stunt spread throughout the hotel, and the employee partic.i.p.ants were marked as men on their way up. As for their scapegoat, the management's att.i.tude toward his part in the affair was also characteristic. Here was a man who got so besotted that he could be lifted and moved about without waking. Obviously, anyone who habitually attained such a condition was a menace to himself and the hotel.

So his name was entered on the "heel list"-a catalogue of undesirables-and he ceased to be a guest.

Since practically every hotel man worth his salt had begun his career as a bellhop, the tendency was not to be too severe on a sinner who, on the whole, appeared to be a "good boy." If you didn't "cry" (crying was bothering the management with a problem), if you were, by and large, personable, punctual and perspicacious, if you were an allaround boy-one who could fill in instantly for the valets, food checkers, waiter captains and the operators of elevators, switchboards and Elliott-Fisher machines-if you were all that, you were ent.i.tled to consideration no matter what your misdeed.

There was only one elevator operator on the night shift, and he was often too busy with guest traffic to bother with mere bellboys. Thus we were in the habit of opening up one of the driverless cars and transporting ourselves. This fact led to my first experience with the strange ways of hotel discipline, and a singularly terrifying experience it was.

I had been on the job about two months at the time, and was attending a party of vaudevillians in a third-floor suite. I had also been imbibing freely with those vaudevillians, so much so that I was very far from being sharp and on my toes. I left their rooms and trotted back to the elevator banks. I inserted a key in the door of my chosen car, swung the door open and stepped inside.

Inside the shaft, that is. Another boy had come along and taken my car.

I fell five floors in all-the three above-ground and an additional two into the bas.e.m.e.nt and sub-bas.e.m.e.nt. It wasn't an unchecked fall, of course. I was grabbing at cables and gear all the way. But you may take my word for it that even with full catch-as-catch-can privileges and no holds barred, a five-story fall is a hair-raising and painful ordeal.

I lay at the bottom of the pit for a few minutes, too shocked and pain-wracked to move. Then, groaning and mumbling dazedly, I sat up.

The pit door snapped open, and an ashen-faced engineer looked in at me. He helped me out, then ran to inform the room clerk of my accident.

This particular clerk-one of several I was to work with-was the epitome of all clerks: crisp, cool and cynical. He looked me over, the corflers of his mouth quirking strangely.

"Hurt pretty bad, eh?" he said. "Like to take the rest of the night off?"

"N-no, sir." I suppressed a groan. "I feel fine."

"You're drunk. You've got a breath that would knock a horse down."

"I haven't had a thing to drink," I said. "I've been chewing a new kind of cough drop."

"You're drunk. That's why you fell down the elevator shaft."

"Me?" I laughed shakily. "I didn't fall down the shaft, sir. I was-uh-"

"Go on. And you'd better make it good, understand?"

"I-uh-I save tinfoil, sir. Off of cigarette packages and gum wrappers. I climbed in there to look for some."

The engineer turned suddenly and departed. The clerk was abruptly stricken with a spasm of coughing.

He recovered from the fit, jerked out a pad of fine slips and began to write.

"You're going to have to sharpen up," he said curtly. "Get on your toes and stay there. You're a fairly good boy-show quite a lot of promise on some occasions-but you'll have to do a lot better."

"Yes, sir," I said, "All right." He ripped off the fine slip and handed it to me. "Now get yourself washed up and cleaned up, and get up on that floor! Right away, understand?"

"Yes, sir" I said, and I looked down at what he had written: To J. Thompson, bellboy, $1 fine.

Caught in general untidiness.

My next experience with the peculiar ways of hotel discipline came one morning when I had been held over onto the day shift. I was very tired and had taken a few drinks to pep myself up. Those few set so well with me that I took a few more, after which, as nearly as I could reconstruct events, I sat down in one of the lobby sand jars and went to sleep.

The bell captain promptly spotted me and I was hustled down to the locker room. The a.s.sistant manager, the same one who had hired me, followed us, vowing that I ought to be murdered.

"Of all the no-good blank blank blanks," he yelled, "you're the world's worst! You're fired, get me? Fired!"

"Y-yes, sir," I said.

"Another thing," he snarled, turning toward the door. "One more thing. Don't you dare come around here asking for your job back-for at least a week!"

To the best of my recollection, I was fired six times during my several years at the hotel. I was always rehired, sometimes within the same night. Five of my firings were for drinking, the other for smoking in a guest's room-all very serious offenses. Yet the hotel consistently rehired me where it curtly refused jobs to boys discharged for nominally trifling reasons. Failure, it seemed, could only be offset by ability. The "sharp" received every consideration, the dull got nothing.

This was all wrong, I am sure. But as a frequent traveler and diner-out, I often look back with longing on the days when an employee might be discharged on a moment's notice, without severance pay for himself or penalty for his employer-simply on the grounds that he was unsuited to his job.

19.

As a bellboy I supposedly drew a salary of fifteen dollars a month, but in practice I seldom saw a penny of it. It was almost always consumed by fines, cleaning and pressing charges, insurance fees and the like. My earnings were in tips which ranged from virtually nothing a night to as much as fifty dollars.

On a bad night, a Sunday say, with no parties going on and few guests arriving, I might make less than a dollar. But on a good Sat.u.r.day or during a lively convention, it would be no trick at all to knock off twenty-five, thirtyfive or fifty or more dollars. Or, I should say, it was easy enough to do after I learned my way around. My first week on the job, I barely earned enough to pay for my cigarettes and carfare.

During normal times, only two bellboys were used on the night shift, and they were often idle except for the hotel's endless untipped "dead work." My first working companion, a "boy" of some forty years, took advantage of my ignorance to the end that I did the lion's share of the dead work and got a very small lamb's share of the profitable "bells."

He would take a call over the bell captain's telephone without letting on that it was a call. It would be a wrong number or a guest inquiring about his mail or something of the kind. Then, having saved up four or five bells, he would take care of them all on one trip. He also sent me on calls to empty rooms, and gave me bells which he knew to be trifling while he took the good ones.

After a week or so of this, I began to get wise to Pelly, or Pelican, as he was called, and I retaliated with the same stunts he had been pulling on me. I tried to reason with him. I pointed out that as surely as he tricked me, I would trick him and that we would both lose money as a result. But Pelican took this as a sign that I was weakening. He told me, in effect, to do my d.a.m.nedest and that I would find his d.a.m.nedest considerably better.

We night boys had many duties which took us behind the desk, ch.o.r.es such as cleaning the key rack and sorting mail. So, around three o'clock one morning, I removed a rate slip from the room rack and called Pell from a mezzanine house phone.

I spoke in a high, pseudo-feminine voice. I told him that the window in my room was stuck and asked for a bellboy's a.s.sistance in opening it.

Pell promised to take care of the matter, but I could tell he was suspicious. Peering through the rails of the mezzanine, I saw him hurry to the room rack, then nod triumphantly as he saw that there was no rate slip for the number I had given him. Obviously, or so he thought, the room was unrented. Actually, it was occupied by one of the crustiest old dowagers ever to curse a hotel with her patronage.

Pell s.n.a.t.c.hed up the bell captain's phone and rang the room. I crept down the stairs, slipped around behind the key rack and returned the rate slip to its proper place. Then, I sauntered up behind him, listening to him read "me" off.

"I'm comin' after you," he was saying. "You keep up that squeaky-voice c.r.a.p an' I'll come right up there'n get you. I'll turn you wrong side out. Kick your tail end right out through your teeth. Who I think I'm talkin' to? Why, you goofy pin-headed granny-dodger, I'm-I'm-"

He had turned and seen me. A look of pure horror spread over his face.

"Y-you," he stuttered, pointing a wobbling finger at me. "I th-thought that you-"

"Yeah?" I grinned at him. "As I was saying, Pell, I think we'd better stop rooking each other, don't you?"

He slammed up the receiver, silencing the outraged shrieks that were pouring over the wire. Lifting it again, he gave hasty instructions to the night switchboard operator. She was to say that the call had come in from the outside, from whom she did not know. If she made the story stick, he would buy her a five-pound box of candy.

Well, she made the story stick, and Pell escaped the penalty for his lack of sharpness. But never again did he gyp me on a call. We got along so well together that I felt quite depressed when he was literally chased out of the hotel. I was saddened by the event, but I still think it was one of the most hilarious I have ever witnessed.

Pell and the then room clerk, a Mr. Hebert, detested each other. Pell was constantly stating his intention of quitting or getting a transfer to days. Just as constantly, Hebert announced his intention to fire Pell or have him transferred. Yet neither did either. They chose rather to stay on the same shift, making things tough for each other.

Being in authority, Hebert would appear to have had the advantage of Pell. He could fine him, load him with dead work, bawl him out cruelly before other employees. Having done those things, however, and being unwilling to fire him, there was little else he could do. Pell, a mere bellboy with no authority, could do plenty.

He was a very smooth talker, a wonder at insinuating himself into the good graces of touchy and exacting guests. Having convinced such a person that he was "all for him" and hated to see him mistreated, Pell would reluctantly reveal that the man had been given the worst room in the house and at double the usual rate.

"They call this the dead room," he would say (to repeat one of his lies). "I think there must be some kind of germs in the wallpaper, the way everyone dies that stays here. Now, I know you won't let on that I told you-I just think you're a very nice gentleman, and I don't expect any big tip for tipping you off, but-"

At this juncture, the guest would usually tip Pell handsomely, step to the telephone and sulphurously demand that Hebert switch him to another room. Hebert would want to know why, naturally. The guest, enjoined to secrecy by Pell, would refuse to explain. He simply wanted another room, and he wanted it right now, by G.o.d, and he'd better not, by G.o.d, be gypped on the price.

Red-faced and bewildered, wondering, aloud, what the h.e.l.l was getting into people, Hebert would do his best to satisfy the man. But the suspicions of a man who had been placed in the dreaded "dead room" at a double rate were not easy to a.s.suage. By the time he had finished talking to the guest, Hebert was on the point of talking to himself. Sweat was pouring from his face and he was trembling in every joint, and there was a wild look in his eyes.

It was Pell who spread the rumor that Hebert wore no pants behind the high marble counter, a canard which- according to the s.e.x and temperament of the guest- resulted in looks of disgust, scowls, and howls of laughter for the baffled and blushing room clerk. Pell was also responsible for the widespread belief that Hebert maintained a stable of wh.o.r.es in the hotel, renting them Out at very low rates to gentlemen who could prove they were "all right."

"He don't care about the money, see," Pell would explain. "He's one of these guys that gets a bang out of it. Now, don't let on that I told you-"

Poor Hebert. He had a strong hunch that Pell was at the bottom of his many and maddening difficulties, but he could not prove it.

If Pell had had as much patience as ingenuity, I think he might have succeeded in his announced intention of driving Hebert nuts. But hara.s.sed as he was, Hebert stubbornly refused to crack up. And, annoyed by this perverseness, and emboldened by success, Pell attempted a master stroke.

As I have mentioned, there were two a.s.sistant managers. One was a primly urbane man who managed to be both exquisitely efficient and completely unimpressive. The other, the "Mr. Mushmouth" who had hired me, was likewise an able hotel man but so turbulent and foiblefilled that he seemed to mirror the strange world he worked in.

Essentially kindhearted, he was always a little wary, ready to leap down the throat of anyone who seemed to take advantage of him. Short and paunchy, he was also very vain-vain and sensitive. He was ever ready to interpret a friendly smile as condescension or a helpful gesture as a jibe. And h.e.l.l had no fury like his when he felt himself slighted.

I got along very well with him, probably, I suppose, because we were much alike.

He would come in at the side door at around six in the morning of his long day, his shoulders hunched like a prize fighter's, his sleep-haggard face set in a deep and watchful scowl. Crossing the lobby at a steady but wary gait, he would pause at the end of the long marble counter where he liked to find me stationed, and slowly turn sideways to it. Then, he would remove his beautiful Homburg hat and diffidently thrust it at me.

"Mrningjim," he would grunt.

"Mrningsir," I grunted back at him.

"Srningouside."

"Rnedallnightsir."

"Huh."

"Yuhsr."

At this point he would usually turn and scowl at me and I would scowl back at him. But sometimes, when the feeling was upon him, he would continue the "conversation" for several minutes, deliberately speaking with increasing unintelligibility and being replied to similarly, until we made less than no sense at all.

I was the only one he would speak to until he had had his breakfast. Hebert, poor soul, insisted on crying out a cheery "good morning" to him, but all he got in return was a hate-filled glare.

After breakfast, the a.s.sistant manager would return to the lobby for a brief report on the night's events from Hebert. Then, he would reclaim his hat and make an outside inspection of the hotel. His routine was always the same. He was always the same. Vain, sensitive, quick tempered. Thus, the raw material of Pell's plot against Hebert.

There was a great deal of paper work on the night shift, and Hebert was supplied with a rubber stamp of his name to use on the countless invoices and charge slips which required his endors.e.m.e.nt. Pell obtained an impression of the stamp on a piece of paper. He had a duplicate made and brought it to work with him. Then . . .

The explosive and suspicious little a.s.sistant manager was in an even more terrible mood than usual that morning. He barely grunted at me, and he looked like he could have killed Hebert for the latter's insistently cheerful greeting. Shoulders hunched, hands clenched into fists, he disappeared into the coffee shop.