I was at what I took to be a fairly high end hotel for a conference a few months ago. (I wouldn’t really know, and I wasn’t staying there so I don’t know how much the rooms were, but it seemed pretty damned fancy to me.)
In between sessions at this conference, I was feeling really exhausted and wishing I had a room at the hotel so I could get in a quick nap. On a lark, I went to the concierge’s desk to ask if maybe they had a “nap room” for hotel workers or something like that that I could borrow. (I don’t know, you never know, you know?)
I prefaced this a bit awkwardly. I said something like “This is going to be a strange question. It might be a totally inapprpriate question, actually.”
The concierge smiled a perfectly friendly smile, and said as straighlaced as you can imagine, “Are you asking about a hooker?”
So I clarified what I was asking about and the rest of the story isn’t interesting. But here’s my question–two of them in fact:
I can only assume that concierges at fairly fancy hotels actually do get asked about the availability of prostitutes quite regularly, or else I don’t know how to account for how quickly she jumped to that conclusion. Am I right about this? Do people actually regularly go around asking hotel staff about this kind of thing? (And not just random staff they meet, but the specific person on staff assigned to help them find services as an official representative of the hotel?)
And the second question: Do hotels really do this? Was the lady getting ready to accomodate my request, or was she getting ready to rebuff it?
I mean, I’d assume they don’t do it, since I assume the legal troubles they might get in could be severe. On the other hand, it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a “look the other way” element to this on the part of law enforcement.
I worked as the desk clerk at a Super 8 for a while.
I did indeed pretty much get asked about hookers (or even my own availability as a working girl) on a fairly regular basis. People who go to hotels are often looking to do stuff they cannot do at home, and you wouldn’t believe how ballsy some people are. For some people, getting a hooker is just part of the business trip routine.
Hookers bring problems- police, angry spouses, drugs, etc. At my small motel, at least, the live-in managers would rather be getting sleep than dealing with domestic disputes and the like, so we worked pretty hard to keep johns from using our hotel. For example, we didn’t routinely rent to local customers unless they had some really good excuse.
Overseas, all bets are off. In Chinese hotels it’s not uncommon for hookers to call your room at odd hours. Some Cameroonian hotels would have them sitting on plastic chairs all lined up in the lobby!
Some years ago I was in the Sheraton in Stockholm, with a young lady who was on the same course as I.
She nodded to some supremely elegant and beautiful young women sitting at the bar. I was perplexed and she told me that they were all hookers. It would never have entered my head (especially in her company! She was more worldly wise however)
Oh, yeah. Totally normal. I have a friend who’s a night auditor at a nice hotel and he directs people to the “escorts” section of the phone book when asked.
I worked the evening shift at the front desk of one of the nicer hotels in Daytona Beach while I was in college. I was asked about hookers on an infrequent basis, but it was not an uncommon question. Maybe once a month or so. Not so much about rooms for prostitutes, but rather where to go in town to find one.
What language to people use to ask? Is it straightforward, “Hey, where can I get a hooker in these parts?” or is it more slantward, “Is there…uh…someplace to find a … date…around here? NudgenudgewinkwinkknowotImean?”
I’d be terrified that asking outright would land me in the middle of a sting. I don’t really grok how this stuff works. I have a secret fear of being someplace and having someone assume I’m a prostitute and I’d not know when they were trying to hire me until it was too late to extricate myself safely. Seriously, it makes me really anxious sometimes!
I just quickly scanned the OP and for a minute or so I thought it was about how he asked about a “nap room” and the clerk thought he was inquiring about a room you could rent for an hour or so to spend with a hooker.
My guess is that at high end hotels they’ll just direct you to an escort service. Concierges at those places aren’t in the business of rebuffing well heeled clients.
And by directing them to an escort service (rather than say the nearest crack whore corner), they can also claim plausible deniability - the ol’ excuse “hey, the guy is just paying for the girl’s time and anything else that happens to occur is simply a private matter.”
I stayed at one like that in Doula when I was on a project there. Our team included two other guys about my age, and an older, very distinguished scientist who was the head of a major research organization who I’ll call Gerald. I and the other two guys had rooms on the second floor, and Gerald was on the fourth.
One evening when we were coming back from dinner, one of the young ladies got up and joined us as we entered the elevator.
As the door closed, she sidled up to Gerald, and asked him very politely, “Excuse me sir, are you sleeping alone tonight?”
Gerald turned bright red, and stammered out “But, but, I’m married!”
Gerald’s new friend looked at him very quizzically, and said, “Your wife, she is here with you?”
At that point we reached our floor. As the rest of us stepped out, leaving Gerald with the young lady, we could see the sweat popping out on his brow as he tried to figure out what to say next.
Well I wasn’t thinking of an official, sanction space for napping.
I had in mind something more like what I saw in a recent episode of The Office, where a lot of the maintenance workers habitually napped on this particular shelf in their work area. At a place I used to work at, it was common for people pulling doubles to take a short nap between the two shifts, and there was this particular spot the naps usually took place. That’s what I was asking after. I didn’t just want to plop down on a hotel couch in public, risking potential embarrasment for both myself and the hotel staff.
It turned out, by the way, that that’s exactly what she invited me to do–just plop down on a couch.
They commonly have a dorm area for the firefighters to sleep, on duty, being paid. But as they are on duty for 48 hours straight, and might be awakened at any time by a fire call, I do NOT want a job like that.
I’m not a law enforcement agent looking to arrest someone, but wouldn’t this be similar to aiding and abetting a crime? Did the management have a policy on this (saying “yes, help the customer” or “no, don’t do it”)?
