One of my butler colleagues at a previous job in London was asked to ship in and set up a guest’s order of fresh oysters in the bathtub. He diligently filled the tub with ice and laid the oysters out, only to discover that the guest wanted the oysters placed in the tub around his soaking body. Eventually, the client seemed satisfied: He purchased the room next door for his butler so he’d always be near.
During my shifts, lobster shells kept appearing in the fountains of the hotel’s interior courtyard. Every day, the staff would fish them out, only to find a new one a few hours later. It turned out that a Middle Eastern prince was ordering cooked lobster from room service for every meal and then throwing the empty shells out the window to land in a fountain below.
Another time, a woman called hysterically crying “as though her husband died and she just discovered the body.” When Emma finally calmed her down, she comprehended the real reason for the guest’s tears: There was no more Kleenex in her suite, and her young daughter had been forced to blow her nose on toilet paper.
One butler told the story of how he was asked to replace all the furniture in a suite because the guest didn’t like the color blue.
Another arranged for a live tarantula flown in from Africa to be served as a meal.
A full raid of your room’s bar runs $600 at the Plaza—something that happens at least once a week. The likelihood that guests will not want to pay is almost guaranteed.
Even now, guests sometimes request that staff of a certain ethnic extraction not be allowed to service their rooms; others will ask service members if they are legal in America. Emma, the director of the butler team, cited several incidents of sexism, too, such as the time guests asked to speak with a manager but grew angrier when she showed up instead of a man.
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