Serving others*

Concierge Confidential: The Gloves Come Off—and the Secrets Come Out: Tales from the Man Who Serves Millionaires, Moguls, and Madmen by Michael Fazio with Michael Malice

Totally fascinating brain candy.

Here’s the stuff you can learn from this book: People actually hire other people to engineer their fancy date nights. And they expect them to hire private helicopters at a moment’s notice.

I’m inclined to ask: Who are these people?!

Seriously.

To this small-town Midwesterner, the idea of a concierge is quite strange. So reading this book was like getting a glimpse into another culture.

The author includes lots of tips for how to get a table at the hottest restaurants, how to get hard-to-snag tickets, etc. (All of which was completely useless to me. Nonetheless, it was delightful to read about all the machinations I am able to avoid since I don’t want to go to the hottest restaurant in New York.)

Fazio tells all kinds of outrageous stories about the demands and expectations of hotel guests, and the lengths to which a concierge will go to meet those demands.

One of the dirty little secrets is that the concierge often gets a kickback on the services he arranges, so there’s a serious incentive to setting things up well for the guest. But heck, if the guest is willing to pay the asking price, and the concierge has gone to hell and back to arrange things for the guest, then what’s the problem, right?

Still.

I’m strangely relieved I’m a mid-level hotel guest whose main concern is that the room be clean, comfortable, quiet, and smoke-free. If you can throw in a view… man, I’m a happy creature then. So the expectations of the very privileged just seem so very strange to me.

But—like I said—fascinating.

*Yup. Almost like the tuxedo people on Downton Abbey...