Jacob Tomsky never intended to go into the hotel business. As a new college graduate, armed only with a philosophy degree and a singular lack of career direction, he became a valet parker for a large luxury hotel in New Orleans. Yet, rising fast through the ranks, he ended up working in "hospitality" for more than a decade, doing everything from supervising the housekeeping department to manning the front desk at an upscale Manhattan hotel. He's checked you in, checked you out, separated your white panties from the white bedsheets, parked your car, tasted your room-service meals, cleaned your toilet, denied you a late checkout, given you a wake-up call, eaten M&Ms out of your minibar, laughed at your jokes, and taken your money. In Heads in Beds he pulls back the curtain to expose the crazy and compelling reality of a multibillion-dollar industry we think we know.
Heads in Beds is a funny, authentic, and irreverent chronicle of the highs and lows of hotel life, told by a keenly observant insider who's seen it all. Prepare to be amused, shocked, and amazed as he spills the unwritten code of the bellhops, the antics that go on in the valet parking garage, the housekeeping department's dirty little secrets - not to mention the shameless activities of the guests, who are rarely on their best behavior. Prepare to be moved, too, by his candor about what it's like to toil in a highly demanding service industry at the luxury level, where people expect to get what they pay for (and often a whole lot more). Employees are poorly paid and frequently abused by coworkers and guests alike, and maintaining a semblance of sanity is a daily challenge.
Along his journey Tomsky also reveals the secrets of the industry, offering easy ways to get what you need from your hotel without any hassle. This book (and a timely proffered twenty-dollar bill) will help you score late checkouts and upgrades, get free stuff galore, and make that pay-per-view charge magically disappear. Thanks to him, you'll know how to get the very best service from any business that makes its money from putting heads in beds. Or, at the very least, you will keep the bellmen from taking your luggage into the camera-free back office and bashing it against the wall repeatedly.
Phew. I feel like I just read the entire goddamned book again, typing that out. I think the jacket over-sells the "hilarious antics and seedy underbelly" aspect of the book. From my end (which would be the end just having finished the entire thing and now trying to make some goddamn sense out of it) it feels more like a giant middle finger to the hotel managers, rather than trying to shock or titillate the public. Which, I guess maybe some of it is shocking and/or titillating (although I mostly found that it was not wholly unexpected, just probably grosser) but that's not really the story he's telling here. He's telling his own hero-journey along the bumpy path of hoteliering (not a word, don't even bother trying to look it up).
My mother is actually the one who purchased Heads in Beds for me, because for some weird reason, she only buys me two (2) types of books: YA books that I've already read (sorry, mom) and non-fiction. Because I read so much slush (no slur, man, I love slush) the non-fiction I read is usually the non-fiction equivalent: true-crime (Death in White Bear Lake), big name books (In the Garden of Beasts), and like, travel books. Which, I've learned so much about Iceland! Oh, and insider-y type books, you know Heat, Blood, Bones & Butter and Julie & Julia. Because I also love food, goddammit.
I enjoyed Heads in Beds. It has a good mix of eccentric characters, plot-line, and insider details. Plus, Tomsky seems to understand that we don't really want to hear about how he spent a year living abroad in lah-di-da Paris, we want to hear about the time his manager called in sick to work from three floors up because she had done just a tad too much coke the night before.
At one point, in a long paragraph of text, I found myself wanting to read it in more detail and not skim it, because I wanted to sort of...do right by the author. Despite the petty grumbling and ostensible ickiness of the job, he endears himself to the reader, which can be a hard thing to do in a "tell-all" type book. Given the level of snark displayed, I wouldn't have thought to sympathize with Tomsky as much as I did. Gentle readers, I will not lie to you. I too once worked in the service industry. And by "once worked" I mean I still do, but not in that soul-crushing see-fifty-customers-an-hour way that underpins our most basic transactions. And it gave me a profound insight into the service industry: Don't treat your servicers like shit. There - I just gave you one of life's most important mottos.
There is just a relationship between the customer and the worker that people who have never worked often fail to understand. There is an even weirder relationship between customers and waiters that I admittedly don't understand, because I do know that waiting tables is thankless, and I have been fortunate enough not to have to do it. But people who have not worked do not realize that this is a symbiotic relationship. Even in something as simple as a cash-for-goods transaction, you can achieve better or worse levels of service, often depending on your own behavior. Employees are rarely shitheads to absolutely everyone. We have favorites. And the best way to be a favored customer is to be nice (and to be a goddamned regular, because if you're just passing through, you can handle it impersonal). I still, even after 10+ years, remember a certain customer's name and face, so that every time he paid (by check, always) I had it in the system and could refrain from asking for ID, making his check-out just that bit faster and smoother.
This whole book is, like True Porn Clerk Stories (by Ali Davis, another great addition to the annals of the service worker, and one more true of my own experience) telling people what they should already know: be decent, and you might get some unexpected (or expected) benefits. Everything the Tomsky (and Davis) say is true: everyone has had that terrible customer who, once gone, magically makes every following customer as sweet as honey. Everyone has had to learn to lie, lie, lie to customers, because the truth does not always set you free: sometimes the truth just pisses someone the fuck off.
Heads in Beds (which I am strenuously trying to avoid typing as Beds in Heads, although my fingers much prefer that version) is basically one man's Icarus flight: rising slowly ( or quickly, it's hard to get a good sense of time) through the hotel ranks only to fly too close to the sun, to give in to the urge to stick it to management just a little too much, and the subsequent fall from grace. Here, thanks to the union (almost a deus ex in Heads in Beds, as they tend to be) Tomsky's descent is cut short, but you're definitely left with the feeling that this isn't going to take long to boil over again. I can only hope that he's left the hotel business before he ends up murdering someone (management being more likely than a guest, because that is how the service industry works - guests come and go, but your bosses are dicks forever).
I appreciated Heads in Beds less for the cheat-the-system advice (free minibar, free movies!) and more for the ethos. There is an art to good service, an underappreciated art to anticipating needs, oiling the machinery and generally working the behind the scenes magic that goes undetected by the customer. While there isn't any particular secret to writing a good tell-all (and there definitely needs to be a better description for these types of books than memoirs or tell-alls. Sometimes these aren't tell-alls, and generally they're not lengthy/scholastic enough for me to think of them as "memoirs"), Tomsky gets the job done in fine journeyman style. I don't know that you need it in permanent format, but if you're looking for a quick, fun read while you're waiting for a deliveryman to please hurry up and drop off this bookcase so I can maybe plan a trip to the grocery store later then I would say it's a great choice.
