Who's in 418? (part 1)

There have been many hoteliers with whom I have worked. No two General Managers were ever close to being the same. Some were “old school” and had come up through the ranks. Others had studied at Cornell or Michigan State and learned their skills by completing the required courses for a hotel degree. Either way, I always tried to learn from each man or woman everything that I could while employed as a team member within their unique operation.


Kent was a cowboy from Idaho. He always wore his boots and had an easy way with people. He treated his staff like they were his friends. Charles was a smallish, round, grandfather type. Don’t let that fool you, he would take no nonsense and was a perfectionist, although he was never unreasonable. The daily envelope was always complete and in the noon mail. Betty started her day in the office but would always make her way, by mid-morning, to the laundry room of the housekeeping department and she truly felt more comfortable with the housekeepers than she did around the front desk. She taught me what a “clean room” really looked like. “Fresh as a daisy”, she’d always say.

Peter was a Certified Chef de Cuisine. I cleaned up his kitchen until you could eat off the floor under the pot sink. He seemed to be a little out of his element as a General Manager and would say and do odd things from time to time. Once, he decided that we would begin having a formal, weekly staff meeting, with required attendance for all of the department heads, every Monday morning at 8:00 AM. We had never had structured, regular staff meetings. In fact, he had always been quite casual in his style of management. At the first one, Peter stood at the head of the long, board room table around which his dozen or so managers were assembled. We were smiling, sipping our morning coffee and chatting with each other as we waited for the meeting to start. Suddenly, he leaned forward, placed his hands palms down on the table and literally shouted into us at the top of his lungs, “My first name is Mister - My last name is Renz - and I expect to be called by both-of-them!” I don’t recall the rest of the meeting.

Cass was a promoter. He had grown up in a tough Chicago neighborhood. Everyone called him Mr. Opyt, even the hotel’s owner. We called him Mr. O when he wasn’t within earshot. Cass knew how to operate with entertainment better than anyone I’ve ever seen. He painted everything black and used lights, mirrors, sound and stage to create a Las Vegas style Show Bar in our dining room when the competition was trying to sell their room as a pancake house! He always sold out the hotel for New Years Eve and jumped on the Elvis Impersonator bandwagon almost before the King’s body was cold. Cass was selling “Sizzlers” for $19.95 back in the 1970s. I added up the food cost for these petit fillets that everyone ordered and it was less than five dollars. If enough of them were not leaving the kitchen, Cass would order one and instruct the waitress to walk slowly around the entire dining room before setting it down in front of him, where it eventually grew cold and became Rocky’s dinner. The sound and smell of the au jus hissing on the red hot steel always did the trick. Later in the evening, we did the same with Irish coffee. The customers could not resist the suggestion.

Cass did not need me as his Assistant because of my Food and Beverage experience and I remember his surprise when he found out that I had helped the front desk’s new Night Auditor balance for a week or so until she finally learned the job. “Just watch the joint for me”, he’d said, and so that was what I did. I wore a suit and tie and babysat Mr. O’s action hotel, six nights a week. I’d arrive at 4:00 PM, Tuesday through Sunday, pick up the keys from the office and stay until Maria, the bartender, had closed, cashed out and was ready to make her deposit and let me lock up. At 4:30, Cass would walk out of the office, cross the lobby, and take his place on the second bar stool from the left end of the bar. It was a strategic spot from which he could see most of the dining room, all of the bar, the front desk, all of the cash registers and the front doors of the hotel. Maria always sounded a little nervous as she immediately sat one of his “clear ones’ near his right hand and smiled, “Hi Mr. Opyt” she’d say. Maria would always try to say something cute or clever but he mostly ignored her. He was at his best when he ignored all of us and just got down to pounding down six or seven of the “clear ones”, at which point, usually 7:00, he would rise and weave his way down the corridor, into the elevator, one floor down, out the back door of the hotel and across the parking lot to his home. Cass and his wife lived in a house trailer at the far end of the back parking lot with their trained German Shepard, Rocky. Sometimes, (I never figured out why), he would leave the bar earlier and come back with the dog. Cass would have a murderous look on his face at these times and as he entered the bar room and went to his stool, Rocky, who I never saw leashed, stayed close by his side. “Rocky, lay down”, he’d say too loudly and a little bit slurred. The dog lay down at the foot of the second stool and although he would closely watch people as they came and went, Rocky never moved until Cass told him to.

The main entrance to the lobby, front desk, meeting rooms, restaurants and bar of the five story, 200 room hotel was on the second floor. The first floor was ground level in the back of the rooms building and although there were several guest rooms and the hotel’s indoor swimming pool on the ground floor, most of that floor’s space were “back of the house” areas like housekeeping, laundry, maintenance and storage. There were two elevators next to the desk area by which guests could access the guestrooms in the tower. The rooms tower was long, with interior corridors and rooms on both sides. There were three stairwells; one on each end and one in the middle, near the pool.

On a slow Sunday night, in the summer of 1979, Mr. O and Rocky had gone home about three hours ago. The band was beginning to make their way back to the stage to start the second set. Carol was at her Hostess station at the entrance to the dining room and Maria and I were talking about something unimportant as she filled a dining room waiter’s drink order at the service end of the bar. I heard Carol’s hostess phone ring and after she answered it and spoke for a moment, she motioned me over to her. “Nancy has a problem at the desk and needs you right away”, she whispered discreetly. Carol continued in a concerned tone, “She said that there/s someone in room 418 and it’s supposed to be vacant.”

To be continued…….