Pointless Luxury Can Be Pretty Fun
I’ve been trying to figure out why Americans have such a mania for going on business trips.
Doing business certainly can’t be the reason. If we wanted to do business, we’d all stay home and use the fax machine.
The answer suddenly occurred to me: Because it’s the only time we can pretend to have servants.
We can’t have butlers, footmen and maidservants at home, but we can certainly have them on business trips. This is America’s way of feeling like aristocracy for $150 a night.
This flash of insight came as I was sitting in my room at a big hotel in downtown Seattle, the kind where nobody in their right mind would go except if someone else is paying for it. I was watching a maid perform the “turn-down” service, which consists of pulling down the bed-cover, arranging the pillows attractively and folding a corner of the sheets back.
Now, you tell me: Why on God’s green earth does an adult human being need someone else to fold back sheets?
Do they think I’m too dense to figure out which end of the bed to get into? Do they imagine me kneeling at the foot of the bed and attempting to burrow my way up through the blankets?
No, they probably don’t. Here’s why they offer the turn-down service: It’s a totally useless service, and therefore a luxury.
You see, Master can’t be bothered with sheets. Master (me) wants to slip smoothly into bed without having to fuss in an undignified way with a throw pillow. Master thinks this beats the heck out of being at home.
Anyway, you don’t think Queen Elizabeth or Prince Charles have to wrestle with their own throw pillows, do you? Absolutely not, although Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles have, on occasion, been known to pillow-wrestle.
The point is, your big-time business traveler such as myself loves the idea of having people in uniforms perform useless tasks for him. That’s why there are always two guys standing at the entrance of every fancy hotel, dressed as if they were in the cast of “The Little Prince,” waiting to perform valuable functions that you couldn’t possibly do for yourself, such as open your car door.
I’m trying to figure out what will be next at these hotels. I’ve got it: Dressers. That’s right, a butler-like person will come up and assist me into my evening clothes. I’ll feel just like Prince Albert, although the difference is he actually had evening clothes to change into.
Restaurants also have figured out that we traveling executives like being waited upon. Not only do these restaurants have uniformed serving persons, but they also have a sommelier (French for “boozemaster”) whose job, in its entirety, is to yank the cork out of a wine bottle.
One thing I’ve noticed about people on expense accounts: They forget that they are middle-management executives sitting in a restaurant in Seattle and suddenly imagine themselves to be members of the Eton Old Boys Club in London.
Whereas at home they might end dinner with an Alka-Seltzer, here they suddenly feel the need for 30-year-old port. It doesn’t matter that they have no idea what port actually is. Their best guess is that it is something similar to Night Train Express. No matter. Now, they must have port, because, darn it, that’s what most earls drink after a rough day of harassing the neighborhood foxes.
Hey! Maybe that’s what’s next at expense-account hotels: Nightly fox hunts through the lobby, followed by brandy, cigars and debates on the subject of Tories vs. Whigs.
Of course, most business traveling isn’t quite so grand. We business travelers usually have to forego the turn-down service, since the Super Eight Motel does not usually provide it. Nor does the International House of Pancakes have an extensive list of vintage ports by the glass.
But on those fortunate occasions in which we get to enjoy first-class accommodations, we business travelers do enjoy it. Good help is so hard to get these days.
(Note to accounting department:
Enclosed is expense account for $3,000. Thorough research can be expensive).
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review