Confessions of a Hotel Elevator Operator
Another episode of surreal stories from the hidden world of hotels
Hotel security specialists are the Swiss Army knives of hotel operations.
Need help rearranging things in the conference area? Call security.
Need help buttering bread to feed 350 stranded airline passengers? Call security.
Need someone to fish through a weekend’s worth of garbage because someone threw out something valuable? Call security.
Need someone to deliver room service to a VIP who is supposedly living in exile in a different country? Call security.
Need an elevator operator for visiting dignitaries? Call security.
I wasn’t a visiting dignitary, but the first time I visited Moscow there were security guards/elevator operators in every elevator in the Hotel Ukraina. They were the strong silent type. You showed them the card you received at check-in and they pushed the button that took you to your floor. When you stepped into the hallway and the sliding door closed behind you, an elderly woman seated on a wooden chair at a wooden table stuck her hand out and yelled: “Card!”. She took the card with your room number on it and handed you the heavy metal key. Five minutes later, assuming you’d found your room and entered it, the phone would ring and, if you answered, a voice not unlike the one that had yelled “Card!” at you would ask: “You want Russian girl!”
The service we offered in our Scandinavian hotels didn’t go quite that far. To be fair, in 2010, when I last visited Hotel Ukraina, now a Radisson Collection Hotel, there was no lift operator and the babushka in the corridor was gone too.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the SAS Scandinavia Hotel in Oslo hosted more than our fair share of high-profile people. I was privileged to be the elevator operator for many of them. Here’s the short list:
King Olav V of Norway before he passed
Norway’s King Harald when he was Crown Prince and invited his classmates for drinks in a suite
Jimmy Carter at 4:30 am for a bird-watching trip with local ornithologists. He was properly attired in green Fjällräven gear and, of course, accompanied by secret service agents in dark suits, sunglasses and shiny shoes.
Nelson Mandela on one of his first official visits as head of state in South Africa
The President and VP of a former Soviet State on their first tour to introduce themselves to the world. Despite limited English, after returning from a long, liquid-filled state dinner, they recognized the word “Bar” at the top of the list of buttons in the elevator. Before your humble security guard/button pusher could react, they hit the bar button, and a long, liquid-filled night became longer. The liquid-filled part came after the security guard’s shift ended and, fortunately, before the pub hotel employees frequented closed.
Salman Rushdie, while he was supposedly still in hiding, came through the garage entrance for a day-before-he-officially-arrived visit and interviews that would be published the day he officially arrived. That was possible in the pre-online era.
The Norwegian band a-ha also used the garage entrance/exit. With thousands of fans cheering on the national heroes after Take on Me became an international hit, we helped them through the crowd and into an elevator that took them to the 20th floor where they each had a suite. Once we reached the 20th floor, we escorted them to the service area. The back-of-house elevators took them to the basement where waiting cars drove them home to spend a weekend with their families. Easiest weekend ever for the housekeeping team tasked with cleaning the suites…
A US government official who always brought his wife with him. She used the “privacy” of the lift rides to go on profanity-rich rants telling him what a useless person he was.
And then there was Tony Blair.
He might not remember it himself, but I was his personal lift operator (he’s British, so he’d use the term lift instead of elevator) for several days during the historic EU Summit in Copenhagen in 2002 when 10 new member countries entered the European Union. Interestingly, of course, Mr. Blair’s country has since left the union. But, I digress.
During the EU Summit in Gothenburg, Sweden, in June 2001, chaotic, violent demonstrations had broken out causing mayhem and destruction along the city’s main street. US President George Bush had dropped in, too, and was mooned by friendly Swedes outside his hotel. But, again, I digress.
We had an excellent collaboration with the Danish police in the run-up to the summit in Copenhagen. Knowing that we had experience from multiple summits, we were even given the opportunity to run information workshops on what had taken place in other locations. Every police person assigned to protection duties near our hotel was given an info-pack with content that included pictures of emergency exits, safe rooms and other preparations we’d made.
Our preparations included paying an exorbitant amount of money for a crisis communications course for our senior leaders in Copenhagen. I’ll never forget the feeling when I answered my cell phone while grocery shopping a couple of days before things kicked off. It was a journalist, so I advised them to contact the GM or a Regional Manager.
“We did. They gave us your cellphone number.”
The journalist from the Danish national broadcaster wanted to do a behind-the-scenes segment from the hotel. As any good security person would do two days before a major, high-profile, high-risk event, I said, “Yes”.
To be truthful, I said “Yes, but…” and in the end we agreed on some terms.
The regional director and the GM wanted my head on a stake, but I reminded them they were the ones who had given the journalist my cellphone number.
I told the journalist I understood their angle. They would show how the wealthy and powerful wined and dined in five-star luxury and then they would show the protesters camping out in squalid conditions. The journalist confided in me that wasn’t their intention. They had planned to show the protester camps and then an external shot of the hotel and say they weren’t allowed inside.
She was shocked by my “Yes”, even if I followed it up with a “but”.
The TV-team followed our rules. They came in bright and early and got some shots of empty conference rooms (no official EU meetings were held in the hotel), the lobby which was still empty save for a few police officers that they couldn’t show and a couple of front desk agents that didn’t mind being on TV. They even got a couple of shots from the kitchen where the breakfast team was preparing the morning meal for our dignitaries. One breakfast cook sympathized heavily with the protesters and was firmly against the EU and any other powerful political body. Of course, the journalist chose him when she asked the question, “How do you feel about making breakfast for all these heads of state?”
“There’s nothing special about these people. I don’t do anything extra for them. An omelet is an omelet.”
The protesters refused to let the TV team film their camps, so in the end, we scored a brilliant communications coup.
I’m sorry, I was talking about being Tony Blair’s “lift operator”, wasn’t I?
The hotel Mr. Blair would be staying in was the Radisson Royal. Designed top to bottom by Arne Jacobsen, the “Royal” is an icon in Denmark and is known by architects around the world as one of the first designer hotels. When it opened in 1960, I guess dignitaries didn’t travel with large entourages. Either that or people were much smaller in those days.
With Danish Security Police, Mr. Blair’s own protection people, a secretary or two, and your humble “lift” operator, the guest elevators were far too small to squeeze into. The hotel engineering team had diligently spruced up a large service lift and repainted the back-of-house corridor to make it slightly more appealing to a Prime Minister. As it turned out, we needed all the space in the service elevator too, because Mr. Blair always had his then-Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw with him. And, of course, Mr. Straw also had a secretary and a protection agent by his side. It was crowded.
If there was one thing the Danes were going to do, it was to ensure that there was no disruption to the summit they were responsible for. One-upping the Swedes is a popular Danish pastime.
Thus, no fewer than 70 officers were assigned to protect the Royal.
Granted, some of them had been behind desks for a decade or two and weren’t fully up to speed on how things had changed in the outside world, but it was a show of force.
When they were a few minutes out from the hotel, one of the local policemen received a message from Danish Security Police in the motorcade. What seemed to be every one of the 70 police in the hotel promptly formed a line from the main entrance to the door that led to the service area where the larger elevator was.
Arrival went smoothly. Mr. Blair was all smiles until the elevator door closed and then he was all business.
Once they’d settled into the suite, the head of Mr. Blair’s security detail contacted me.
“Why are the police all lined up like that? It makes it easy for someone to know when we’re coming and what entrance we’ll be using.”
I showed him an aerial photo of the hotel that showed the many different entrance options we could use. Danish security police had numbered them and would communicate the number of the entrance they would use to the police in the hotel when they were en route.
“Excellent!”, he said, “here’s the new plan. When the motorcade contacts the police in the hotel, you watch which entrance they line up at. I will call you. When you answer, just say the number of the entrance that’s being prepared. I will give you a different number and you can meet us there.”
It worked brilliantly. The 70 policemen would form their human chain. My phone would ring. I would say a number. The voice on the other end would say another number and hang up. I would quietly go to the entrance the number corresponded to along with one of the hotel security personnel.
The poor desk jockeys tasked with guarding our hotel could never figure out why the motorcade always arrived at the “wrong entrance”.
Departures worked in a similar fashion. The police would line up. My phone would ring, and I would say a number. The voice on the other end would say another number and hang up. I would proceed to Mr. Blair’s floor in the large elevator. When we arrived at the ground floor, the entourage would take a different route than “planned” and, fortunately, a hotel security person would be in place to open the exit door where Mr. Blair’s motorcade would miraculously be waiting.
Mr. Blair never changed. He was all smiles until the elevator doors were closed and then he was all business. I’ve never come across anyone who could process so much information during the time it took to ride an elevator twenty floors. His secretary would read non-stop from her notes, and he would comment immediately and authoritatively on every single item.
“Cocktails.”
“Make sure I can speak to countries M, N, and O. Don’t let country Y near me.”
Mr. Straw would nod.
A list of topics that were expected to come up would be read out. Mr. Blair would comment on every topic.
“If country A says this, we will say that, but if country B says it, we will agree.”
Every single EU issue and half of the world’s problems were solved during those elevator rides.
I’m not sure what happened in the meetings, but for some reason, many of those issues remain mysteriously unsolved today.
As the elevator neared the ground floor on departure day, Mr. Blair looked at me and the head of his security detail. With an emotionless wink, he said, “I know what you guys did this week. Thank you.”
The doors opened, the bright, toothy smile appeared again, a few hands were shaken, and the entourage was off.
We treated the police to a beer in the bar before they returned to the desks they’d been chained to. Much of the conversation was centred on how their own security police close protection teams could get the arrival and departure routes wrong. Every. Single. Time.
Stay safe, Always Care
Written with the clarity of hindsight, the accuracy of a faded memory, and countless creative liberties, 87 Stories is a journal of how my gap year lasted four decades, made me an emigrant, an immigrant and gave me a life I never dreamed of.
The surreal stories from the hidden world of hotels series gives a behind-the-scenes look at the wacky, wonderful world of hotels from the eyes of a university dropout who had a storied, basement-to-boardroom career in hotel security. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any of the episodes!
In addition to my love for writing, I’m also a professor, an educator, and a consultant. I’ve been told that my specialty is saving bacon.
Need a storyteller to motivate your team. You can hire me! Unlike many storytellers for hire, I guarantee that I only tell my own stories…
Thanks for being part of the Always Care Community. Your support is my motivation and I’m genuinely grateful that you’re here. Please share, subscribe, and connect with me.