How to Park Cars: A Manual for Valets and Unsuccessful Suicides: Chapters 11-13
Chapter 11: Your Fellow Valets
Without intention, I have been working this profession for a decade. I have described to you some of the base technicalities of the job, as well as the customer base. Whether you’re going to be a part time weekend warrior, a hapless veteran like myself, or a calculated career man, your coworkers may be the most important relationships you have in this job. In the immediate sense, your workload will probably necessitate many legs, and you must rely on others for surviving the rush of traffic coming for you. In the long term, relationships you have with fellow valets will set the stage for your entire employment.
Valet companies are flimsy. The young and dumb business major thinks that valet is pure profit—a service wherein all the overhead is provided for by customers and clients, margins are 100 percent, and the only expense is labor. It seems to be that way when you just imagine a pimple faced teen on a stool, under an umbrella, in a tacky red vest outside the local shopping mall.
In reality, the industry is viciously competitive between a few major companies, new parties rise up and take certain locations for short periods before being bought by the majors, and often properties create bidding wars between all these factions. Some properties create “in-house” valet staffs, accepting liability but pocketing all profit, minus labor.
The workers, those of us doing this job long term, tend to get around all the different corporate labels. I have worked for 3 valet companies now. The base—the labor—we are the same across every valet company. Often literally, the same people. When I lost a job through closure of a property once, I was hired immediately, with no lost time, by another company at another location because of my contacts. Many of the valets I started out with, guys who were just 20 years old in the mid 2010’s are now managers across my region. They have good salaries, families, and have adjusted to office and meeting life.
I never purposely “networked” with these guys. I was just myself, and fortunately I’m an innocent enough soul that they have commended me to others over the years.
I remember my first valet company brought up the book “how to win friends and influence people” in one of its training videos. So I read it. And I asked my boss if he read it, and he said “oh yes, it’s a way of life.” The conversation is memorable because I took such an antagonistic view of the book, decrying it as devoid of human soul, more aptly it should be titled “how to be a psychopath and drink the brain fluid of your inferiors.” He laughed, without eye contact, and forgot to repeat my name in order to stir my subconscious affection.
I’ve stated already that ethically I have been a crooked employee in many ways over the years. It should go without saying that I make mistakes practically on the job with some frequency as well. Whatever ugly parts of my personality have rubbed others the wrong way must also be considered on the whole of how I’ve “influenced people.” But I think the most outstanding reason that I’ve been a desired valet across the board with all these silly companies is that when I’m on the clock, my goal is simply to do good work. I’m quite sure of this, in fact. I cannot locate for you, unfortunately, where this spirit comes from in me. It is not mine alone, of course, as all of my best coworkers have this notion at the root of their hourly duties. We are pleased when a day on the job goes well, when clients and customers are served to their contentment, when order reigns supreme in the garage and on the driveway, and the next shift comes on to an easy and prosperous transition.
In more formal ethical definitions, this is something of the vulgar notion to Kant’s categorical imperative. “I do good work because I like doing good work.” There are, of course, many other motives to work a job, and while disclaiming that your coworkers, and mine, are all full and complex people, I will endeavor to describe some of their general types in this chapter.
One note beforehand:
—99 percent of all valets are male, and about 90 percent of those are below the age of 30. There are three basic positions on all valet staffs:
a. Valet. The base start pointing, and generally the most common station of employment for these company’s workers. Note that all valet companies use an obscure title on our tax forms such as “Guest service associate.” I assume this is to aid us in tax evasion. Most of these workers are relegated to part time hours ever since the Obamacare mandate of health benefits, though companies will sometimes wiggle a full time Valet in, particularly those who work the overnight shift.
b. Shift leader/supervisor. These guys get full time hours—that’s the major benefit of it, though there are a multitude of workers who much prefer part-time hours and usually they see supervisors as borderline idiotic. Their hourly pay is slightly more than the valets, usually, but it’s so marginal that a part-timer working hotter shifts might make more than them annually. They work the identical tasks and errands of the valets, though they are supposed to be somewhat managerial and run operations with moderate to severe delegation. Sometimes their bosses put superfluous responsibilities on them. Note that usually the dress code for both the aforementioned classes is identical, though some spots allow their supervisors to dress themselves freely.
c. Account managers/assistant managers. They write the schedule, they do the paperwork, revenue calculations, and all major points of communication with the client (meaning the hotel, restaurant, casino, etc…). Seldom are these guys parking cars, though it’s not outrageous for them to work the driveway in certain moments, or if the location only necessitates a barebone staff anyway. They do not collect tips. I don’t even think it’s legal for them to collect tips in my state. I’ve never been one of these guys, and I may be missing some of their duties in my description, though I have been chummy and friendly with many of my old account managers. Strangely, the prior position, supervisors, sometimes make a lot more money than these guys, especially if the hourly worker isn’t declaring his tips. This is not uncommon at all. The manager position, from a close distance, seems to me, usually, one of those jobs which is stupendously easy, but disproportionately stressful. Especially when considering the workforce they’re in charge of. I have several times come close to pursuing this career, but given that it pays worse than the hourly plus tips of being a supervisor, and that because of the industry there are fewer job openings for managers, I do not see much advantage to this career other than social status and sedentary day-to-days.
There are, of course, a few more pieces to a valet company. Regional managers, Vice Presidents, Presidents, HR departments, claims departments, etc… Interactions with these folks is going to be rare and dull for the bulk of the workforce. I do not know the long history of valet companies in America, nor am I sure I care at all, though at a glance, a disproportionate number of them come out of Connecticut, and have spread to become large corporations across the country. I think for my next book, I will write a drama about the seedy valet wars in Connecticut, circa 1985, in the tone of The Wire with lots of wiseguys and red tape.
Valet type #1: Fast Movers
A fair percentage of valets are going to run for almost every car requested, and alternatively they will run back from their quick route when parking a car. They may or may not be particularly personable with the human elements that arrive with each vehicle, but they do the base part of the job exceptionally. They’re fast. And when it gets busy they’ll move even faster.
During a rush of business on this job, there is no polite queue of customers waiting for their turn in line. No. People just congregate the driveway in a mess and often aggressively try to shoulder out their neighbors in order to be served first. This applies to both incoming cars and pedestrians who approach the valet podium. The fast movers of the highest ability flourish in this chaotic environment. Their attention gets pulled in twelve directions at the same time, and by an enviable cunning they sort through it with fast decisions and fast body movements. During slow periods, a lot of these guys continue to work at a fast pace, and do not dally getting cars off the driveway or when retrieving a guests car even when they’ve been told “take your time.” For some of us, the compulsion to work quickly and cleanly is almost born from an anxiety, having witnessed apocalyptic street backups enough times in our past.
Valet type #2: The Romero’s
I have called them Romero’s because they are like the director’s zombies. Slow. They walk for cars. They walk after they’ve parked a car. Often they’re on their phone while walking around the garage, or hitting their vape, or they’ve forgot what they’re doing entirely because they are stoned.
Valet type #3: Stoners
The most impossible characters in all labor experimentation. They cannot be convinced that it’s a malfeasance to be stoned on the job. They see it as a “hack” to enjoy wage employment, or they think that they are a better man while stoned, a better employee medicated. I have lately tried to convince these soft-brains that marijuana is a psy-op, that its legality has been awarded because government whip crackers saw the younger generation as a threat to their longstanding capital stranglehold. I recommend they read Brave New World, but, most of the young men I work with scoff and tell me they read that in high school (and then they clarify that, well, it was assigned, anyway).
There is a type of straight-toothed, clean cut wealthy Mormon hotel guest or general do-gooder who will always flatly refuse valet services across the board, anywhere in the world. They hate valets because our basic trustworthiness is nil—from scuttlebutt or web searching they know that we are not honest folks with their cars. This antipathy is at its worst when the clean living do-gooder encounters a stoner, the glossy eyed valet with an overload of self-righteousness vindicates the do-gooder’s worldview that pagans and poor people are through and through stupid offspring of the father of lies.
Valet type #4: The Talk
Certain individuals are gifted at talking to others. In my experience, I would say there is no training whatsoever that can mold a gauche or average conversationalist into an advanced one. Companies always have scripts for guest interactions, but frankly, the people who are good at talking to others employ verbal maneuvers far outside the realms of these scripts, and the formulas for guest communication drawn up are rendered pitifully robotic.
The valets who are high in this skill may or may not have much else to offer on the job, but because this talent is so valuable, and equates to so many extra gratuities, positive guest experiences, and problems solved, a wider amount of careers are available to the talkers. They often do valet for a time before moving on to better paying social environs—I’ve seen several of these types switch over to hotel management.
One thing to note, and applicable to all the generalities I’m making in this list: ethics do not correlate at all to this personality type. Someone gifted with communication may be ruthlessly selfish and exploitative. They may also be genuinely humane and empathetic. I tend to lean into the assessment that most people gifted in communication are the latter. But keep your guard up. This kind of person, in dark varieties, is very dangerous. They crop up as regional managers or vice presidents of valet companies with some regularity.
Valet Type #5: The Tip-Mooch
In brief—the tip structure of most valet sites is that all the guys on shift at one time pool their tips. Generally this is a clean and uncontested operation. However, there is a type of valet who seemingly avoids doing work. They step backwards a little when cars approach, they disappear in moments of high activity, by all witnesses it would seem they are trying to make others do all the running, parking, talking. The practical communist problem arises in the opinions of the other valets: why am I sharing my tips with this guy?
The most forgivable kind of tip-mooch is simply nervous. Maybe it’s his first job. He’s a little scared, timid. This type has a good chance to turn things around. I was very timid when I first began.
Sometimes a bad supervisor arises who takes his powers of delegation too far. He sits on his phone at the podium, a car gets requested, and with one hand he holds out the keys to you, telling you to go get it, and with the other hand he scrolls the idiotic nerf of Instagram, Tinder, or YouTube.
Very often the tip-mooch goes into higher management. The kind of people who act too good for work get rewarded with more pay and an Ikea rolling chair.
Valet Type #6: Overnight Valets
Despite this being the most straightforward category I’ve yet to mention, denoting valets who work the graveyard shift, I feel the most pressure to be accurate and fair with this demographic. I’ll start by saying that I’ve put in about a year total of overnight valet myself, shifts from 11pm to 7am. My doctor has since told me to never do so again.
At most locations, the workload for these hours is close to nil. When I used to do them, my paperwork and ostensible responsibilities would be done by midnight, and then I had 6 hours of waiting until anything like work would happen next. Often I tried to sleep, sitting in a chair. I knew of one night valet who spread out like a king on hotel furniture, even using a blanket and eye mask for his comfort.
Most of us would agree only begrudgingly to work these hours, with conditions of high compensation or regular time off. However, there is a certain percentage of people who dream of this shift. The point for them, in large part, is being paid not to interact with other people. They enjoy the solitude, lack of supervision, and freedom. Thus they can be difficult to interact with, sometimes. I got in a terrible feud with a night valet one time—to be frank I don’t recall the details of what started it. But he took a course of shunning me, refusing to acknowledge me at all, much less talk to me, and this was ugly not just socially but also in relation to work, as my feelings being hurt was a little matter, but it sucked that I couldn’t get any help from this guy when work things popped up (i.e. doing the actual job). I realized after a time this man was deeply afraid of me. When he screamed at me “I don’t have to talk to you!” it came from fear, it made him anxious to be in confrontation. And once the feud had begun, every sight of me was a confrontation.
On the other hand, one of my friends from work is a man who is a night auditor, a man who has worked the graveyard for the past two decades. I don’t want to poison your mind into thinking people must be this way or that because of the hours they work, and that’s why I feel some trepidation with the category, but night workers are a different sort, by-and-large. Don’t try to judge them, but understand them. For the valet ones, they’re working a completely different job for the most part, almost no tips, and none of the same obstacles.
When I was on night shifts, I wrote some poetry, smoked a lot of cigarettes, and wondered if the moon was enough to keep me alive until I could make a real friend.
Valet type #7: The Old Man
I’m 34. And I tell you: I look like it. I look worse, maybe. This is above average for the age of valets. Occasionally, when I’m out in the world and I meet people, and they ask me that measuring stick of a question: what do you do? And I say “valet,” sometimes if it’s an old guy I’m talking to he gets excited and cries out: “I did valet when I was a kid!” And they fondly recall old memories of parking cars in their twenties before moving into big enterprises in their formal adult life. And sure, I sometimes get a little embarrassed, feeling like an undeveloped adult. Though usually I wipe this fear away with a mental note that back in this guy’s day you could probably buy a house with a fox pelt and some beads.
However, in the “old man” category, I’m not among the laborers I’m talking about. My age is enough for the young guys on my job to occasionally chide or respect, but there are some fellows you’ll find at valet stands who are fifty years or older.
Certain locations almost prohibit this category entirely: a fact of some valet stands is that you must be a fit and fast man, such as my current location. I run about 7 to 10 miles per day when on the clock. So the older guys usually find a place at the less physically intense locales. Sure, there a few who are in it for the money, I knew one man in his late forties, unmarried, not particularly stellar at the job, who more or less just needed income to eat and drink and live on his boat. He gambled a lot and was a somewhat lecherous creep in conversation. However, a lot of the older crew members are married, their wives make most of the income, and they like to do it for a few extra bucks and a way to get out of the house. These men are often the happiest, most genial valet staff you’ll ever meet. Some of the old guys are nearly doing the job for fun alone. The money is nothing. Their depth of conversation can far surpass the young guys, and the guests will enjoy having long talks with them. As a result, the old guys have a much higher probability of being rewarded with huge gratuities. What they lack in speed and parking ability is easily made up for by their social habits. I am not trying mount a defense of these workers, per se, but I wholeheartedly encourage any recruiter to hire people that may on the surface seem “too old” to do the job.
Conversely, there is something ugly that happens when an entire staff is youthful and male, and I suppose I could elaborate as to why at some length, but summarily, from a guest or customer perspective, handing the keys of your Aston Martin to a 20 year old, looking around and seeing a bunch of other vape addicted 20 year olds with their noses buried in their phones—the customer must feel at least a little bit that the staff is a lot like a bunch of babes in search of a tit. The customer feels as though he is doing us a favor, rather than the other way around, and tips become thin.
Valet Type #8: The Thief
So most of our tips are handed to us in cash. Typically we split the cash tips at the end of a shift between all valets on duty at the time. Some valets will pocket cash tips, thus avoiding the “cut” at the end of a shift. This increases your profit, if you are the thief, sometimes up to ten fold, as it’s not uncommon to have ten members on staff on a given day, depending on where you work.
It is extremely difficult to catch thieves. Say the hotel you work at employs you to do bell service as well as park cars, that is—taking luggage to people’s rooms. As a bellman, you go up to the room alone, offload the luggage, and the hotel guest hands you a twenty dollar bill. You finish up and land back in the hallway. There is nobody around. It’s just you and God and the fancy carpet. The valets down on the driveway, back where you’re headed, they’ll easily believe you if you bitch that the customer stiffed you. Getting stiffed is common. Or they’re so busy with their own work you won’t even need to make a show of it.
Making an accusation that someone is pocketing tips without proof is not an option. In fact, proof is so important to such an accusation that I’ve never seen it work without multiple witnesses accusing and convicting the thief—for if only one valet accuses another, a defense of personal vendetta often gets raised, and the whole social scenario becomes a disaster.
Some employees are so paranoid about their coworker’s fingers and pockets that they make strict rules about the money. They won’t allow anyone but themselves around the tip cache, or they only send certain people they deem trustworthy to do certain tasks. I’ve been that sort of employee before. Nowadays, I’m a little more fun and fancy free, I think as a result of being a valet reincarnation, I have an underlying trust, not in humanity, but in the bigger picture to shake out alright, even if a thief takes from me.
Trustworthiness may be the highest quality of any servant. I don’t suspect thieves really appear in high numbers anywhere, but it’s not an intrinsic personal trait. That is to say, most employees are part-time thieves, if at all. They just steal in certain moments and opportunities. One time, a valet gave me a little monologue about how he was stuck on a shift with a terrible and useless coworker, and the story-teller summed up by proudly declaring that he pocketed some of the more substantial tips. I suppose that I, the receiver of this story, was meant to applaud him, or condone the thievery because it was so obvious that this other valet doesn’t deserve the wages. I thoroughly condemned him though, knowing it would make the monologue man unhappy. I told him something like, “eventually, if you think that way, I’m sure you’re going to steal from me. You’re going to tell yourself one day that you deserve to steal from me as well. Maybe I’ve pissed you off, or you think I’m wealthy enough anyway, or you’re in a tight spot financially in your own life. But you’re still just a little satanic man making dumb arguments as to why doing wrong could be right.” (Yes, in my personal life I do enjoy employing the word Satan in conversation).
Trustworthiness. I toyed with using the word “faithfulness,” but it sounds too intangible, Godly, and the word “honesty” doesn’t quite locate the quality from the empathetic perspective—from the view of a co-worker or employer. To be trustworthy—others can trust you—that’s really paramount. Although I don’t think that many of the people I’ve worked with over the years are thieves, an astonishing low percentage exhibits much in the way of trustworthiness. Not even my bosses.
I have only a small occupation. Lives are not at stake parking cars, at least probably not. But when someone’s crooked in a little thing, they’re likely to be crooked in big things also.
As for the types I’ve just gone over, remember that any particular person can be a blend of multiple or all the types, in fact seldom is a person just one thing or another, and only hilarious grotesques fit into one category. Also keep in my mind that people are not static. They do change over time, but it’s like the stock market, the graph goes up and down every moment, and trends are usually only evident in hindsight.
Chapter 12: Ethics
I do not want to speculate about any intangibles or lofty ideas. One time I was speaking with a younger valet and he proposed a multitude of ethical hypotheticals in the context of skimming dailies, which I’ll describe in detail a little later, and I was confounded by his dumb and repetitive words in the face of my clean argument that it’s wrong to steal money. Period. Dull and selfish ideas are like that—they require a lot of explaining. But see, I’m already getting off the track. Let’s begin with the unethical behavior that most disturbs me about working in this industry, which nearly drives me off of being in it at all, and which I feel a great deal of shame when its circumstances arise: damage done to customer vehicles, or as they are called in the industry, “claims,” and how valet companies respond to them.
The Claim
Here’s a real story: three old ladies pull up to the valet driveway in a Cadillac Escalade. This was once a premier luxury vehicle, though it is now becoming dated and a little bit tacky. The ladies are splendid though, they even joke about the ostentatious nature of the car with the valet who issues their ticket. The trio laughs and saunters to the front door of the hotel as he gets in the car to park it. The valet circles the driveway, headed for the garage. Almost at the exact moment the ladies are entering the building, there’s a terrible squeal of metal grinding against a concrete pillar. The valet has misjudged the curve into the garage, mashed the side panel of the passenger door into gates’ barrier, and in panic, stopped the car in this defiled place.
I look over at the hotel door. The ladies have missed it. They somehow didn’t see or hear. I look all around at the driveway, there are plenty of other customers standing around, but nobody is taking notice, so I skip over to the valet who has crashed. His window is still down as he was preparing to punch the code into the valet gate, and he’s sitting in the passenger seat with a look on his face like his whole life is a mistake. “Hop out,” I tell him. He starts to try and tell me what happened. “Not right now,” I say, “just hop out.” We trade places. I back the car off the pillar in reverse, then I pop into drive and park the car in the garage.
I get out and I inspect the damage. It’s significant. A dent that needs a whole new door panel. And a closer look reveals it’s even dented inward a little on a second panel. That means about twice the amount of money to fix it, probably in the neighborhood of two thousand dollars.
I get a rag. I look for any kind of moisture nearby. There’s a bottle of hand sanitizer on an old, out-of-use valet podium in the garage. That’ll do—actually it’s pretty good even, hand sanitizer might even be the preferred buffer.
Some other employees come and skulk around while I’m trying to buff out the damage. My boss approaches. He’s been informed of the situation. I ask him how he wants to play it. “The car’s black,” he says. “That’s good. Get it out as much as possible and we’ll try to distract them as their leaving.” He laments something like “God, fuck, we’ve had 3 claimsvthis year and it’s only January” as he’s walking away.
The ladies come out from their lunch at the hotel after about two hours. When they hand the shift lead their ticket at the podium, there’s some slight head nods amongst the staff. We radio the boss, who’s been chewing his fingernails in the office. He gets the car personally, and pulls it onto the driveway in such a way that it’s difficult to notice the dent.
They’re so damn kind. They’re in a good mood. They’ve had a few drinks and gaily tip us as they drive away unwitting. The Cadillac turns out of our driveway, down the street and out of view. I feel like every meter it takes all I can see is the horrible dent. My boss takes a deep breath. He fist bumps me. Tells me “well done” and thanks for thinking fast. He knows that once the car is off the property, no matter what, we have won the battle. A valet claims department always denies claims when a car leaves the property.
This is the process that occurs, at greater and lesser faults, for any time a car is damaged by a valet. It is a wickedness which every company I have worked for commits regularly. Not once in a while, but often many times per year.
I once had a boss who, when I asked him how much he tips valets when he goes to a valet location, responded quickly “oh, I would never valet my car,” on the basis of its insecurity in another company’s hands.
I have not yet resolved my employment with these companies alongside my disdain for this unethical behavior. When I’ve asked mentors about the situation, sometimes I get the response of “well, most enterprises aren’t 100 percent clean, either. Hell, even churches have blind spots.”
There are “claims” that get paid out, damage we cause that is so obvious we can’t get away with it, or else maybe the offense was committed in view of the public. For several years I was the leader responsible for addressing these claims with the guests we had offended. When I began that assignment, it terrified me to approach the customers with the bad news, but as time went on, I grew excited. People show some fun colors when you present them with bad news, a lot of times their mercy is uplifting. Of course, my old trick with that task was to explain to people that we were going to pay them out in cash for the damage. Several claims I filed with people who were driving shit cars in the first place became wide eyed with joy when they realized they could profit by putting up with a dented fender, or missing sideview.
Probably not the best time to mention this, but I was surprised in the early years on this job how resilient car paneling is. You can back up any modern vehicle at pretty swift speed right into an object, and there’s going to be zero cosmetic damage, so long as you don’t scrape anything—the collision must be flat and single pointed. It’s not reasonable to expect a valet to never cause vehicle damage, or bump something every once in a while. The number of cars we go through is enormous, and sometimes acts of God happen that aren’t even your mistake: I remember one time a beach umbrella flew into the windshield of a dodge Ram I was parking. The thing had hovered like invisible Mary Poppins for several hundred yards before torpedoing into the car. I’ve estimated that I’ve parked and moved cars numbering in the hundreds of thousands. As a confession of highly commendable transparency, I’d also estimate that I have bumped, damaged, or had minor collisions in somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 cars. There are valets with better or worse rates of accuracy—as a supervisor, I’ve made decisions countless times to keep the guys I consider more dangerous drivers out of certain situations, usually in respect to the value or hazardous nature of particular vehicles.
I will repeat that I am troubled and offended by valet company’s treatment of vehicle damage, the way they hide and avoid alerting the owners, such as in my opening anecdote to this chapter. This is wrong behavior. However. I am also positive that no matter how manly, obstinate, or professional a particular driver is, the average visitor to a valet garage has a lower chance of successful, undamaged parking than the valets on staff do. We have home field advantage. We know the garage, and, if we’re long on the job, we’ve done this far more times than any random guest.
It’s an unusual situation. What I’m saying is, on the one hand, you really can’t trust valet companies. On the other hand, we are safer and more responsible than the public when parking their cars. It’s not terribly uncommon for a guest to roll up, usually in a low Asian car, or a big truck, or a high end sports car, and demand that they be allowed to park themselves in our garage. Sometimes I let them do it, while supervising them either in the passenger seat or walking next to them.
Situations where you’re directly or vaguely dependent on an unscrupulous entity are hideous, and the level of your dependence on them will exacerbate anxiety, bitterness, and a kind of resentment that can shorten your life-span. This more applies to employees of the valet companies than it does to customers. To those hotel or restaurant guests reticent to park valet based on the information I’ve stated, it’s understandable, but to be frank, rarely, if ever, should you worry about your car, especially when you’re not in it, in motion. The danger to your vehicle in parking valet is not high, and as I’ve stated, I think it’s lower than if you, say, parked your own car at a Costco or a bank. However I do not ask that you roll over and go easy on a valet company in the event they damage your car. They’ll probably try to lie to you.
So every valet company I’ve worked for, and every manager I’ve had in ten years who is dishonest with their customers. Whether or not the 18 year old kids that I often work with think about this, undoubtedly when you have a manager that is dishonest, it makes for an entire work culture that is dishonest. If God can’t be trusted, don’t expect people to exhibit anything close to grace.
And so it goes with these valet companies. As long as they continue to be led by selfish, deceitful managers, I expect the labor at the bottom of the pyramid to scheme viciously on the driveway as well.
Customers, I hope it goes without saying, can be ugly liars as well. Out of anxiety, confusion, or sometimes malice, they do make false claims from time to time, citing damage on their cars that we clearly did not do. Most of the time, people start lying when they feel afraid. I remember an international traveler pointing out to me some damage on his rental car. I explained to him that the sticker over the spot he was looking at meant the rental company had marked it, and knew about it before he received the car. He didn’t believe me and yelled at me for refusing to take responsibility, and he was yelling and accusing me in front of a large number of people, a moderately embarrassing scene. I also informed him that, having worked in the region for a long time, I knew which rental company he had used, and I knew well enough that even if that particular mark was new (which it wasn’t), they weren’t going to charge him for it. He asked me if I wanted to bet. I smiled, and he didn’t like this, but I explained to him I can’t make a bet with a man I can’t trust. He could go to the rental lot and strangely demand they charge him for it. He yelled at me some more. I don’t think he was trying to get one over, I think he was just afraid of the money and feelings.
Cleary we hadn’t damaged this guy’s car. We comped his parking due to his meltdown. He’s one example of hundreds of these instances, but it’s a real problem when the habit of your company is to lie, and suddenly you’re in a moment of telling the truth. There’s some old fable about that, I’m sure.
Let’s look at the bottom of the pyramid, and the primary unethical behavior of the valets:
Skimming
Endemic—every location I’ve worked as a valet skims the transient tickets, often prodigiously. I’ve done it. I’ve also been complicit where it’s being done by others. Basically and usually it works like this:
Daily parking at your location costs ten dollars. This money is supposed to be charged to the visitor, and accepted as payment, received by your valet company. The valet on duty, instead of giving the ten dollars to his company puts it in the tip pool, thus keeping the money (albeit sharing with the other valets). I’ve often been amused when I begin work at a new location and the valets show me their method as if I’ve never heard of this scam before. The way to escape any audit is to re-use old tickets, though even this isn’t foolproof, any manager with eyeballs can generally tell when a ticket has been doubled. Another way a valet might accomplish this theft covertly is to improperly validate a used ticket at an adjoining restaurant. So they collect ten dollars from the customer, put the money in the tip pool, then walk over to the restaurant and have a hostess stamp it, thus recording the parking as “free” on the books. If you’re really lazy, you can scribble “void” on the ticket and pretend that the car was never parked in the first place, that for some reason a ticket was issued, but then the guest changed their mind and drove away at the last minute.
The popularity of this scam is in large part due to its ease. But culture is huge too. As I’ve stated, having bosses that are constant liars does a lot. Also, working on a staff of many people who all hover around a driveway freely also makes for more theft. A gas station attendant is not as likely, I don’t think, to reach into a till, pull out a hundred dollars, and pocket it. On a given night, at my current location, the valets are easily skimming over a hundred dollars. But the gas station attendant feels more alone, creeped on by the solitude of his store, and the static attendant can’t mentally evade the irrefutable wrong of taking money from a till as much.
The bosses usually know that skimming occurs. In the industry, it’s calculated like shrink or waste in a retail store. Some of the young guys I’ve worked with think they’re slick, and they’re getting away with it. On the other hand, some guys admit the boss knows, but since he doesn’t do anything about it—it must be ok. Green light to steal. I once had a manager who was a prodigious skimmer back when he was a valet, and then he got promoted—what a hot spot for him! He couldn’t say anything to the staff regarding theft, as he was company enemy number 1 beforehand.
There’s only so many ways to view your boss, just like opinions of God:
God doesn’t care what we do.
God is an asshole. Fuck him.
God ain’t looking.
God won’t punish us for wrongdoing. He’s a homie.
There may be many and more nuanced versions of these Boss-views, but I wish to emphasize and re-emphasize that the earlier mentioned unethical behavior of valet companies stokes the negative perspectives and consequent behaviors of staff. I take the view ethics are generally inflexible across all life circumstances, and whatever ostensible situation arises, there’s no wiggle in right and wrong. That’s not to say people can’t feel confusion and anxiety about their decisions. There are times in life much more troubling than dealing with cars or money. The older I get, the more I realize that material problems are the best kind of problems to have. One time a man approached me at the valet stand in the early morning and handed me the ticket to his car, and in doing so, says to me “You’re going to pull my car up?” emphasizing the “you’re.” So I said, “yes, sir, is that alright?” A touch of return condescension in my voice. He kind of bitched at me, and I was quite confused about this, as everything about the interaction is old standard to me: ticket, car, guest, ta-da. I’m a professional, why is this such a weird deal to him? I even said to him at one point, flexing my credentials “It’s not a big deal, sir, I’ll take care of your car,” before running towards the garage to retrieve it. He yelled at me: “IT IS A BIG DEAL.” When I got to the garage and saw the car he requested, then it made sense. It was a BMW M3 CSL E46 with a big spoiler on it and sluttish little skirt on the sides. When I saw the Instagram sticker on the rear window I knew there wasn’t any hope for a tip. The interaction impressed me with our high separation of values, and what I want to tell valets is that even if you’re a guy like me, who thinks this particular car is absolute cringe, and the man driving it probably a merciless lover, make no mistake that he deserves your finest care regardless. Whether or not the car and the job is a “big deal,” do it right. But who am I kidding? Any valet reading this is probably a 20 year old kid who thinks that car is tits.
There are, of course, outside of the standard procedures of this job, moments of ethical trouble that arise with people. I’ve mentioned the occasional pervert, the drug habits which come by valet stands, and in short, the sizable percentage of people who come to hotels to do very unethical or creepy things. But life gets on top of you fast in a way that I’m quite sure, whatever advice I might spell out in this book, all my readers are going to be hit with moments of decision that put the “ick” in ethics.
One time I was having a typical day on the job. It was sunny. It was busy. And pedestrian traffic equaled that of the cars coming by. I was standing at the highest reach of the valet driveway talking to a customer—simple chatter in the order of a check-in to the hotel, at this point in my career the information out of my lips a perfect script about parking and the property, sincere enough to relay the relevant information to the guest, banal enough to buzz them off quickly so I can help the next car coming in.
On the sidewalk, I noticed a very tall man with a mullet. I thought “golly, nice mullet, dude.” He had a family with him, a wife and several kids—one of the children was a boy of about eight years old, and this boy had a matching mullet. And I thought “oh, how terrible, kids think too much of their parents.” This mullet whipping father and son were horsing around a bit as they passed by—the kid was smacking on his fathers legs, or jumping in efforts to climb his very tall body.
Then the father picked up the boy by the shoulders. I looked the other direction—I couldn’t have expected what was about to occur, I don’t know whether I excused the visual because I was distracted by my own work or if I casually assumed the father was just picking up his son for a piggy back ride, or something harmless. As I was looking at the face of the hotel guest I was serving, I saw his eyes widen—the guest saw it in full view. The father, as I turned back to look myself, had evidently body slammed his child into a bush just off the sidewalk, and the child was immediately in tears and writhing.
Now I was giving this mullet duo my full attention. I stood about ten feet away from them. I do not have children, though many nieces and nephews, and at first, I let what was occurring between this strange family continue without terrible guilt or action based on the knowledge that sometimes kids overreact to things. I didn’t see the body slam after all. Maybe it was a highly skilled, fatherly plop in a fluffy bush, and the kid is truly just angry for attention, or upset he didn’t get to Disneyland or some nonsense.
Unfortunately, what occurred next ruined my self-justifications of innocence. The father proceeded to curse in the face of his son with such hatred and abuse that it made me shrink up into the long gone child I once was myself. I felt scared. He was using language that nobody on this planet would like to hear directed at them, much less children. I’m sure there’s a way in therapy to process “shut the fuck up,” and “stop being a little bitch!” shouted at you inches from your face, but for most of us, what doesn’t kill you makes life harder.
I am still very ashamed of the things that went through my mind during this moment. They were all based in fear, excuses for inaction. I considered assaulting the man, but thought “he is big, I would be trounced.” I considered saying anything, sternly in condemnation, but thought “I have no children, who am I to criticize a father?” I wondered about calling for more attention from others to the scene, as there were many people about, but thought “this is just city life, look, nobody else cares, why should I? Not my problem.”
But out of all my shameful reasons for ignoring the situation, what stuck in my little brain the most was the most dreadful selfishness. I thought, “I’m on the clock. I could lose my job if I do anything. I’m just a valet. I just park cars, dammit. Leave me alone.”
Readers—whatever occupation you find yourself in, whatever clubs or parties or factions you join, beware that your identity among them is always a risk for excusing liberty and justice for all. How silly and evil that a man can become fearful about his income, or his career, or status, just as I was. “Valet” is not the kind of job title that’s going to get me dates from women and respect from men. And yet I was willing to cling to it like an anxious lover when confronted with a situation that threatened my valet title.
And so I did nothing. But continued to park cars. God, forgive me. That family disappeared forever from my view, and all I have is the worst memory of them. My coworkers at the scene were little in the way of therapy, though they claimed, as men often do, that if I had attacked, they would’ve rolled with me.
Ethics. They are the geometry of a body slam.
Chapter 13: Inside of People’s Cars
There is a certain type of valet guest, usually a woman, who will say, “I’m so sorry—my car’s a mess” when they hand over their keys. The people who say this usually have cars that are far cleaner than my personal vehicle. That is to say, this warning is typically more anxiety than it is actual filth.
Alternatively, the truly messy interior, insides of cars that evoke high amounts of disgust, those owners generally say nothing beforehand. Sometimes, as in an episode of Seinfeld, a car interior may be spotless, but an odor of intense human organs or some other mysterious evil pervades the cabin. I have myself, on a few occasions, laid a battle fart inside the car of an unruly customer, or else had a flatus escape me untimely during the brief parking journey. I assume many of the foul odors to smack me when parking a car are from guests returning the cheek in kind. At the risk of sounding paranoid and victim oriented, I’m certain that some people going about this world are downright sadists, and get a real kick out of demeaning others. Service workers in the path of these pissers have little recourse. One time a man gave me a hefty tip, grinning as he handed over the keys to me, and like a peep show attendant told me to “have a good night!” His car smelled like a fungal butthole that he attempted to remedy by lighting his ass pubes on fire and expelling the proliferous wind of Satan. There’s no way to know, but by the way he said goodnight, I think it was on purpose.
In the early part of my career, Teslas and dashcams were rare. When I got inside a vehicle, there was nobody but God watching. Nowadays, it’s very hard to guess when you might be recorded. Presently, when I see the valet mode or the red dot of an interior camera, I begin reciting poetry, or singing a song, or I say something bizarre and biting about the guest or my life. I guess I like to reinforce constantly that I have a little personality, despite my repetitive baseline of service commands. Entering another persons car can tell you a lot and fast about other people’s personalities. This chapter is about the experience of entering other people’s cars, on a visceral level, experiences and gleanings from the way others organize their vehicles, with some advice and warnings to valets, as per usual.
Let’s get the most obvious advice out of the way first: if a vehicle arrives with intense hygienic issues, deny them service. Don’t get in it. Needles lying around, rats, cockroaches, lice—I’ve seen all these things, do not park these cars. The surliest I’ve ever been with coworkers was when someone parked a car with rats, and I found it in the morning, when the owner requested it. “I’d wish plague upon you,” I told the other valets, “but you’ve already brought it.”
My tolerance for disgust, however, is markedly higher than most other peoples. I will not speculate or elaborate why, about that. But there is not an odor on the planet, save for one in memory, that I would turn down parking a car for, that is, if I thought that I was going to be the only valet to drive it, and the interior is otherwise sanitary. (The one odor that defeated me was a painter’s car, which kept gallons of toxic chemicals in its back seat. It was a gas chamber).
Vomit and excrement, additionally milk, don’t ever seem to leave as odors, after they’ve been cleaned. I can tell immediately when a rental car has had one of these mishaps in the past. Air fresheners, especially when I see a lot of them in one dashboard, signify that some loose human liquids once caught floorboards, or maybe even the seat I’m occupying. If there’s a child seat or two or three in the back, you can be sure the ghosts of many bowel movements will hang in the air. I assume any minivan that pulls up is going to smell like baby excretions.
These would be the perfumes I would pitch, if Calvin Klein asked me to encapsulate the aromatic wonders of valet parking:
Eau de Baby Seat. She has 4 kids, a minivan, and her husband is upset about the Steelers game. They drove from Boise to San Francisco non-stop. Is that milk and Cheerios on the floor? Or is there something more? Who knows, it was wailing and gnashing of teeth all through Nevada.
Fleurs de Drogue. Marijuana actually improves his driving, otherwise he’s too distracted by his cell phone. Skunk and shake are all a police officer might whiff from the window of his Honda civic, but there’s an eighth he forgot about in the center console, along with an ashy pipe that hasn’t been washed in fifteen years.
Le Poo Poo Residue. That one time he got road head from his high school sweetheart, but he was questionably digesting some curry from dinner, hoped she and his father wouldn’t notice the chunky skid mark he left in his BMW. He scrubbed as best he could, but the little dots in the leather seats may have eaten what he tried to wipe.
Bentley de Carl’s Junior. New money, classic American. It’s a 300,000 dollar car. It’s a cheese stuccoed bag of trash on the floorboards. Five different bags in fact, from five fast food restaurants, all consumed in the past 3 days for about 20 dollars. Is it Paris Hiltons car? No. But it could be. Cheese and sophistication, all at once.
L’odeur Corporelle. It’s a rental ford F-150. A fishing pole in the back. But that’s not fish. That’s body sweat. My god, with the windows down you can’t escape it. You are in the armpit of Baal, the never bathing Satan. Dead bodies can’t smell as bad, surely. The living somehow outfunk them.
New Car Smell. It’s a trick, right? Why is this scent limited to factory pressed vehicles? The air is purgatory. The knobs are cherub nipples. Everything is fresher than newborns. Nissan or Rolls Royce, doesn’t make a difference, it’s the aroma of a sealed machine, more complex and mysterious than birth itself.
All these smells and more will hit the nostrils of any journeyman valet. As I mentioned, I have a high tolerance for disgust, so for me, I must compensate by refusing a greater number of the odorous guests than my personal inclination, for the sake of my coworkers. As to what words you use in explaining a refusal of service to an overly funky patron, I advise you only mention sanitary conditions if hard pressed, and otherwise divert language towards “I apologize, but I don’t feel comfortable parking your vehicle.” Some of the most funky and disgusting car owners are going to act nonplussed about being rejected no matter what you do. Strangely, I advise no mercy to them. Remain calm and express to them the car is unbearable. These savages need the doctor’s opinion you can provide.
Please, if you lean the opposite direction of me in the disgust department—if you’re squeamish or easily choked by cigarette smell or the average minivan, buckle up and deal with it more often than not. Remember what mothers put up with on the daily. If they can survive birth, afterbirth, and years of diaper changing, you can park a bad smelling car once in a while. Don’t use anything I’ve said to become a germ opposed valet tsar. Remember always that your shit stink, too.
Beyond smells, car interiors are riddled with tokens and possessions of their owners. Most of the nooks and compartments are predictable, so far as what they’ll usually contain. The glove compartment will have boring paperwork, registration, insurance and the like. These are useful if you’ve for any reason missed getting the owners name before issuing them the ticket.
Most cars have a deepish open compartment directly beneath at the split between seats. There’s usually junk here—loose change, maybe trash, work badges, etc… I do not recommend putting your hand in this nook unless necessary. It’s sometimes sticky.
Venture into center consoles only when guests request something from them, for the most part, tho if you’re missing keys sometimes it’s an odd but important place to look. Some people, a very rare class, keep their key fob in the center console all the time, and presumably never remove it.
Push start cars are one of those backwards and unhelpful advancements in technology, as there is very little upside to not having a standard key ignition. I will not labor to describe all the variants, but advanced valets can find the overriding key-hole to start in fob technology vehicles (sometimes it’s under the “start” button, sometimes it’s in weird reaches the the console or glove box) for when the fob battery is dead.
Common accoutrements of a vehicle interior are religious icons, idols, or family Polaroids. A stunning number of people hang stuff from their rear view, a practice that seems moderately dangerous.
Police scanners are way more common than I would’ve guessed. I don’t understand why people need them. Do they speed 100 percent of the time until their little scanner beeps in its electric voice “k-band! Meeep meeep meeeeep!1” Is there something felonious inside the vehicle that could put me away for years? Why the fear? I’m opposed to the nuisance of the beeping and the robot voice more so than the threat of police. You can get away with anything if you’re innocent.
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“K band” is a radio frequency. It’s often the range of radio frequency that police devices use. So the scanner is alerting that this signal is nearby, and possibly police. However, other vehicles, even regular cars nowadays, often use the same radio frequency in their navigation devices.
Back seats are sometimes entirely composed of garbage, especially in two door coupes. Trunks may be the same, though often contain utility items or bottled water. Trunks are also where stranger items might occur—guns, open alcohol containers, random underwear… though a seemingly private area of a car, valets are going to end up looking in a trunk for one reason or another with most overnight cars—most obviously just to help unload luggage. I don’t feel shy popping the trunk of an overnight guest right when they arrive and beginning to help with luggage, but occasionally a guest gets very peeved at me for the presumption, and demand the compartment stay shut.
Here are some of the most unusual things I’ve seen inside cars over the years—the ocular sensations:
A man once had a statue of St Christopher hanged from his rear view, and I do mean hanged, as with a little noose, the baby Jesus carved on the shoulders of the saint seemed worried that his carrier had been lynched. I shall never know if this was a mockery of religion and its superstitions or if the owner just picked a bizarre way to be sincerely prayerful.
On top of the console in an Acura, a hotel guest left something in excess of a pound of marijuana in a jug the size of a small fish tank. For a few days all the valets gossiped about it, and when the man checked out, he remarked “damn! I thought you guys would help yourself!” And proceeded to tip us in handfuls of flower.
I once encountered a base model Nissan, finely groomed, that had a condom fitted over the shifter. My assumption is that the owner saw humor in this act, or else genuinely did not want my paws touching the weaved faux leather. In any event, the condom made the phallic nature of the gear shift, combined with the familiar smell of latex, a helplessly and needlessly sexual practice in valet. But who gives a handy with a condom, anyway? Strange thoughts created by a little gesture.
Not one car, but I have seen several, that are mobile hoarding zones, where all but the drivers seat is obstructed by an immense amount of junk. There’s never any logic to it whatsoever, like the shopping carts you see homeless people burdened by, and how they cling to things, and you wonder why. Just why.
There are numerous occasions where a guest leaves an item of immense value in their car. Nothing tops the time those ESPN reporters left their camera equipment in rental cars trunk immediately after bragging about how valuable they were. Indeed, similarly, several Television programs over the years have stayed at my hotels during production, and their equipment, and my knowledge of its whereabouts in the night, is probably the most valuable criminal 411 I’ve ever been privy to. Theft from a vehicle, that is, something stolen out of a car, is rare though. It is more infrequent than us damaging a car. In fact, not counting the valets who will pop a mint from somebody’s Altoid can on the dash, I cannot recall a single instance of theft perpetrated by a valet in this fashion. I have, however, seen unrelated, non-employees break into cars, and it is unknown whether or not a valet tipped off an accomplice thief. I have suspected several robberies over the years were of this nature—even recently, two bicycles locked on the back rack of a Prius were recently stolen from the depths of our garage, and I think it’s probably an employee colluded with someone to do so.
A strangely effective deterrence from crime, such as stealing an item during the valet process, is paranoia. Somewhat often people will leave cash out in a plainview area of the vehicle. It could be a small amount, or a large amount, but when someone leaves cash right out in the open, it’s impossible for me to avoid the thought “this is a trap. This is a bait car.” Having lived a tumultuous sort of personal life, I am perhaps hyper aware that the moments which turn the future often occur fast, and without much contemplation. People who have been arrested usually understand this well, too. We are all one decision away from incarceration, one lapse of reason from the nuthouse, one moment of passion from inferno. So you’ve got to be on the lookout for traps. The devil always wants to you trick you. If you don’t believe in the devil, people lay enough traps, anyway.
Moreover, I hope I should not have to mount much of an apology for working honestly. Don’t steal. Lastly about car interiors, I do not have any qualms about adjusting people’s seats, air conditioning, or radios whatsoever when I get in their car. I do have an odd fascination in some of the seat positions people elect—it’s a good reminder to me that although we all share the same general parts, human bodies are remarkably personal. What is comfortable to some is torture to another. You’ve really got to be empathetic about people’s bodies.
Usually I just turn the radio off, though sometimes I like the song playing and turn it up. Since phones connect to people’s cars, a recurring sitcom-ish bit happens where a guest gets a phone call from someone and the device is still connected to the car. I always answer semi-professionally, “Hello! This is _____ the valet! How can I help you?”