How to Park Cars: A Manual for Valets and Unsuccessful Suicides: Chapters 14-16
Chapter 14: Beyond Ethics
I did not know any of my grandparents particularly well.
Sometimes a friend or acquaintance relays to me that their grandfather or mother makes the best casserole in the world, or they’re going through some issues, or they vote for the wrong candidates, or whatever, and I’m slightly reminded that this is a familial relationship I never really had. My father was estranged from his old man, more or less, who retired two states away (literally and figuratively), and the rest of my grands died when I was just a boy.
The closest I had was my mom’s dad, who, in failing health and after the death of his wife, lived with my family briefly before a speedy demise when I was aged 12. I do not think he liked me, though, it was a bad year for him in many ways that I could not then, nor perhaps now, fully appreciate or empathize with. In better health, he was a friendly man, somewhat to a fault, often talking to strangers at the dinner table adjacent in a restaurant, veteran of the last noble war, and a crotchety objector to things like freemasonry and other bygone boys clubs, steadfast to creaky church pews in denominations with dwindling membership. He had an awful hunch, and I wonder if those wooden pews made it worse, or if, just as when I kneel during the same services, I feel an ungodly amount of guilt just for the way it makes my body feel, let alone all the sinning I’ve done, my knees like knives are stuck in them, and my spine, as I try to posture with shoulders back, screams “curve! Curve!” And so we hunch.
When he died, after the funeral and all the family redheads cried their eyes out, my mother gave me a blanket of his. It said “navy” on it, and I had no clue whether it was issued to him in the actual navy, though it smelled as if it could’ve been 4 or 5 decades old indeed.
I cleaned it. And I kept it in my car for park outings or the beach. I read not a few books on that blanket. It wasn’t terribly sacred to me, although, if, for instance, I was with a lady on one of these park or beach outings, I should certainly avoid letting her use the blanket. It would’ve been too disrespectful to that old Protestant navy man to have even the thought of copping a feel on his property. I don’t think the bikini was even invented in the culture he came from. I wasn’t going to introduce it to him in the afterlife. Or afterblanket. Whatever.
Some people think it doesn’t get cold where I live. I guess if you’re a goddamned Canadian or something, sure. But I recall a gusty night in December when I was on the job, and it felt like 40 degrees out with a that frigid Pacific Ocean spitting mist our way. I moved the valet podium inside the lobby of the hotel a little earlier than usual, just to keep warm.
A man walked in the doors of the hotel. It must’ve been around 10pm at that point—I remember being itchy to get off work. The last hour on the clock is very hard to stay mindful about, to be present.
The man had snot caked all under his nose, an unshaven face, socks with flip flops. By the way he spoke, whether fantastic acting or actual sobriety, he seemed well mannered, and less homeless than his appearance. However, what he was asking for was a blanket. So he was homeless, though he insisted it was for a friend, for some other tragic case on the street that night.
The front desk agent immediately replied that we have no such blankets to give it out.
I looked at the homeless man. Then I swiveled and looked at the front desk, the young lady in her company issued blazer, the neatly ironed black skirt and tights. I knew that right behind her desk, right behind it, there was pile of blankets. They always keep them there for ease of access, as it’s common for hotel guests to come request them at night. There must be 500 of these blankets lying around.
What would J.W. Marriott do in this situation?
Now I don’t mean to be too harsh on that desk agent. Lord knows, where I come from and where I work, I’ve stepped over a lot of miserable homeless people, and I’ve had little feuds with some on my job, and witnessed certain daily loiterers act with extreme violence, perversion, and malice towards God and property.
In this case, the man’s request was perfectly reasonable though his lie about the blanket being for a “friend” broke my heart a little. I could relate to that: needing help, but asking in a screwed up way because I’m sometimes too hurt and scared of everything to admit how bad I’ve got it.
What would J.W. Marriott do? I said this to the lady at the desk, after the guy went out the door, cold. She had no idea what the fuck I was talking about. Often I say these sorts of socially inept platitudes, so she dismissed it as my usual strangeness.
I chased down the man and gave him my grandfathers blanket. He came back, a couple days later, to thank me, and I asked how his friend was doing, he said oh good good he’s trying to get in to a shelter. And he had cleaned his nose. I’ve heard the words “thank you” from a million hotel guests over the years, but that’s the only one I really think about as meaning much. He came back just to say it. I hope the grandfather of which I only have vague impressions would approve of what I did, same goes for J.W.
On this job, or, not to be too cute, in this life: I’m somewhere between the street and the cozy hotel. Try not to forget, always, that it’s a very short distance between the two. The gap is not as wide as people would have you believe. It’s hard to be in between, but not as brutal as being at either extreme.
Chapter 15: Advice from the Psychiatric Ward
If you ever find yourself in a place like a psych ward, or a rehab of any stripe—if you’re unfortunate enough to reside in a gloomy building labeled vaguely “treatment centre” outside, usually as a course of your institutionalization, the authorities in these places will give you a job.
It is not a real job. It will be something pathetic and easy like emptying the ashtrays, raking the horseshoe pit, or picking up lunch from the cafeteria (all assignments I’ve had).
More or less, the jobs they give you are a test. They want to see if you have the social fitness to contribute, or any self respect to be remotely prideful.
What type of inpatient would you be? I think a large percentage of the population is the “fuck it, I’m in the clutches of disorder and disease, I’m not doing shit” variety. Over 50 percent. It’s probably something like that in the real world too. Or they do the job, but hardly; half assed, as they please.
Because these half asses are a majority, those few who take their jobs very seriously will invariably be ridiculed. But what is an insult, really, in the sort of wellness dungeon that makes a psych ward? One man in hell can’t preach much to another. It gets tougher back on the surface—on your valet job.
If you can withstand the ridicule which applies to wage work and psych ward follies equally, a silver lining is that it’s quite easy to be, in a basic sense, better than all your co-workers. To quote a brilliant woman: a good man is hard to find. For most wage jobs, showing up on time will make you the best employee. I’m not exaggerating. The level of social business awareness on a typical wage workforce is next to nil. Very few workers want their employment. I don’t stress without pity: most of them just don’t know how to get out of it. I want my job, sure, but if I’m being honest, I don’t know how to get out of it either.
There are practical dangers of being a great worker in the eyes of your boss, but, if you honestly want the job, which I hope you do, the benefits are clear: more work, better shifts, and better leverage for other career opportunities. You may, also, receive an easier time requesting desired days off. I hope you are not the type who overworks yourself, because if you are, reading my prior statements may be dreadfully unhealthy. Please take vacations, weekends, and find time to make love or fornicate off the clock.
That said, it’s precisely because of my lowest experiences, my extremities in living, that I can easily work the sort of job that I do without being an ingrate or having shame. It’s a real mensch who works diligently without any sordid mystical rearrangement of cognition such as I’ve had, to some extent.
There is another type of mind, growing in numbers among young people, who delight in having task work of any kind, while despairing and misbehaving wildly when there is no labor available. They were problem students in public schools, but make the best workers—so long as there is work to do. I say they make the best workers, and I mean it, though these nervous hearts can easily fall into drug habits, phone addictions, or antisocial customer service behavior. They just get bored. Fast. So they’re a confusing lot, and as well can be confused with those who work hard for, let’s say, less pathological reasons.
I am going to back down from making further delicate analogies about the fictitious hospital “jobs” and the “real-world” wages, except to say I’m certain that doing a “good job” of anything is seldom a process of doing one thing very well—though that may guarantee fame or employment forever—the man who attends to all small things with care is like God. Perhaps what the psych ward tests get at the quickest is the relation between your personal life and your responsibility towards work. The two are inextricable, when it comes down to it. And so in this “real world,” the things you do and feel off the clock are directly relational to what you do on it, or if you have a clock at all. Long way of saying a simple thing we all know, that your personal life, the wages paid in the experience only, are more important than the job, but I lean in to thinking that your job, whatever it may be, and how you behave at it, is a decent measure of the rest of your spirit.
When I get that dreadful question during a new social encounter, the “what do you do?” I am firstly defensive, probably because my answer is not going to impress the way I hoped it would 20 years ago, when I was young and the whole world was an open ocean and I thought I’d make a daring sailor. It seems like I’ve spent the last twenty years trying swim across the Atlantic, with detentions on some unfriendly islands not far from where I started.
I do not say “I’m a valet” or “valet parking,” as these nouns are almost out of date at this point, and always have been, frankly, confusing, as in centuries past a “valet” is some kind of French butler.
I always like to respond with the most absurdly reductive mode of “living” I can think to describe: “I park cars,” is what I say. I almost always want to insist on the askers imagination: “can you believe it? I get paid to park other people’s cars. Isn’t life strange?” If I’m afforded elaborating further, I will tell stories, the way a lawyer might boast in sneak about the magnitude of his trials, and speak with confidence about his work in such a way that the listener must think “he’s either a great lawyer, or he certainly thinks himself one.” In the same way, as I talk about my strange living, I come to inflate the subject with preposterous importance, and my knowledge of all things car parking is issued with esoteric bravura for I think I cannot impress anyone with the job I have, but I could impress anybody with the job I do.
There is a perfectly literary insanity to being an excelsior car parker—and a trove of authors from the 20th century made it their whole shtick to mock the little sincerities of people without real wars to fight. My father used to joke, when someone on the TV had a badge of inane professionalism, “just as well as being the world’s greatest ping pong player!”
Yes, there is probably a more terrible fate for someone who takes their job too seriously rather than the one who takes a pimp and prostitute angle on employment. But on that scale, I’ve worked with a lot more whores than I have professionals, and the ones who balance it—who work somewhere in the middle—it’s damned hard to notice them, same way it’s damned hard to even notice a genuinely humble person. Me, I slide here and there, though this book worries me a little as a heavy stone on the serious end.
Chapter 16: Advanced Valets
a) When I enter a vehicle, my right foot hits the brake pedal before my ass hits the seat. This allows for a
slightly quicker ignition and shift.
b) If I’ve parked a car earlier in the day, and worked until the moment the same vehicle is requested to
be brought out later, I emphatically take the lead and retrieve the vehicle myself, rather than issuing
the job to one of my coworkers. This heightens the probability of a tip. Repeating service—using the
same valet multiple times to treat the same guest, is what you want to aim for with all actions,
barring the improbability that a particular guest doesn’t like a particular valet.
c) When you enter a vehicle, visually scan the cabin for any items the driver may have left behind. Mostly
you’re looking for cell phones. If you see it, and you’re sure they’ll want it, hop out of the car and take
the item to them. This kills two birds: you won’t have to run back to the garage later to retrieve the
item for them, and they’ll be impressed by your conscientiousness.
d) A word about communication. A large majority of errors occur because the way in which a task is
communicated is unclear. I ain’t Marshall Mcluhan, but the mode of communication is as important or
more than the verbiage. Strive to speak in person as often as possible when relaying task details. And
try to receive information through the fewest channels—the fewest people. Radios, text messages,
and all the apps in all the world are helpful in many ways, but when it comes down to it, our species
still gets shit done best when you’re within smelling distance of the person communicating.
In a strange way, I fear the militaries of the world a whole lot more after a decade on my valet job, because the number of times I’ve witnessed errors occur due to communication mishaps is so high. And often when these mistakes occur and you try to assess the situation for future prevention, and/or an explanation to any relevant authorities, you’re left scratching your head and figuring nobody was really at fault, it’s just hard to get a message across through a lot of people. So I’m quite sure many bombs have been dropped on the wrong village, and a league of G.I. Joe’s were only doing what seemed right at the time.
e) Use people’s names. It’s going to be written on the keytag, if you don’t already know it. Do not feel
self-conscious about the obviousness of collecting someone’s name in this manner. There was a
study done once, probably by some college graduates with too much time and money, that states
people act generously even when they’re conscious of casual bribery (in the experiment I believe
they had a teacher give candy to subjects who were about to review the teacher’s performance for
the semester, the reviews were significantly improved by the candy subjects, and what’s more, if the
teacher said out loud “this is to bribe you,” they’d still receive higher marks on the review).
If you don’t know their name, or can’t pronounce it and are unwilling to ask for some reason, (I could not for the life of me muster the courage to call a certain Mr. Butts by his name, nor, even knowing it was pronounced “Nuh-zee,” find myself straight faced enough to issue Mr. Nazi’s car to him by uttering the two syllables out loud), these are the correct nouns to use:
Sir
Miss
This may change in time and though this does not seem to be an advanced move, I mention this technique in the category largely because my coworkers make the terrible “ma’am” mistake. “Ma’am” is the dreadful consequence of an American south that tried to stuff French into a cotton gin. A contemporary utterance of the formal “Madam” here in the states is going to be connected mostly to a connotation of brothels. And though the term “miss” has its own sordid connotations, and even though you will be plainly mislabeling a huge number of women visiting your locale, the error in marriage appointment you risk will probably be taken as a compliment. If you call a 60 year old lady “miss,” she’ll have a fun time correcting you, at worst.
On the flip side, as a note to any readers who are on the other side of the valet stand, there are some definite pronouns which you ought to avoid referring to valets as. Do not call me:
Buddy or bud (I feel like blaspheming for how offensive this title is to me. When a man calls me this, I instantly feel the need to uppercut him sucker style).
Champ
Boss
Kid
Kudos to the general public who bothers to learn a service staff members name. Even if you ask me my name, then forget it later, I respect and admire you in a way that is almost higher than money in my hand.
f) A common question you’re going to receive from guests is where to eat around your location. Your
answer should be in two parts: the first, you name the outright most popular dining destination in the
area. The second, you emphasize how everybody thinks highly of destination one, but destination two
is where locals, and or you, prefer. Be careful not to give them an outright local dive, someplace a
vacationer will feel menaced. This social maneuver can be accomplished even if you don’t know the
area, just google dining near you, pick the two highly rated restaurants. If you know an honest answer,
or course, go with that. Few of us work long enough in a given locale, or actually live where we work to
know the area expertly.
g) If it’s good weather out and the slow season, and your driveway has enough space to stage cars,
consider this scenario: say a man comes into your driveway with a fancy car, something very
bourgeois like a base 911 or a Maserati, and he’s making a big stink about not wanting to valet his car
on the basis of protecting his valuable running metal. As you’re politely explaining to the man your
appreciation for his carefulness, and your understanding of his valuable property, have one of your
coworkers pull from the garage a high-end vehicle, especially one that surpasses his in clout and
status. Ideally you want the car pulled to be a “daily” ticket, something that’s going out soon. Do not
make any sort of verbal mention about the scene. The careful man may or may not be persuaded.
A base objective of any valet’s job is to collect keys from every single person who brings a car on the driveway, no matter what. However, the advanced valet knows that there are going to be customers who aggressively want to defy this job function, and they will use child-like social tactics to retain their car keys. The customer will say, “oh I’m just going inside for two minutes,” or they’ll pout, insult you, demean you, etc… I had one man, an elderly gentleman, park his car all wonky on the driveway, refuse to relinquish his keys to me, and begin walking to the hotel entrance. In a last-ditch effort to persuade him, I tried to play the situation pathetically, saying something like “please, it would really help me out if I could have your keys, just in case anything happens.”
“Anything happens!” he yelled at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?” The driveway at the time was swarmed with cars and people. I was short staffed, supervisor on duty, just trying to float through the check-in rush and get out of dodge, so my reply was less than smooth:
“Like, if you disappear, if anything happens…so I can move the car,” is something like what I said.
The man then threatened to make me disappear, as in, murder me. I kept calm, dropped everything I was doing at the time, and went to the front desk to inform them that this man was banned from parking with us, that he threatened my life, and I can direct him to street parking nearby, if need be. His wife was mortified. This last bit is the advanced tactic, and you only want to use it in extreme circumstances, but you can leverage a man’s marriage or relationship against him in certain situations. On the other hand, sometimes the wife is as much a problem as the man, but generally speaking women are the more reasonable and friendly gender, when it comes to patronage. Also in the other extreme, fights between couples sometimes boil over onto their driveway behavior, and these you more or less have to let run their course, or accept being a neutral emotional punching bag.
h) Finally, for those of you working at busy locations, places where you’re going to have dozens of
pedestrians asking for your attention at one time, while also new cars are bounding into the driveway
non-stop, you must understand that for the most part, “multitasking” is not a real thing. It is not
possible, over ninety percent of the time, to do multiple things at once. Get that idea out of your
mind entirely. In point of fact, it’s typically a disaster to even attempt to do multiple things at one
time. You’ll end up doing both poorly, or one of them out of order and the other not at all. The
advanced maneuver is an ability to receive many tasks individually, prioritize them by importance,
order of the request, expectation of timeliness, and expected value (how much you think they’ll tip).
Then you complete one task at a time, and of course, you delegate as many tasks as possible to your
coworkers—presumably they do this mostly without you even asking, if you’re working with some
real valets. It is important however, on this job more than some others, that you childishly announce
to your coworkers the little things you are doing. For example, if Mr. Lingenfelder requests his car in
person, ticket in hand, and there’s 5 cars already on the driveway ready to be parked, I might
announce to my coworkers: “I’m going to park this Toyota and come back with Mr. Lingenfelders car.”
It’s very simple, but it saves any of my fellow valets from mistakenly running for Lingenfelders car
themselves.
If you watched me work for a shift, you might be tempted to accuse me of hypocrisy about this multitasking advice. I do many things at a time with one physical trip of my body, and I’m quite sure that my organization in doing so is what lands me so many shifts doing bellman duty. What I mean is: if I’ve got a luggage delivery to room 205, and another luggage delivery to room 237, I’m absolutely going to take both loads of luggage to the second floor at the same time. There might be some intelligent people reading this who think what I just said is hilariously condescending or plain dumb. But I swear to you, I’m the minority of bellman who would do this, in practicality. Some of my coworkers are indeed too dull to comprehend such service, however most of them simply find it beneficial to eat up more clock doing the deliveries separate.
There are times I really stretch the imagination in executing multiple tasks in one body movement:
I am on the driveway
Driveway is packed with cars
Lady asks for a sweater from her car
There are several requests for cars in the garage to be pulled out on the drive
A man asks me to plug in his electric vehicle
1. I take one of the cars off the driveway into the garage
2. I drive it to the lady’s sweater, and grab that, parking the car I’m in nearby
3. I retrieve one of the requested vehicles, and drive it back up top with the sweater, giving it to the lady,
and the car to its owner.
4. As for the electric vehicle, I wrote down what car it is, and I’ll get to that later, when I have more time.
(Note that studious valets will understand there are small pieces of this scenario left unmentioned, namely the retrieval of everyone’s car keys, which in various locations occurs at different spots, but requires specific precision in organizing cleanly).
I do not consider these actions multitasking at all. I am moving my body in an organized flow of tasks to work fluidly. Maybe it’s semantic to some, but I wish to emphasize to my valet readers that in the vulgar sense of the word: don’t multitask. Don’t try to do multiple things at once. However, mentally speaking, a high level of fitness is structuring how to move yourself with grace and tact. I’m quite sure that if I could apply my skill for this sort of valet organization to my personal affairs, I’d be a billionaire. But something happens when I get off the clock, I feel confused and hazy, sometimes hungry, or horny, or nothing at all, and I mostly occupy my time consuming, rather than producing.
As a general concept for green workers, and for those of you that may work at monstrously busy locations: do something. It gets overwhelming at times when there are many tasks requested all at once. I’ve had many terrible rushes of business that feel as though they are unsolvable, a driveway overflowing with cars, and guests coming up and demanding all sorts of big and little services, that everything boils down to immediate motion. Just go. Do one thing. Park a car. It’s critical to just do something. Chip away at the mess when things are out of control. Keep moving. If I could do this in my personal life, I don’t think I’d be a billionaire, but it’d keep my bedroom clean, surely.