LOSS PREVENTION

If Loss Prevention were a profit center, I would be their flagship client!

It all started at 5am this morning. I finally decided to give up my quest for a good night's sleep and get out of bed to get my day started. Today, my first day on my new job in my new country and feeling somewhat nervous and apprehensive about it, no sooner am I plugging in my iron than I realize that my hotel safe is malfunctioning. I go from Mr. Prepared-Have-It-All-Under-Control to Mr. Holy-Cow-How-Do-I-Freakin'-Get-To-Work-With-No-Money? I can't get to my car keys, my passport, my money, etc........What the Hell now? My day all of a sudden turns upside down.

In come Loss Prevention. After about an hour standing in my room in my "nights" (not quite shorts, not quite underwear) with two strange men (I never actually talked to another man--let alone 2 men!!--in my nights), their efforts were to no avail, and I was stuck with the option to come back at lunchtime to have them drill my safe open. So I wolfed down a pricey hotel breakfast buffet (not really in the budget, you know), grabbed a gratis taxi (on the hotel's account for the inconvenience of the malfunctioned safe), and headed off to meet my new employers.

At noon I was able to shoot back to my room by taxi (again, on the hotel) and there I met the same guys (this time dressed much more professionally), who got the safe open finally but had to stay to repair it. I couldn't stay for that event so I munched on a couple of turtle heads (actually, it was celery and carrot sticks but turtle heads would have made this story better) and whisked back off to work.

When I got back to the hotel at night and entered my key into my door, I saw a figure of a hotel staffer with a room service tray approaching me. He strolled into my room proudly and placed down a very attractive fruit platter and a large bottle of Aqua-fina water with a lovely note of apology from the front desk over the safe issue and the trouble it cai\used. Fair enough, I thought; I was not going to argue. They even threw a microwave in my room. I guess my large stock of cup-a-soup and EZ Mac n Cheese tipped them off.

So after changing back into my "nights" and a white t-shirt, I dived into the strawberries and grapes with tremendous gusto. I saved what I couldn't finish and brought the room-service tray into the hallway. I rested it on the decorativve ledge just across the hall from my room when I heard that dreaded sound............."Bam!"

You guessed it.....my door slammed shut behind me! And there I was, Mr. Nights, barefoot, stuck in the hallway, just 3 inches of wood and steel separating me from the comfort of my room. I sat there dazed for a minute and had to remind myself that I was not on some movie set somewhere. I walked briskly down the hall to the elevators where I knew there was a phone and called the front desk to tell them of my dilemna. I tried to act as cool as possible, but it's difficult to do so when you are half-naked in a hotel corridor standing next to 4 people waiting for the elevator while explaining that you have been locked out of your room. Ever since my hotel stay began I had wondered what that phone was for, and I smugly thought, each time I passed it, that I would never have use for it. Well, the day I open my first hotel, remind me to make sure to put a phone in every hallway and set it below a picture of a vbery humbled, red-faced grown man in his "nights" banging on his room door trying to will it open..........

Up comes Loss Prevention (good thing it was a different shift of staffers at this hour), and he explains that he cannot just open my door without ID. I would have to come down to the front desk first to verify mysefl, to which I reminded him desperately of my embarrassing wardrobe and protested that I could not go down there dressed like I was just about to jump into bed. I had my dignity, after all.......................or so I pretended to have............

He relented and called his supervisor, who came up and let me in, asked for my ID and left quickly, the whole time feigning that this happens all the time..............The first thing I thought about when I got inside (after, of course, vowing to staple my card to my hand) was that I had probably broken a record of losing my vanity twice in the same day by speaking with 2 strange guys on 2 separate occassions.....................in my "nights." MAY THIS NEVER HAPPEN TO YOU!