“How quickly can you get here?”
“Pretty quick, but I like to talk to the guest first. Would you connect
me?”
I didn’t assume this was an emergency; guests who make urgent requests
are more often impatient than sick.
“How quickly can you get here?” asked the guest impatiently.
“Pretty quick. What’s going on?”
“It’s my assistant. He’s got the flu.”
“Could you tell me what’s bothering him?”
“I’m not a doctor. That’s why I called you.”
I suppressed a surge of annoyance. “People mean different things when
they say ‘the flu.’ Is he vomiting?”
“No.”
“Is he feverish?”
“Yes. I have a dinner reservation at 6:30. Can you make it?”
It was 5:30. Unless guests feel truly miserable (vomiting, pain) they
are usually willing to wait, so I like to delay dinnertime calls until rush
hour traffic dwindles. But hotel doctoring is a competitive business, and if I
disappointed this demanding caller, he might ask the concierge to suggest
someone else.
Creeping 1½ miles to the freeway onramp took fifteen minutes, but then
traffic moved steadily, and I arrived on time. In hotel
doctoring, delivering medical care is the easiest part. The patient suffered a
bad cold and didn’t consider it a serious problem. In person, his boss seemed
congenial.
On my drive back, the freeway stopped cold. I took an exit three miles
from home. Despite this, traffic crawled
so slowly I was expecting a blocked lane ahead, but it was just the rush hour.
It took an hour. On the bright side, I had finished half my dinner when the
call arrived, so I wasn’t hungry. And in hotel doctoring, when you finish
seeing one patient, you go home.
Posts
