u/brotherlyshove

Inspired by an infamous Datalounge thread.

After someone suggested on DL, Marian Mercer is a Madame and these are her high priced call girls really reframes this and makes honestly more sense as them being hookers.

I forgot there’s a core of 5 girls in the first few episodes and then they Destiny’s Child it down. I like the first 5 team. One gets replaced by Louise Lasser eventually, which certainly isn’t marrying up casting.

GYPSY!’s Ann Jilian is odd and weirdly butch right now. I like Ann, she’s the If Delta Burke Didn’t Get Fat of the group.

The big drama in the pilot is that one of the girls is a virgin.

In Downtown Los Angeles.

In the 80s.

Working in a building that looks like a coke straw.

In a dining room that looks like a coke mirror.

It’s fun to watch after popping a gummy.

Season 2 introduces the technologically advanced time saver, the salad spinner.

And more frumpy French maid style uniforms. They changed the uniforms after the first episodes. The costumes aren’t the problem.

There is nothing but empty real estate in all of Erie County and I can’t even get a 1k studio because the pay at so many places in this town too low to survive here.

There’s no demand here. This is shockingly and appallingly evil of agencies.

I’m 47 and just moved back here from a major city after 25 years and I literally have no place to live.

In the hotel business I’ve encountered hundred of celebs in my tenure. Some A list, some way down the alphabet.

Here’s my favorite story.

Ludacris stayed at my hotel in 2002. Our hotel got all the concert acts in town. I was working audit.

He came into the hotel around 1am after the show, no fanfare, nothing big, I buzzed him in. All good.

15 or so minutes later an attractive young woman comes in, not suspicious. She said hello she small talked cordially then headed to the locked elevators, but had a key, and went to her room, so I thought.

An hour or so later, a man calls from an outside line. I give the customary phone greeting with hotel name, and angrily asks, “wait did you say hotel?”
I repeated and confirmed hotel name. He said he got a call from this phone number. I told him I had no way of knowing which room or who called. He got angry and said something about “her doing it again.”

The young woman from an hour before comes down to the lobby about 15 minutes later, with another person, chatting. Suddenly my doorbell rings. A man enters, immediately sees the woman, he starts screaming at her.

Then Ludacris comes into the lobby from elevators, asks the woman what’s up, and the guy is like “did you f**k Ludacris?” And Ludacris seems to be familiar with this young woman. My spidey sense tingling, I page security. Turns out, the young woman is the guy’s wife. And they start verbally tussling. I’m watching, waiting for security. They finally arrive (it always feels like security will never show up).

While security intervenes in the feuding couple’s drama, Ludacris decides to avoid confronting angry man and approaches me at the desk like nothing’s wrong, asking for a water, with a little light in his eye, slightly muffling a giggle. I get him his water, and Ludacris and I actually had a very pleasant chat at the desk while the screaming ensued. He was very charming and polite, considering he just banged the dude’s wife (I have no idea why she called him from the hotel phone tho, there was def no sign or implication Ludacris put her in danger).

The husband and wife left and Ludacris went back to his room. Security told me he had his young kids in the car and left them in there crying while he came in to scream at his wife.

It’s a funny story, and Ludacris, I gotta say, was one of the nicest, friendliest celebs I ever met at the desk.

Goddammit this chicken salad has walnuts in it.

I surrender.

Between third parties and Investment companies, this is why the industry is a nightmare now.

Investment companies are not sensible to the delicate art of hospitality, and if that hallway rug on floor 14, isn’t fixed, it won’t be. It co$ts too much and it’s cheaper to pay your doctor bill when you trip over it then fix it.

Investment companies, which pretty much own every hotel on earth now, see numbers on paper, not human.

Problems don’t get fixed, but hey, let the employees take care of it by using their “customer service skills” and offering a free in-room movie.

I worked for the same Hyatt twice, once in the early 2000s when it was a privately owned company, then recently when Aimbridge owned it along with hundreds of other hotels across the country that weren’t even Hyatt.

My last hotel, a once beautiful antique jewel historic property, was treated so cheaply by the ownership that we didn’t even have security in a major metropolitan downtown.

I’m out of hotels. Never going back.

my paycheck hits early thursdays around 4am. I have to go into the office tomorrow and have no bus fare, I’m debating if I should borrow bus fare. pathetic, I know.

edit: it came through at 6:30am! I can take the bus.