Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality [Hardcover]

Jacob Tomsky (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 20, 2012

In the tradition of Kitchen Confidential and Waiter Rant, a rollicking, eye-opening, fantastically indiscreet memoir of a life spent (and misspent) in the hotel industry.

Jacob Tomsky never intended to go into the hotel business. As a new college graduate, armed only with a philosophy degree and a singular lack of career direction, he became a valet parker for a large luxury hotel in New Orleans. Yet, rising fast through the ranks, he ended up working in “hospitality” for more than a decade, doing everything from supervising the housekeeping department to manning the front desk at an upscale Manhattan hotel. He’s checked you in, checked you out, separated your white panties from the white bed sheets, parked your car, tasted your room-service meals, cleaned your toilet, denied you a late checkout, given you a wake-up call, eaten M&Ms out of your minibar, laughed at your jokes, and taken your money. In Heads in Beds he pulls back the curtain to expose the crazy and compelling reality of a multi-billion-dollar industry we think we know.

Heads in Beds is a funny, authentic, and irreverent chronicle of the highs and lows of hotel life, told by a keenly observant insider who’s seen it all. Prepare to be amused, shocked, and amazed as he spills the unwritten code of the bellhops, the antics that go on in the valet parking garage, the housekeeping department’s dirty little secrets—not to mention the shameless activities of the guests, who are rarely on their best behavior. Prepare to be moved, too, by his candor about what it’s like to toil in a highly demanding service industry at the luxury level, where people expect to get what they pay for (and often a whole lot more). Employees are poorly paid and frequently abused by coworkers and guests alike, and maintaining a semblance of sanity is a daily challenge.

Along his journey Tomsky also reveals the secrets of the industry, offering easy ways to get what you need from your hotel without any hassle. This book (and a timely proffered twenty-dollar bill) will help you score late checkouts and upgrades, get free stuff galore, and make that pay-per-view charge magically disappear. Thanks to him you’ll know how to get the very best service from any business that makes its money from putting heads in beds. Or, at the very least, you will keep the bellmen from taking your luggage into the camera-free back office and bashing it against the wall repeatedly.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2012: Always tip. If you can’t tip, be nice. And if you can’t manage either, you might be better off unwrapping a new toothbrush every day. That’s just one lesson to be learned from Jacob Tomsky’s gonzo account of his years as a front-desk clerk at hotels in New Orleans and New York. From the glad-handing doormen to the unsung workers in the “back of the house,” Tomsky exposes the machinery and machinations that make luxury hotels run (if not always smoothly), advising his potential guests about whose palms to grease (and how much) in order to get that coveted park-view upgrade. Informative and mildly salacious, Heads in Beds is an entertaining peek inside the places people go to get away, and the stunts they pull when they get there. --Jon Foro

Amazon Exclusive: An Essay by Jacob Tomsky

When I started working in hotels the computer screens glowed in one color, alien green, and the monitors were the size of boulders. We used to confidently toss comment cards in the trash (or, as we referred to it, file them in the “T” file) making them disappear forever. I used to cash checks by picking up the phone and speaking to another human being. Music in the lobby was usually provided by a piano player, who would swivel his head at passing guests with a ridiculous, pasty-looking smile as he tapped out non-offensive cover songs played with a non-offensive classical flourish.

Now, mid-volume, beat-heavy techno seeps from recessed speakers built into the lobby’s crown molding. The screens are flat. You can’t manage to direct anything from Trip Advisor into the “T” file and all the guests want to hook up their iPad to the toilet or whatever. And if you pay with a check I still have to pick up the phone, which is extremely irritating because who pays with checks anymore? Stop it.

But all of that change means nothing. Because I’ll tell you what hasn’t changed: The front desk agents, the bellmen, the doormen, the housekeepers, the room service attendants, and the managers. Hotel employees are still version 1.0 and I guarantee if you brought me to a bar and sat me next to a front desk agent from 1897, we’d over-drink and swap the same type of hilarious stories about the same type of insane guests. Hospitality, no matter how slick it gets, will always be a business run by people who serve people. It will always be about service. It will always take a person to explain that, no, you cannot hook up your iPad to the toilet but you can use it to control the lights and wirelessly play music through the in-room speaker system. And guests still, and hopefully will forever, hand me physical comment cards, which I will continue to throw in the trash.

During all these renovations (while I said things like, “Wait, they made the internet wireless? It’s in the goddamn air now?”) I was always writing. I grew up reading novel after novel and that’s all I wanted from life, to give back and write something good. After years of hotel work and relocations that took me from New Orleans to Paris to Copenhagen and ultimately New York City, I finally conceived the idea for Heads in Beds. I put everything I had into it, all my knowledge of the industry and the writing skills I’d developed since I was a child. I truly hope you find it funny and informative and that it helps you navigate the crooked halls of hospitality. That has always been my goal, to write something good.

That and hang out with a front desk agent from 1897.

From Booklist

Comparisons to Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential (2000) are inevitable but not entirely accurate. Yes, both Tomsky and Bourdain purport to expose the underbelly of service industries with which most readers are familiar, hotels and restaurants. But where Bourdain is all rock ’n’ roll, egotistical bluster, Tomsky is surprisingly earnest and sympathetic; there are, after all, no television programs called Top Desk Clerk. He wants your respect, not your adulation. Sure, he tosses off a few requisite f-bombs, instructs readers on how to steal from hotel minibars, and name-drops Brian Wilson, of the Beach Boys, more so because he seems to feel the genre demands it. Indeed, it would be easy to pen a book about crazy hotel guests. But this memoir succeeds, instead, in humanizing the people who park our cars, clean our hotel rooms, and carry our luggage. You will never not tip housekeeping or your bellhop again. Tomsky fell into hotel work and proved to be rather good at it; the same can be said for his writing. --Patty Wetli

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; First Edition edition (November 20, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385535635
• ISBN-13: 978-0385535632
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (464 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,226 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #5 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Business & Professional
  • #8 in Books > Business & Investing > Industries & Professions > Hospitality, Travel & Tourism
  • #23 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Business

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

102 of 111 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Hustling the punters September 12, 2012

By Joseph Haschka TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

"Service is not about being up-front and honest. Service is about minimizing negatives and creating the illusion of perfection. Here's how it's done: Lie. Smile. Finesse. Barter. Convince. Lie again. Smile again." - Jacob Tomsky in HEADS IN BEDS

Having realized that a degree in philosophy doesn't, in today's job market, put much sustenance on the table, twenty-something Jacob Tomsky enters the service sector. HEADS IN BEDS is the author's account of his ten years in the hotel industry in New Orleans and New York in the valet service, as a front desk agent, and as a mid-level Housekeeping manager. He began to pen it when, as he states:

"(Management) also tacked on a three-week unpaid suspension, trying to starve me out. Those three weeks were like an extended mental leave for me and, coincidentally, gave me the time to embark on this project it seems you might be enjoying ..."

Gee, you think?

The best - or at least most practically useful - parts of this book are the ways, according to the author, that the hotel customer can game the system, e.g. negate minibar and in-room movie charges, avoid a same-day cancellation penalty, insure the immediate availability of a room even on an early morning arrival, or the best way to bribe the front desk agent to add an extra level of service.

Somewhat surprisingly, nothing is said about what I would think are two of the more important and/or profitable hotel operations: food service and event/convention planning. Thus, HEADS IN BEDS isn't a comprehensive look at the biz.

I did find the book particularly instructive on at least one point. If Tomsky can be believed when he asserts that the average guest treats his/her hotel room like home, then their treatment of the former would indicate the average guest is a domesticated pig. That observation has raised my sensitivity towards the plight of the housekeepers and I've vowed to tip more generously in the future (though my wife and I try to leave as little residual mess as possible when we stay anywhere away).

The most useful parts of the book aside, Tomsky's narrative is largely self-indulgent to the point of being occasionally whiney. It's all about him. How he unwound during a year's sojourn in Europe between New Orleans and New York gigs. How he couldn't find a job outside the lodging industry. How he suffered from the absence of a steady paycheck. Once employed, how he benefited from unionization. How he managed to fall for and hook-up with a frequent-stay female guest. How he deflects (from himself) a guest's anger in the face of unmet expectations. How he was frequently screwed over by hotel management for perceived infractions. And, most important of all, how he hustles a guest for big tips.

HEADS IN BEDS isn't a bad book, and I might have been more generous - well, maybe not - except that Tomsky's personality, self-absorption, and cynicism just got wearisome. Others will perhaps be more forgiving. In any case, since I'm not posting this review anonymously, I guess the best I can hope for is that he's never the front desk agent at one of my favorite hotel chain's properties. Or at least that he remains in New York City while I vacation elsewhere.

281 of 326 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Decent idea for a book, unreliable narrator September 23, 2012

By David G. Schwartz VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I'm conflicted about HEADS IN BEDS. I really wanted to like it. I spent some time in hospitality myself, and I think there are great stories to be told from both sides of the check-in desk. And there are some interesting stories in this book, at least in the 85 pages of it that I got through before putting it down.

And why did I put it down? Mostly, because a memoir needs a likable, or at least, engaging, narrator and Tomsky comes across as neither.

An example: early in the book, he decides to impress us by giving us some historical context for the development of the hospitality industry. I guess he and his editor thought that three paragraphs of history was too dry, so Tomsky decided to spice it up. "So in 1794, someone, some ---hole, built the very first 'hotel' in New York City..."

If Tomsky really feels that way about whoever opened that hotel, I've got to ask, why? What did he ever do to him to earn that kind of vitriol. And if he doesn't really feel angry enough towards him to use that word, then he's the worst kind of literary poseur: a YouTube commenting keyboard warrior with an agent.

Tomsky does this quite a bit. It's one thing to have the profanity and pseudo-tough guy language in your dialog. It can even come out of your narrator's mouth when speaking out loud. But when the narrator uses this kind of language to talk directly to the reader, it's trying too hard to be edgy.

He does this throughout, and it feels completely inauthentic to me. It makes me not trust the narrator, and that's the kiss of death for a memoir.

What finally killed the book for me was the narrator's sense of entitlement. I needed a break after page 82, where the narrator was distraught over not being able to spend the rest of his life hanging out in parks in Copenhagen smoking marijuana, and having to return to the US to work after his money ran out. I put the book down for a few days, then dove back in, but tapped out three pages later when the narrator complained about living expenses in New York City being too expensive, and the difficulties of getting a job outside of the one field where he has actual experience.

I've got to confess that I just couldn't keep reading after that. Newsflash: most people who work in hospitality don't do it because they really get off on showing up to work ten minutes before their shift and waiting on other people all day. They do it because they are adults who other people are depending on to be responsible. I try to finish every book I start, but at that point, I figured that the author wasn't treating his readers with any respect, so I didn't feel compelled to read on.

88 of 100 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The Title Is Just The Beginning July 24, 2012

By Crabigail Cassidy TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

The title is funny, but it's just the beginning of this factual, entertaining, and even informative look at the hospitality industry.
Jacob Tomsky graduated from college with a philosophy degree and a college loan. Without really intending to pursue a service career, he initially took a job in the Big Easy as a valet at a pricey restaurant viewing it as a temporary job and way to take a stab at getting that looming loan down. Before long, the innocent valet comes to the realization that his job is the pits. With that he rushes off two apps to hotels in New Orleans in search of more meaningful (I.e., more lucrative) employment. What follows next is a chronicle of life in the hospitality industry.
Over the next ten years Jacob's career goes from valet to front desk and almost every point in between. He introduces his reader to stories from the trenches and a large cast of characters that range from a crafty head bellman Alan(aka the "Gray Wolf") to Julio the night manager who pulled a disappearing act for hours on end as he conducted business of another kind. In the world of hotels, luggage takes a whacking, employees sample room service, and amenities are carried off like contraband. For the most part hotel employees are often poorly paid, treated badly, and angry.
The reader also learns that hotels can be very different. In New Orleans things were far more relaxed than in New York where check-in becomes a five second process of shuffling in the cattle/guests and being optimally productive while not even being provided a stool.
Tomsky offers tips on getting the most out of your hotel in regard to perks. Pretty obvious stuff actually but it's always good to be informed and even better when you are not.
I received this book at 8 a.m. and took to it like Grant took Richmond and shot through it in 3 hours. It was honest to an extreme point of bluntness, interesting, darn funny, and well written.
This is a fact and anecdote driven book that is perfect for a do nothing day.