Swan Towels and ‘Hotel-elves’:
on the Uncanniness of Luxury Hotels
Małgorzata Szubartowska
Uniwersytet Warszawski
What is a lobby boy? A lobby boy is completely invisible, yet always in sight.
A lobby boy remembers what people hate. A lobby boy anticipates the client’s needs before the needs are needed. A lobby boy is, above all, discreet to a fault. Our guests know that their deepest secrets, some of which are frankly rather unseemly, will go with us to our graves. So keep your mouth shut, Zero.
Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel In her horror-like parody of the reality television show Celebrity Ghost Stories, stand-up comedian Amy Schumer1 recounts a “supernatural” experience she had while staying at a luxury hotel for the "rst time, a ghost story of sorts: in the morning, a strange knocking noise at the door wakes her up, but when she opens the door there is no one there, only a newspaper “appears on the #oor”;
later that day, when she returns to her room from a trip, she notices that her towel “transformed into a swan” and that on top of her pillow there is “another
1 Inside Amy Schumer – Celebrity Spooky Stories, h$ps://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=8uwb-nmOlic [retrieved: 20.07.2016].
tiny pillow made entirely of chocolate”; once she starts suspecting that her room is haunted, she tests her theory by spilling her shampoo all over the bathroom and emptying the minibar; again, when she returns to the room, it is spotless, all of the bo$les have magically re"lled themselves and the swan towel is there again; "nally, she hears a voice coming from the other side of the door calling her name and although she manages to chase the “evil spirit” away, it warns her that it will be back later. “I guess there are more forces out there than meets the eye. And sometimes, those forces bring us swan towels”, Schumer concludes her story. Inspired by this pop cultural comment, this article aims to look closer at the cultural imagination related to the ambivalent status of the maids employed at luxury hotels and discuss how their invisible omnipresence affects the guests, how their relationship with the guests is regulated through power-knowledge relations of the hotel etique$e and "nally, what are the consequences of the distribution of vision for those relationships.
Devious maids, sneaky lobby boys
Schumer’s satirical piece, although meant as a snide comment on celebrity cul- ture, also reveals a certain, ongoing unease – perhaps less superstitious in nature, but no less prejudiced – that many American travelers have expressed about hotel staff since the establishment of the deluxe hotel industry popularized dur- ing the industrial revolution, an anxiety that has its roots in nineteenth-centu- ry popular culture. A&er taking a closer look at nineteenth-century American
"ction, journalistic pieces, cartoons and other pop cultural materials, Andrew K. Sandoval-Strausz and Daniel Levinson Wilk noticed that hotel employees were extremely unpopular "gures since the very beginning of the hotel industry. 'e hotel clerk “was the constant subject of complaints, the bu$ of jokes, the stock character in any number of stories and anecdotes”2. 'e stereotype of the clerk in American popular culture depicted him as lazy, arrogant, hostile and ignorant.
'e popular image of a chambermaid was not any more favorable, but it was founded on different premises. Sandoval-Strausz and Wilk write:
2 A.K. Sandoval-Strausz, D.L. Wilk, Princes and Maids of the City Hotel: The Cultural Politics of Commercial Hospitality in America, “'e Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts” 2005, vol. 25, p. 163.
He [the clerk] was highly visible, occupying a prominent spot at the hotel entrance.
She [the chambermaid], by contrast, was invisible, since she worked in the guests’
bedrooms, the most private and intimate spaces in the hotel. But it was precisely the chambermaid’s invisibility and proximity that aroused the most hostility. What people most feared from chambermaids sprang from what they could not see them doing.3 It was precisely invisibility that underlay the major anxieties about chamber- maids, which revolved around the fear of unexpected invasion and the breach of boundaries, whether of the guest’s room or the guest’s body4. 'e most common concern was that chambermaids would steal guests’ belongings while they were away from their rooms. 'is particular prejudice bears signs of class-related stereotypes – as most workers at the time, were assumed to be so poor as to be on the verge of beastliness, devoid of any ethical code proper to human beings deserving of that name. 'e second biggest fear also proves the abject social sta- tus of a housemaid – the threat of a maid’s uncleanliness and possible contagion5. An anonymous pamphlet Horrors of Hotel Life published in 1884 warns that in a hotel, the guest “is confronted at once with dangers and dirt, not apparent to the eye, indeed, but a thousand times the worse for being concealed under apparent cleanliness”6. Maids were o&en accused of such practices as “utilizing towels as cleaning rags, reusing dirty dishes and soiled linens without washing them, and availing themselves of dinner napkins in place of sanitary napkins”7. Yet again, the biggest fears rest upon the fact that the housemaid cannot be seen, thus, cannot be controlled.
Sandoval-Strausz and Wilk argue that those suspicions and misconceptions were the result of a socio-cultural system generated by the rise of early capital- ism in a society which was not mentally prepared for the appearance of a new institution such as a hotel:
in the transition from household to institutional hospitality, guests were apparently unprepared for the replacement of the patriarch’s domestic dependents with wage
3 Ibid., p. 165.
4 Ibid., p. 166.
5 See: idem.
6 Reformed Landlord, Horrors of Hotel Life, 1884; [as cited in:] A.K. Sandoval-Strausz, D.L. Wilk, Princes and Maids…, p. 166.
7 A.K. Sandoval-Strausz, D.L. Wilk, Princes and Maids…, p. 166.
laborers who existed outside household bonds of deference and discipline yet had the kind of constant access to intimate spaces that normally required familial or quasi- -familial trust. (…) In hotels, the disconnectedness of guests and workers tended to generate a form of alienation in both. Even as hotels became people’s temporary homes away from home, hotel hospitality o&en failed to reproduce the proper level of domesticity that Americans associated primarily with the sanctum sanctorum of their own households.8
Discipline and polish
As part of the process of hospitality’s institutionalization, a hotel etique$e was designed to regulate the behavior of staff members and instruct them on how to interact with the guests by freezing the potential behaviors in the form of systematized rituals. Since the early twentieth century, hotel management has become a science in its own right with the "rst school of hotel administration in America founded at Cornell University in 1922. 'enceforth, hotel managers have increasingly emphasized on the proper training and monitoring of clerks, chambermaids and other employees, believing that “courtesy enhances work-
#ow”9. 'e primary guideline was to restrict employee-guest contact (visual and audial) as much as possible and also homogenize employees’ behaviors. Up to this day, basic instructions disciplining hoteliers’ bodies and tongues, as de"ned by the most popular hotel management training blog Hospitality-school.com, include the following:
• (…) Maintain a steady pace and never stop or change speed once inside. (…)
• Hotel staff should always use the service elevators unless accompanying a guest.
• 'e hotel staff should not stare at the guest or themselves through the mirrors inside the guest elevator. (…)”10
• “It is highly advisable that you should not argue with the guest. Try to speak so&ly and clearly, without arti"cial accent.
• Maintain a distance of at least two feet from the guests. (…)
8 Ibidem, p. 171.
9 Etiquette and Manners of a True Hotelier (Part 1), h$p://www.hospitality-school.com/
etique$e-manners-hotelier-1 [retrieved: 25.07.2016].
10 Idem.
• Avoid unnecessary movements of hands and facial gestures (…) while speak- ing to guests. (…)
• While standing (…), stand erect at ease, but not in a casual manner. (…)
• Remember, you may be in view of a guest even when you are not directly interacting with him/her. Maintain your poise at all times. (…)
• Walk (…) avoiding any sound of the footsteps.”11
• “Always greet your guest and other associates with a smiling voice and natural tone. (…)
• Ensure proper cleanliness and hygiene in the hotel area as well as in your working area. Keep your working equipment clean and tidy. (…)
• Do not engage in any unusual activities while on duty such as moving legs, spi$ing or drum on desk with the "ngertips or swing your keys / key card or play with the coins in your pocket. (…)
• Remember you are not permi$ed to read newspapers, books or magazines while performing your duty. (…)
• Keep away all your personal affairs while on duty. Never bring them in your working area. (…)
• Do not invite friends and family into any area of the hotel. Remember you are not allowed to a$ain any sort of hotel amenities (ex- restaurants, bars, public rest rooms and guest rooms). (…)
• Do not enter the hotel through guest entrance. Always use staff entrance to enter in the hotel.
• Refrain yourself from the following actions, such as: laughing or talking loud- ly with colleagues, running or walking fast along the guest corridor, whistling or singing on duty, use of slang language.12
Regulating the employee-guest relations has been a major concern for ho- tel managers, as it is apparently staff behavior that impacts guest satisfaction the most and determines the status of a hotel. According to a study on nega- tive service a$itudes, the customers expect to be the center of a$ention, to be tended to without having to deal with any emotional or moral ambivalence – rudeness, impatience, indifference and lack of boundaries are to be named
11 Etiquette and Manners of a True Hotelier (Part 2), h$p://www.hospitality-school.com/
etique$e-manners-hotelier-2 [retrieved: 25.07.2016].
12 Do’s and Don’ts of Hotel Housekeeping, h$p://www.hospitality-school.com/dos-donts- -hotel-housekeeping [retrieved: 25.07.2016].
among the major undesirable responses. Any staff member’s reaction that is unexpected and overtly reveals to the guest the individual personality of the em- ployee is considered sabotage behavior13. 'ere are also numerous complaints to be found on websites such as TripAdvisor or Booking.com where the former guests deplore their stay at a hotel, which was “ruined by poor housekeeping”.
On another website dedicated to collecting the “worst hotel horror stories”
we can read comments like: “Laundry room next door, dryers/washers began at 6 a.m. AND staff watched loud TV all day, too. Argh.” or “Our room, #225, had a "lthy brown stain in the toilet bowl (…). 'e dining room serving staff were surly, ill-mannered and rigid (…). It is completely unacceptable for a male staff member to scream, «only soup or salad, not both!» to tour members at the buffet”14. 'is proves that work performed by the hotel staff falls under the category of ‘emotional labor’, to use Arlie Russel Hochschild’s terminology.
What this means is that the main task of the hotel employee is to „produce an emotional state in another person” to provide the guest with a speci"c type of experience rather than a particular product, by restraining his or her own emotional activity as a human being15.
Hence, it seems that contemporary luxury hotels still draw their strength from those archaic popular suspicions and con"rm their exceptionality exactly by refuting such stereotypes about their staff, while at the same time, reinforc- ing the negative image of the hotel employees as typical to hotel services of lower-standards.
Ritzy, ritzier, the ritziest
In a promotional video posted online by the Ritz-Carlton chain of hotels16 we can see a neat-looking Asian woman dressed in a white uniform resembling hospital scrubs. Slowly and carefully, she is arranging objects in the room in
13 See: C. Chen, J. Lei, J. Hao, Hotel Staff Service Sabotage Behavior: Classification and Impact on Consumer Willingness to Pay, “International Journal of Marketing Studies” 2015, vol. 4, pp. 136–137.
14 The 10 Worst Hotel Horror Stories, h$p://www.independen$raveler.com/travel-tips/
hotel-and-b-and-b/the-10-worst-hotel-horror-stories [retrieved: 27.07.2016].
15 See: A.R. Hochschild, The Managed Heart, Commercialization of Human Feeling, Berkeley and London 2003, pp. 137–149.
16 The Art of The Craft – Housekeeping Supervisor, h$ps://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=0KEavRCAyi0 [retrieved: 22.07.2016].
perfect order and with extraordinary precision as if she was performing open- heart surgery. As she is placing face cream containers next to decorative vases with Chinese ornaments, she makes it seem like those everyday personal items are exhibits on display and their status is no different than that of antique deco- rations. Skilled at iteration, she comes across as a derivative artist of sorts who is preparing the stage on which human life is performed according to a similar, pre-designed scenario. 'us, the meticulously arranged se$ing supplies a stage and props, to use Erving Goffman’s terminology, with which a guest can per- form his privilege and present himself in front of himself, and himself only as a member of the upper-class or the higher middle-class, by which he re-enacts and „enhance[s] (…) [his] status, (…) heighten[s] his importance”17. 'e maid acts the part of director as well as supporting cast, enabling the performance
"rstly by creating this scenery (which, as Goffman points out, is crucial to the presentation, as it begins only once the guest enters the scene and ends the moment he leaves it18), but also by serving as an insigni"cant extra – merely a mirror for the protagonist – who appears on stage only for the main character to be able to play his part.
She is the master of the objects, in charge of the material world but deprived of human contact, allowed to make interactions with objects instead of people and even those interactions take a very well-structured, controlled form. 'e only one-way contact she is allowed to have with the guests before they arrive is by leaving them a printed note on their bed welcoming them to the hotel. 'e note itself – even though it is meant to mimic the more intimate relationship between a host and a house guest – is also standardized, depersonalized and wri$en in a font only resembling hand-wri$en, calligraphic le$ers. 'e goal of such practices is obviously to create the illusion that the housekeepers are like hosts who are equal to the guests in terms of social status but just polite enough to keep their distance. However, since they are actually deprived of their own in- dividual, ethnic and class identity, it becomes clear that the relationship between the housekeepers and the guests is merely staged, performed and completely arti"cial. Likewise, even though the video is supposed to present the staff, its true focus remains on the guest – even the short interview with the housekeep- er emphasizes that her entire professional identity is constructed through the
17 Ibidem, p. 139.
18 See: E. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Edinburgh 1957, p. 13.
relationship she has with a hypothetical guest, as the "rst time she speaks in the video is to say (in a manner which seems just all too rehearsed): “It makes me so happy when the room is perfect. Seeing a smile on a guest’s face makes me very happy.”, suggesting that it is not only a job for her but something that determines her emotional well-being, which is tightly correlated with that of those whom she serves. Later in the video we watch her shadowing a guest and quietly "nishing the actions that he has started for him, such as closing the book that he had been reading but le& open on the bed. By the end of the video, she
"nally confronts the guest when she brings him freshly-ironed clothes. A&er they nod at each other in silence and without making eye-contact, she immedi- ately withdraws from the room – she is standing there in plain sight, but is still removed from the view of the guest, her presence being acknowledged merely from the corner of his eye.
Finally, by the end of the video, an inscription appears: “Let us rede"ne your idea of immaculate”. If we were to accept this invitation, we would say that what they promise on a literal level is simply thanks to the skilled and (overly) dedicated staff, the rooms are spotlessly clean and there is no #aw to be found, since, as it was already discussed, physical uncleanness is a true source of horror for many hotel guests. But there may also be another, more important type of cleanness at play here on a symbolic level. In the word ‘immaculate’
chosen by the hotel PR agents, there is a clear connotation with the notion of the immaculate conception, which implies that the whole ritual of puri"cation that the hotel guest is undergoing is performed not by real, #esh-and-blood humans but by some ephemeral, ghostly (and almost godly) intermediaries who do not invade the guest’s privacy with their material presence, who do not “penetrate” the space in a way that can be felt or experienced consciously by the guests and yet somehow they manage to get the job done. In that way, their stay at the hotel is pure, free from any blemishes, which would inevitably be caused by being forced to socialize in the intimacy of one’s bedroom with a perfect stranger, a stranger who moreover embodies all that is repugnant.
A housemaid herself is an abject, because she reminds the guests of the re- alities they are trying to leave behind just for a short while – on the level of everyday life chores and responsibilities, but also on a social level: a maid may traumatically remind the guest of the social hierarchies, struggles, injustices, personal sufferings and inequalities, all of which, if were to be consciously
acknowledged by the guest, might threaten the peace of his stay. Recognizing a real human being in a housemaid entails the risk of identi"cation and losing the clear distinction between self and other, which, according to Julia Kristeva, is the main source of horror19.
Yet, time spent at a hotel, be it for recreational or business purposes, al- ways uproots the guest from the context of his everyday life, turns him into an Everyman and for that reason it resembles a carnival, when all is allowed, social distinctions are suspended and identities blurred but only to eventually solidify their original separateness. At a hotel, the guests participate in a ritual of puri-
"cation, in which they lose their habitual identity and get rid of their internal
‘"lth’, the repressed darkness inside them that constitutes a source of horror in their everyday lives. Celebrities, public "gures, successful businessmen, even up- per-class WASP housewives use the luxury hotel to extract what they normally repress, externalize it, turn it into waste and leave it for someone else to clean up, never to look back at the part of themselves they have le& behind. 'ey can act out their fantasies and desires and repress them once again and do not have to face the consequences of their temporary suspension of social standards prop- er to their status. As it is expressed in the simpli"ed but nonetheless accurate mo$o: “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”.
Once it is over, the housemaids are there to clean up all the waste, to wit- ness the temporary devastation and depravation just to bring the world to its previous order. Hence, the basic function of a hotel is not merely “to provide travelers with shelter, accommodation, food, refreshment, and related servic- es and goods”20, but in fact, a luxury hotel offers much more on a symbolic level – they offer catharsis from everyday social pressures. Moreover, what the notion of luxury truly involves is not only a gourmet breakfast in a designer bed, but above all – cleanness. Cleanness – physical and psychological – be- comes a product to be purchased and consumed by the nouveau-riches who expect the real world to turn into a fantasy where the norms of their every- day lives in a democratic society do not apply. Above all, it is a symbolical cleanness – the simulated microcosm of a hotel which offers clear and stable social structure with a distinct division of roles, where everybody knows and accepts their place in the hierarchy which depends only on possessed
19 See: J. Kristeva, Powers of Horror. An Essay on Abjection, New York 1982, p. 10–17.
20 A.K. Sandoval-Strausz, D.L. Wilk, Princes and Maids…, p. 161.
capital. However, it is not only a celebration of clear class distinctions, but equally of racial ones. A luxury hotel, an institution consistently ascribing certain roles to people of particular origins, is a place where the rich do not socialize with the poor, but also where the typical WASP-y guest is served by workers of color.
To conclude, it is the very abject status of a maid that constitutes the main source of ‘uncanniness’ parodied by Amy Schumer, in keeping with Freud’s de"nition of the sense of the ‘uncanny’, that is, the terrifying which leads back to something once very familiar and later repressed, extracted from ourselves and projected onto an object in the outer world21. 'e profound purpose of the hotel etique$e is therefore to make the uncanny (unheimlich) hotel maids heim- lich so that they become tame and “arouse a sense of restfulness and security”22. But since heimlichkeit is a two-faced coin, they simultaneously become heimlich in the other sense of the word, as discussed by Freud – they are “concealed, kept from sight”23 and receive a certain ghostly quality, which, in consequence, freeze guest-employee relations into a vicious circle in which neither party can gain absolute power over the other. 'e invisibility of hotel maids, although imposed on them by the institution itself in the a$empt to repress and control them, becomes a superpower of sorts, as it provides a chance of emancipation and empowerment by handing over panoptical vision, and with it – knowledge.
As Sandoval-Strausz and Wilk note, the hostility towards hotel staff stemmed from the fact that workers suddenly gained symbolic power over the upper-class.
'e clerk was offensive, since he was “unacceptably climbing above their proper station in life”24 but also threatening, as:
he exercised a sort of temporary dominance over guests because he had discretion over whether to assign them a be$er or worse bedchamber and whether to give them the room right away or "nd some pretext to make them stand and wait for it. 'e clerk also effectively possessed the power to sit in judgment over guests’ social status, since his a$entiveness, demeanor, and courteous or indifferent service re#ected his
21 See: S. Freud, The ‘Uncanny’, [in:] The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XVII (1917-1919): An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works, ed. and transl. J. Strachey, London 1955, pp. 219–232.
22 Ibid., p. 222.
23 Ibid, p. 223.
24 A.K. Sandoval-Strausz, D.L. Wilk, Princes and Maids…, p. 167.
estimation of whether they were people of consequence who required the white glove treatment or ordinary folk who did not.25
As such, the hotel etique$e, designed to appease the fearful guests, affects the them inasmuch as it does the staff, since it actually places the guests in the center of a panopticon, where the guests are only symbolically in control, but in fact, they are the ones who are under constant surveillance on the part of the staff and, as in Amy Schumer’s sketch, things are being done to them without their explicit consent or knowledge.
25 Ibid., p. 170.
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