In this second post, my Hoors Towers Correspondent tells of a typical day working in her hotel by the harbour.
My next run-in with a prostitiute happened a month or so later when a hotel guest tried to smuggle one into the room.
Working in a hotel, you'd expect to have a certain amount of duties you didn't particularly like. Dealing with particularly difficult customers for example. Drunk customers perhaps. Folk that think that trashing hotel rooms is still the thing to do...
Lucky me, I very quickly found out part of my job was to throw prostitutes out.
Here there lies a problem. I was always worried about how I was supposed to recognise them – I mean, I would be mortified if I threw out a real girlfriend who just happened to wear slutty clothes!
However, on this particular occasion there was no doubt in my mind.
The young woman tried to sneak past unnoticed (which is not that easy when you're wearing a belt for a skirt and a neon boob tube - classy!) and when I called her over her posture became immediately defensive and threatening.
Me, the little student girl from down south, tried to forget how much she could kill me if she wanted, put on my sweetest smile and said that I was “terribly sorry but it was hotel policy not to allow guests into our rooms, however, if the customer and his friend would like to talk in the public lounge that would be fine.”
It seemed to work; she swore a little bit, pulled her prey and headed back down the stairs. Feeling quite proud of the way I had handled it, I phoned up my Mum immediately.
“I just threw out my first prostitute,” I gushed, trying to make myself sound braver than I actually was. I'm sure my Mum was very impressed.
A week later I received a very strange phonecall. It went something along these lines:
“Good morning, Hoors Towers, Perfectly Polite Hotel Assistant X speaking. How can I help?”
“Yes, hello,” the voice replied, in a strange accent. Immediately I was alerted, was this a prank call or just someone with a very weird accent. Weird accents do happen in the hotel industry you know... “I would like to book a room please.”
“Is that for tonight?”
“Yes,”
“Well I have a standard, a club or an executive.”
“And how much is the standard?”
“Sixty pounds.”
“Would you accept forty-two?” I was really suspicious now. Someone must know the hotel's bottom line for haggling. But could I risk saying anything? No. Better take the details just in case.
“Is that a double room?” the other speaker asked,
“Yes it is. Is the booking for two people?”
“Well the thing is I’m a prostitute and would like to entertain my guests in the room.” This was definitely a prank call but who could it be? I’d better carry on speaking to buy myself some time.
Putting on my best professional voice, I replied. “Well, the thing is we acually have a non-prostitution policy….” I couldn't finish explaining the hotel policy because the other speaker had burst into laughter.
“How long have you known it was me?!!!!” She guffawed!
Mother! Well! Who would have thought that my mother would do that!
From then on, of course, it became a joke between us. Everytime I phoned her she would answer the phone with “Birmingham brothels, how can I help,” and when she phoned me I would say “Hello Sluthouse! What can I do for you today?”
This was all very well apart from the day when I phoned my Mum when she was down south visiting my Grandmother. I was chatting to her at work when a customer arrived, “Oh sorry Mum,” I said, “There’s a customer, I’ll just be a minute.”
But unfortuntely it wasn’t one of those customers that only took up a minute of my time. It was one of those customers that wanted to complain about everything and get all the faulty things in their room fixed. It was a full half an hour before I got to phone my mother back.
“Hello?” she picked up the phone,
“Hello,” I replied, “Sorry I was ages the customer wasn’t happy that his hot water didn’t work.”
“I am going to kill you,” she told me in a dangerous voice,
“Um… how come?”
“Well, two minutes after you hung up the phone rang again. I answered it with 'hello, Birmingham brothels' but it wasn’t you! It was one of you grandmother’s eighty-year-old friends. She was so confused! I had to spend about twenty minutes explaining to her that it was a joke I had with my daughter!”
