Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality
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 t
List Price: $ 15.00
Price:
Find More Hotels In Clearwater Products
Decent idea for a book, unreliable narrator,
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.
0
Was this review helpful to you?
|It should be titled, How to steal things and not get caught.,
What kind of morally-bankrupt, selfish person blatantly lies and then steals and then tells other people that it’s an excellent way to get something for nothing? Did you give one thought to the poor cleaning woman who will come under fire for not stocking the room properly? Actions have consequences. Are you so hard up for a bathrobe that you’re willing to risk a hotel cleaning woman’s job?
Shame on you Mr. Tomsky. You’ve not given us a how-to book to hotel stays. You’ve given us a lesson on your own selfishness. You are one of the reasons hotels are now so expensive. Who do you think ultimately pays for your so-called freebies? The next guest down the line.
0
Was this review helpful to you?
|Uhm, unemployed much?,
The author of this book comes across as entitled, snobbish, and horribly detached from customer service. The reason most people stay in those jobs is because they like the interaction with people, the money is secondary, and the location is a perk. Attracting drifters and those who can’t settle down is a secodary aspect of the profession- and they don’t last long. From past experience, anyone with an attitude half as nasty, condescending, and vitrolic as Tomsky’s would be out of a job so fast they wouldn’t have time to drop the key off at the front desk on the way out.
This book isn’t so much a tell all as it is a mash-up of a “10-things-they-won’t-tell-you” lists, “Waiter Rant’s” pissy attitude, and some of the good ole “look-at-me-I’m-serving-rich-people” melodrama thrown in for good measure. Nothing special or spectacularly revealing here.
0
Was this review helpful to you?
|