You do ballet?...ha ha, get it?...Idiots.

I was just reading an article on Wikipedia explaining what valet parking is and it said that if there is no valet fee, or if the valet service is free, the customary tip should be no less than $7.00. Here in Salt Lake there is a valet fee which means the tips are a lot less than when I worked valet in Vegas, where valet parking was complimentary, but it was rare, even then, that we would get more than 5 bucks. Being a valet isn't easy, especially at the Hotel Monaco. 

On saturday we were short a guy and we got hit with about 100 cars, which is a lot for 4 guys. About 8 months ago the hotel lost their parking garage due to the fact that it was torn down in order to start construction on a very large building that wont be finished for the next 2 years. Because the hotel lost its garage they decided to hire VPS (Valet Parking Services) to start parking all the cars that would be staying there. VPS bought the lowest level of a parking

 garage that is owed by the really big Wells Fargo building that is in the down town area and started parking all the guests cars there. The biggest problem is that it is 3 blocks away. I don't know if any of you are aware of how far that is but just go give you a hint, 6 blocks is a mile...you do the math. Every time a guest comes in and checks his/her car with us, we (everyone but me) have to park the car 3 blocks away and then run back to get the next car just to do the same thing. About 5 time a day someone will leave something like a cell phone or diaper bag in the car leaving it up to us to run back down to the garage that is 1/2 a mile away (I did the math for you) to retrieve it. It sucks.

So, this past saturday we had a couple things happen that caused the day to be the suckiest of all. First of all, there were some scheduling issues that made it so I had some very inexperience guys working with me. I mentioned earlier that we were short one guy, right? The night was going fine up until about 9:00pm when a family came out for their car. My valet guy got the keys and ran to the car. It wouldn't start...in fact, it wouldn't even turn in the ignition. The

 whole steering column was locked. The owner of the car got in and couldn't do anything either. He figured since we were the last people to have the car that it was automatically our fault, which most of the time is true, but we will see later that it was not our fault. I called my boss, who is kind of in charge of dealing with all the people who point their finger at us. I told the guy that someone was on the way over to help fix the problem. I then continued on with my job. At about 10:00pm I went down to the garage leaving my most experienced valet attendant at the front drive to manage the cars while I was gone. Every night I have to go to the garage and make sure that all the doors are locked and all the cars accounted for. While I was down there I noticed that one of the cars that should have already been brought up was still down there, so I sent one of my guys to get the key and take it up to the front drive. While he was in the process of finding the keys the owner of that car came out and gave us her claim ticket. I got a call on my radio from the guy I sent up to get the keys who told me that he couldn't find them. I ran as fast as I could down the 3 blocks to the hotel and asked what the heck was going on. "The keys are just...gone."

 I had to go to the lady whose keys we lost and tell her what her options were. "You can wait here for the locksmith, or we can give you a ride home." Can you believe that I have to say that to someone who trusted us to take

 care of their car? She couldn't go home because her house key was in her car, which obviously was locked. Plus, the locksmith wasn't going to be able to start her car because it was a 2007 mini cooper that has an electric key starter.

 "Crap." I tried to think of someway we could work this out. I told her that the locksmith would be able to at least open the door to get her house key, then I would pay for a taxi to get her home and to work the next morning. Other things that I offered was a room at the hotel, some drinks at the bar while she waited, and at the end we tried to offer her $50 for her troubles, which she refused to take. After about 30 minutes of frantically looking for the keys, we got a flashlight and started looking for the key in all the cars that we had in the garage, which actually ended up being the best idea yet, because we found them in the passenger seat of some random car that was parked by none other than Andrew, the new kid. The lady was very nice about everything and actually thanked us for trying so hard to find the keys, even when all hope seemed to be lost. Now, back to the first car that wouldn't start. We gave the guy and his family a ride home and called a locksmith to come down and figure out what the problem was. It turned out to be the key...it was so worn down that it wouldn't even start the car. The locksmith had to make a brand new key from scratch which ended up starting the car with no problem. Even though it wasn't our fault and we really didn't have to pay for it,  we did anyways because Chris (the owner) is a big softy.

The moral of this story is this: Give big tips to the valets...unless they lose your keys, then milk'em for all they've got.