Viviene Morgan opened the door and was confronted by a naked man. Pedro Llanos tried to clean a room and a female guest asked him to clean something else. These are just two examples of the hotel industry’s dirty little secret.
]]> Hotel guests at some of New York’s finest hotels are totally out of control. Viviene Morgan has worked at the Helmsley for 30 years. She says an average shift is seven hours, that’s seven hours to clean 12 rooms. She says “sometimes it’s only you on the floor. Sometimes it’s you and one other worker.” Morgan says a couple of months ago she went to clean a room and the guest opened the door and he “was naked as the day he was born.” Morgan says she left the room and called her supervisor who returned and told the man to put his clothes on.Pedro Llanos worked at the Waldorf Astoria for 12 years. He was one of a handful of male room attendants. He says he’s been offered glasses of champagne by scantily clad female guests and has even had to rescue a co-worker from a couple who wanted him to perform a service for a man’s wife. When the co-worker tried to leave the room, the guest placed 1-thousand dollars in his pocket and said please do not tell anyone about this. In researching this story I interviewed one worker who said she had a guest who kept buying her presents that she would refuse. She said he finally asked her out on a date. She refused that as well. What is it about hotels that make some people feel they can do and say whatever they want to the employees? Tom ward President of the New York Hotel and Trades Council says “Nobody should ever make the mistake that they have a right to treat a hotel worker like they are household staff.” It's important to note that all of the employees I spoke with say management of their respective hotels backed them 100 percent and removed the guests from the hotel.
The recent alleged activities of former IMF president Dominique Jacques khan and Egyptian banker, Mahmoud Abdel Salam Omar have union leaders demanding better across the board security for its membership. Tom Ward says “I’ve been around the union for 32 years. I’ve seldom seen this level of violence.” And that is just what this is about, violence and abuse. I’ll have more on that later. Ward says “There’s a fine line between providing good service and being a servant. Whenever managers and customers allow that line to blur, that’s when the trouble starts.” Ward says the union will be meeting soon with the hotels in the city and he will demand that all room attendants have mandatory panic buttons.
A few words about DJK and MASO: These two men have serious issues, not only issues with women but serious issues with power and their perceived view of people whom they believe to be less than. Make no mistake; Dominique Jacques Khan and Mahmoud Salam Omar are innocent until proven guilty. But if you spend anytime around law enforcement or social services professionals, they will tell you these alleged acts were not random. This is learned patterned behavior. It was reported today that the Jacques-khan story has become France’s Anita Hill. Hill the lawyer who accused Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment back kin 1993. We have learned that Khan has quite the reputation when it comes to his approaches to women. We’ve always heard about the dashing paramours of French and Italian culture, a sort of European boys will be boys attitude towards men who feel they can chase, harass and annoy women as a way of life. Guys it’s not 1957. nobody’s buying that act anymore! As for Mahmoud Omar, I can only say this. I have a friend from North Africa. She told me in her culture women cover themselves in public, because behind closed doors “we are even crazier than you Americans.” Perhaps Omar was a little confused in the Pierre that night. Maybe he forgot he was in the United States and these actions are against the law. For more watch Help me, Howard tonight on PIX 11 NEWS
