You Want WHAT???

IntroductionWhen people ask me what I do for a living and I tell them I’m a concierge,they are immediately intrigued. “Oh, I bet you have some funstuff going on?!” they exclaim. They become even more intriguedwhen I tell them the place where I ply my trade – Las Vegas.Thanks to everything from the ‘What happens in Vegas’ advertisingcampaign to movies like The Hangover, people have an unendingfascination with life on The Strip. They want to know...
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IntroductionWhen people ask me what I do for a living and I tell them I’m a concierge,they are immediately intrigued. “Oh, I bet you have some funstuff going on?!” they exclaim. They become even more intriguedwhen I tell them the place where I ply my trade – Las Vegas.Thanks to everything from the ‘What happens in Vegas’ advertisingcampaign to movies like The Hangover, people have an unendingfascination with life on The Strip. They want to know theweirdest question I have ever heard as a Las Vegas concierge, thefunniest guest request, the most memorable one, and so on.Over the years, as I have shared stories about my career as a concierge,people would always want to hear more. This gave me theidea to go out and ask my fellow concierges about their stories, andto compile everything into a book to share it with the world.I interviewed more than three dozen colleagues from both bigand small hotels. Since a cornerstone of our profession is privacy,all guest names have been changed. A few stories have also beenmodified, at the concierge’s request, to further protect the confidentialityof the original parties. But I have taken great care in theseinstances to make sure the changes did not interfere with the basicnarrative.Interviewing my fellow Las Vegas concierges turned out to be anextremely rewarding experience. Even though most of them wouldstart out the conversation with something along the lines of ‘I amsure you’ve heard it all’ or ‘No request is too weird,’ I soon learnedthat I definitely had not heard it all and that some requests reallyshould be deemed too strange.18You Want WHAT?19There is truly no limit to the variety of things that happen to aconcierge on the Strip. In one conversation, you are talking aboutwhere to get the best foie gras, and in the next you are assisting aguest whose quickie marriage has turned out to be the biggest mistakeof their young life. Sometimes, we use our network of connectionsto get things done, while at other moments we are just thereto provide a compassionate ear. For the most part though, it’s allabout helping guests fulfill their personal and vacation dreams.Finally, I hope that you, the reader, will have as much fun readingthrough these Las Vegas snippets as I did compiling them. Ifyou happen to have a Las Vegas concierge story of your own thatwould like to share, please feel free to email me at the address listedbelow.At your service,Mariann MohosJuly, 2010lveditors@gmail.com