I have to share something that happened at the St. Regis Rome yesterday. I’m not sure whether I’m more embarrassed or amused by the situation, because I can’t think about it without laughing to the point that I have tears in my eyes. I apologize in advance if this is one of those “you had to be there” situations.
Let me cut to the point — I’m on a trip to Italy with Ford, and our friend Matt is joining us for the first part of the trip. We had a suite at the St. Regis Rome (I used a Platinum Suite Night Award), and I suggested Matt just stay with us, since the suite was big and we could arrange a rollaway. After all, Rome hotels can be obscenely priced.
I’m not sure if the hotel technically allows three guests in rooms or not, though we were mainly just in the room to sleep anyway, and it was a quick stopover, so I didn’t put too much thought into it. I know, shame on me.
Fast forward to yesterday morning at 4AM. We were all awake and jetlagged, and ordered coffee through the St. Regis butler service. When the butler arrived Matt went to hide in the (massive) closet. That’s because the room was technically for two people, and while we didn’t think the butler would care, we wanted to play it safe… or at least that’s what we thought we were doing.
We had one other issue — we couldn’t figure out how to turn on the lights in the room, as the switches didn’t seem to be working properly. We could turn on the lamps, but any of the lights built into the room wouldn’t turn on.
So I asked the butler if he knew how to turn them on, as I assumed it was some easy fix, and that we were just exhausted and not using our brains.
He played with the light switches in the living room with no success, and eventually walked towards the bedroom, where the closet was located. Oh crap, I was hoping he wouldn’t open the closet door. I sort of stood in front of it, hoping that would prevent him from entering. I would have never thought there would be any light control master switches located there anyway.
He walked back towards the living room. Whew, we’re safe.
He fiddled around there for about two minutes with no success, and then walked back towards the bedroom again.
I could sense he was about to open the closet door, and was horrified. Do I let him open the closet door and see Matt there, completely in the dark (since the light in the closet wasn’t working)? Do I say “oh by the way, our friend is sitting in a dark closet at 4AM on a Sunday morning?” We had dug ourselves into a hole, and I wasn’t sure the best way to go from there…
I just walked towards the living room and looked away.
Right as the butler started to open the door to the closet, Matt emerged and said “oh hi, I was just looking for something in here.”
While the butler let out a quiet gasp at first, he played it completely cool otherwise. I was in the living room laughing to the point of tears, though my greatest emotion was embarrassment. I don’t even know what the butler thought, given that he had been in the room for probably about five minutes at this point, which was all time Matt spent “looking for something” in the light-less closet, before nonchalantly emerging when the door opened.
After breakfast I just went to the front desk and proactively added a third person to the reservation (which was fine), just because I was that embarrassed.
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