Yes, Hotels Cater to Rich Exhibitionists Because They Don’t Particularly Care About The Well-Being of Their Most Menial Staff!1!1!!!

Hell, when I lived on Printers Row in Chicago, there was a hotel across the street. One Saturday, there was a guy standing in his window, naked, visible from the thighs up, on about the 5th or 6th floor. I shut the blinds.

Sunday, I opened the blinds. He was there. I closed the blinds.

Monday, I left the blinds closed.

Tuesday, I figured I’d be safe. Opened the blinds. He was there again. Just to head off the inevitable joke, no it wasn’t my reflection. I walked across the street to the front desk of the hotel, and told the person working “Hi. I live across the street. There’s a man standing naked in his window and he’s been there quite some time.” Clerk’s eyes pop out. He asks me to show him the guy, so we go out to the street and I point him out.

Because They Don’t Particularly Care About The Well-Being of Their Most Menial Staff!

It might be worth noting at this point that Sofitel has apparently behaved rather well towards the maid in this case – given her paid leave of absence, provided her with a lawyer, etc.

“Right, because there’s clearly no middle ground in which people take the housekeepers’ complaints seriously, and try to confront, and refuse service to, repeat offenders. She elides the fact that you, as a woman, know when you’re being flashed vs. when you accidentally walk in on someone who hasn’t heard your knock.”

I have a very different point of view on this issue (possibly because I am a male): the point is that, in such circumstances, the only proof of misconduct is the subjective opinion of the victim.
I am sure that a woman can understand very well when she is subject to flashing vs when something only happens by chance, however here we are speaking of a third party (the hotel owner or law enforcers) who have to act only on the basis of what the victim says.
I suppose there is some middle ground between “never confront offenders” and “punish people without any proof”, however a middle ground means that, very often, flashers will not be confronted (otherwise, it wouldn’t be a “middle” ground).

“I refuse to believe a man could be so unlucky as to accidentally show all these women his penis after leaving the door unlocked (it has a bar, you know) open on multiple stays. Honestly. It’s not even remotely plausible.”
Exactly right. Totally willing to believe it could happen once. Maybe even twice. But multiple times at the same Hotel over multiple stays? Even I am not that unlucky.

I’ve had maids or room service staff start to walk into my hotel room while I was in flagrante delicto at least twice in my memory, and never once have they actually spied any genitals. Normally they knock and enter slowly, and there is plenty of time to hide under the covers, or yell “Hold ON! and put some pants on before they actually see anything they shouldn’t.

If they see a penis and it is not intentional on the guest’s part, then somebody was doing something really stupid.

I have nothing to say here except this is true and funny and I wish you would post more.

Drum was riffing off this piece by a hotel manager on how, exactly, you deal with misbehaving guests.

It’s not an everyday occurrence but it happens enough to make this question all too familiar: “Mr. Tomsky, can you give the new girl Room 3501 until next Tuesday? That man is back, the one who loves to let his robe fall open every time I try to clean.” So, yes, we assign the room to the new girl.

But not before hotel managers roll up to the room, flanked by security guards, to request that the guest vacate during cleaning, or at least promise to remain fully clothed or risk expulsion. Often it need not be discussed in detail: those guests who can’t seem to tie their robe properly usually know exactly what they’re guilty of. Typically, an unsolicited phone call from management inquiring if the service in their room is up-to-standard, and offering to send a manager to supervise the next cleaning, improves their behavior. I remember one exhibitionist guest, in New Orleans, cutting me off before I could get down to business:

“Sir, this is Jacob, the housekeeping manager — ” “O.K., fine, O.K.!” And he hung up.

“I honestly would have thought, here is a class of rich people whom not even Megan McArdle would defend! I begin to suspect the null set is involved.”

George Soros, I’d bet, or any rich person who donates heavily to liberal causes.

because it could just as easily be a few bad eggs as it could be an everyday thing.

You say that like you think those are mutually exclusive, but they’re not. If the bad eggs are deliberately arranging these incidents, then it doesn’t take that many to make them an everyday thing (well, I hope not *literally*, but often enough to be a big problem from the staff viewpoint). The average staff person probably cleans a couple dozen rooms a day, if not a couple hundred, so even a fraction of a percent would be enough.

Agreed that in this case Sofitel, the NY cops, the DA’s who had to sign off etc. have all behaved in an exemplary way.

I thought the perp walk and tardy bail were a bit much.

The idle pleasantries in a deflecting way are a dilemma, and I agree that a life-long New Yorker like McArdle knows that as well as anybody (though I also knew life-long New Yorkers who kept their doors unlocked in New York City dorms, because, I don’t know). You don’t want the guy hollering BITCH after you as you edge down the row of benches. He might have a knife.

The fact that (some) men are unaware of the experiences of (lots) of women really isn’t that surprising. Take Marc, for instance, who never deadbolts the door in his hotel despite the fact that people have walked in on him before. There are zero women who stay in hotels who don’t deadbolt the door and put “privacy please” on for good measure if they have ever been walked in on by male staff (I was when I was a teenager). Naturally both he and I were extremely embarrassed and I learned to prevent embarrasment and inconvenience to hotel staff by taking a few obvious, elementary, precautions.

I don’t get the basic skepticism displayed towards the notion that deliberate misbehavior by (male) hotel guests is pretty common. Hotels are liminal places where one set of individuals (the guests) are cut loose from everyday ties, experience anonymity, and can imagine themselves to be able to help themselves to everything from porn on tv to room service to the maids without too much trouble. In addition, as Belle points out in the OP, lots of men engage in sexual harrassment of women in public and semi public places all the time: flashing, frottage, gestures, verbal assaults. I’ve literally never met a woman who hasn’t had one or all of these aimed at her at some point in her life. I’m a totally ordinary, now middle aged, upper middle class woman and its happened to me plenty of times. And those were in circumstances where I could back away, or run away or my class/race status protected me.

Women put up with so much shit from men, every day, sometimes all day. I understand that its hard for anyone to put themselves in someone else’s shoes–like apparently its hard for some to imagine that just because you aren’t afraid, every day, that some high status hotel manager is going to walk in on you while you are showering and rape you that the maids couldn’t be having the experience that they say they are having. I mean, if its not happening to you its not happening to anyone, obviously. But if you never bother to lock your door, or flip on the “privacy please” sign because you don’t have to worry about sexual harrassment you could maybe start to imagine a world in which you *don’t waste the valuable time* of the hotel staff by letting them come into your room unexpectedly when you don’t, in fact, intend to have the room cleaned or the bed turned down. Have a little respect for the work they are doing and their time and their feelings.

aimai

Sorry if I’m outta line, but do these ‘flashers’ (I’ll admit, I’ve never seen one) really deserve to be called “sexual predators”?

@28: Why wouldn’t they, what do you think the distinction should be?

They involve other people in their sex acts without consent, and that non-consensual involvement is integral to the act of flashing. They’re not rapists (so long as they don’t also commit rape), but I see no reason not to call them sexual predators.

#28 – they take pleasure in inflicting distress on other people.

Here’s a little thought experiment for male readers: imagine that you’re walking alone in a strange city, around dusk, and you’re a little bit lost in a neighborhood that’s just seedy enough to make you hope that you find your destination before it gets dark. Up ahead a couple of guys are leaning against a wall. As you walk by, one of them steps into the sidewalk, and, in the moment that you see he’s got 4 inches and 50 pounds on you, he says loudly, “Hey, buddy, got a light?”

Now, imagine the feeling of that moment every day of your life, whenever you wait for a bus or walk past a construction site or try to do your job cleaning rooms.

I see Lemuel Pitkin already gave this advice.

“Jon H, don’t leave us—if you’ll pardon the expression—dangling. What happened next?”

Actually, I don’t know. The hotel clerk spotted the evernude and dashed back in, at which point I figured my work was done. I didn’t see him again. I assume they either booted him or had stern words for him.

A few months later a friend called me to let me know how much rooms cost at that hotel ($400 and up), and thus how much he was spending to expose himself to Chicago.

Barry wrote: “Yes, Jon H, please finish your story. I assume you opened the curtains at different times of the day, so was he just standing there 24/7? What happened?”

Actually I think I only opened the blinds in the mornings. God I hope he wasn’t there all day.

The main branch of the Chicago library was probably visible from his room. Perhaps he just really loves books.

I try hard not to generalize about women. I wish all men did. I wish all women would try hard not to generalize about men.

mrearl says this: “I try hard not to generalize about women. I wish all men did. I wish all women would try hard not to generalize about men.”

Which I admit confuses me. Does he think Belle Waring or any other commentor here is saying that all men flash or assault women? That men are, in general, sexual predators?

If not, what *is* his point?

If it is that Belle (as a woman) had the termerity to disapprove of the behavior of these particular men, well, it’s difficult to discuss men raping and sexually assaulting women without mentioning, at least in passing, that they are men.

(For the record, I grew up in New Orleans, and moved later to Arkansas, and from the time I was eleven, I have flashed, sexually harassed at bus stops and rest stops, and subject, more than once, to frottage on public transit — most of this before I was 20 years old. Once when I was riding my bicycle, a guy driving a delivery van nearly ran me off the road, driving badly and shouting sexual offers at me. And no, there is nothing remarkable about me. I’m an average middle class person who dresses like a regular human being.)
.

Various people have made the claim that most (all?) women urban dwellers have been flashed at least once. Lest anyone have the impression that flashing / being flashed is solely an urban phenomenon, I’ve been flashed twice in a small city of 50,000 and once in a town of 25,000. The most recent perv flashed me after following me around the neighborhood long enough for me to seriously regret my lack of a cell phone. (I was walking my not ancient and not particularly intimidating dog. You can make your own jokes about who had the bone.)

p.s.
I am male…didn’t immediately realize that pseudonym I had chosen–I am not going to divulge my real name if I am going to tell you I leave my doors unlocked all the time :)–was ambiguous about it.

As someone who travels somewhat regularly, I am always annoyed by the fact that room rentals aren’t for 24 hours. I do resent that I need to be up by 8AM to stave off someone trying to enter my room. Yes, I forget to deadbolt if I was out carousing, or working, or, you know, just not caring because I expect someone shouldn’t come into my room — at all — during the time I’ve contracted for it. I don’t need towels or a made bed every 24 hours. But I do enjoy my privacy.

My mother was a housekeeper, and I tend to make my bed in hotels and fold towels. I understand that you can’t clean a whole hotel in the 4 hour window between check out and check in — but I’m living by the terms laid out for me. Even when I leave the DND tag I’ve gotten plenty of knocks.

If it’s a relatively modest locale, I don’t really sweat it. But I’ve been in $300 rooms with a DND tag and a deadbolt and still have had housekeeping push in and wake me up on vacation. I’m sorry, but if I paid for the room and I’ve done everything to indicate I should not be disturbed until the end time at which I’ve contracted to occupy the room, I really don’t care what state someone sees me in.

she does in fact now more or less do as Aimai says all women who’ve had such experiences do

…but only after repeatedly stripping naked and attempting to force sexual favours on male hotel staff (I was a serial offender at a certain hotel in LA with early turndown hours). Surprised she’d admit to it, really. Unless she’s actually talking about the situation in which a woman walks in on another woman getting changed, but that’s so unlike the DS-K scenario that it would be quite misleading to even mention it.

dsquared, I’ve had worse than that in China – repeatedly having sex workers push their way into my hotel room to have sex with me, though I said no. I know a man who went to Russia, and was woken in his bed by a sex worker who had got the key from reception.

As a general tip, too: always lock the door to your love hotel room if it doesn’t lock automatically. You won’t be surprised by cleaning staff, but by other drunk customers. And you are (by virtue of your location) guaranteed to be in flagrante delicto. Trying to tell someone in a second language to get out of your hotel room while you’re going at it (or glowing softly, depending on the timing) is a challenge best avoided by prudent foreplanning.

I know a man who went to Russia, and was woken in his bed by a sex worker who had got the key from reception

This is what happened to me, although I think it was simply that the lock didn’t work properly. As I understood it, neither my travel agent nor (presumably) the large chain of hotels to which this one belonged was aware that their Rosmalen operation had decided to stop catering for the mid-price business traveler and move into value-added services.

This happened to a friend of mine visiting Russia, although it was early evening rather than the middle of the night, and the person at the door was male, six feet tall and in full army uniform. When she turned down the offer of sex, he tried to sell her the uniform. Somehow that detail is particularly horrible – when someone’s selling their body you can always tell yourself it might not be quite as bad as it looks, but a squaddie who’s willing to report back to base without his uniform has got to be really desperate for money.

I’ve heard stories of business travellers in Asia turning down the women brought to them, only to have the confused hotel staff return offering men instead.

My understanding is that this is now quite uncommon in China but still happens in less developed SE Asian countries.

Phil> Given the number of well-attested stories about Russian soldiers (even and especially the officers) selling their weapons and ammo to Chechens during the 90s, I think selling your uniform counts as the least of peccadillos.

On topic, my sincere apologies to that family innocently walking down the corridor of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Helsinki in March 2003. I had genuinely no idea that my roommate, when he’d gone down to breakfast, had absent-mindedly left the room door open, the clot.

Delagar: Being an example of what it wishes not for, it was a feeble attempt at humor.

Andrew, I heard a terrible version of that story from a colleague many years ago, which ended up with the taxi driver offering to sell him a boy. I think it was true.

“lots of men [my emphaisis] engage in sexual harrassment of women in ….. I’ve literally never met a woman who hasn’t had one or all of these aimed at her at some point in her life” – aimai @27
Aimai, the second part is true but the first untrue. As others have noted, sleazes are:
a) a small proportion of the population
b) multiple repeat offenders
So yes, most women have experienced harrassment. But it doesn’t follow that most men have perpetrated harrassment. The failure of many feminists to internalise that creates opponents of some people who should be supporters.