The Hotel #1

This will be the first episode on the topic of my experiences at "The Hotel".  

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:27

Hello, everybody. Again, my name is Matt, and welcome to the losing ticket. Um we had a very successful last week. We did another wrap-up show, and we were honored again with the presence of one Rich with a T and Mike with an M. And uh we were able to expand on some of the previous podcasts, like they did in the first version of that with Gregory. I thought it was a roaring success. I got some good feedback, and hopefully you all enjoyed that as much as I did, and much as we did in making it. In the future, we're gonna have my sister-in-law come in. She's got a lot of good stories. I gotta kinda pull them out of her a little bit, but I I know there's a ton in there because she shared them with us just in passing. I want to get uh Richie's gonna hopefully be a regular with us. And Mike comes back. Mike and I are gonna do a uh a podcast about a place that we worked at, and that's hopefully will be a good one, and he'll he'll be able to uh talk a lot more on that. Uh Gregory will definitely be coming back. We have a lot of things with Greg. Uh you might have heard the names Jerry or Dan in here. Who knows what might happen with them. Maybe they'll have uh they'll they'll they'll be comfortable enough to come on, who knows? You know, or they come back from the dead and they uh and they wanna they want to participate. We'll see. We'll see. Because there's a lot, there's a lot that these people have to add, a lot of stories. And who knows? You know, who who knows who else could be on the on the horizon as this thing grows. And speaking of growing, um, when it comes to this podcast, you know, I I have like a podcast hosting service. I don't know if anybody out there does podcasting. So I this is my first attempt. And I'm learning as we go along. I mean, I'm gonna learn more today than I did yesterday. But um I have like 120 some odd uh downloads of this. Now, I have probably four or five people, individuals, in my very tight circle that I know is listening to it. And maybe, you know, we go back to the very first podcast I did on South Buffalo Neighborhood Watch, and that was started as like a lark, you know, started as like an inside joke. Maybe that's what this was to begin with as well. But we are finding, and through this this web hosting service, we are finding that we have viewers in like Oregon and uh Texas and in Georgia. I know of like my I have family that live in Virginia, so when I see Virginia, it doesn't shock me, but it's not where they live, so it's somebody else. So I don't even know if my sisters are listening to this, and maybe they don't want to, because I am kind of a dick. But um, who knows? Who knows? Maybe they are. I can always use the view, right? But who knows where this is going. I I am enjoying it. I'm enjoying talking about some of the the stories and the events. Uh Richard and I are gonna be going on a adventure uh next weekend, not this weekend, but the weekend of like the 10th and the 11th. We're going on a mini road trip and we're gonna go see a concert down in Charlotte. We're gonna go see ACDC. Um, trying to get Jerry to go, but he's uh he's being a little nancy right now about it. But I have a feeling, because I'm a kind of a crazy asshole, but I have a feeling that it's gonna generate enough fun and excitement and stories to hopefully talk about that next week. But um that being said, this week I'm gonna focus on a topic that someone had requested by the name of Gregory, and we're gonna talk about, or I'm gonna talk about, because I have nobody here. I'm gonna talk about my stories of working in a hotel. So I'm gonna get into uh those events, I guess you can say the people that I worked with, some of the people that were uh, you know, normal or um consistent guests, um, some of the events that happened there, some of the controversial stuff that happened there, some of the famous people, and there were actually I mean depends on what your level of of famous is. Uh there were there have been a few groups of people that I've met. And um we will see how it goes. We'll see if people enjoy this. And this one's gonna be crude in some ways, because there's gonna be a lot of uh there's there's a few there's a few dirty components to this, a few risque components to this, but um I mean it is what it is. It happened, and I believe, if I remember correctly, and I should look this up, I should have had the name already, but I believe there was a uh a writer, an author, who actually once took a job at a flop house in I believe New York or Chicago, and the sole purpose for him to actually get that job, and he was just the front desk guy, was to gather stories so he can write a bunch of short stories. And I'll be honest with you, there are enough in my experiences at Comfort Suites in Chicago, New York, mind you, um, that I probably could um write a few stories, maybe using it as the the root of a story and embellish it and make it something something small like a novella or something like that. But who knows? Who knows? Uh I do like to write, but I am not uh going down that path just yet. I'm seeing how this podcast goes. So again, Comfort Suites was a mid-level, maybe at the most hotel in Chictawaga, New York. It was on a road called Dick Road, which, yes, I embellished the word dick, and I'll talk about that a little bit when giving people directions to our hotel, which was always gave me a giggle, and sometimes it it made the person on the other end of the phone giggle as well. Um I worked there from 2003 to 2000 and about early early 2008. And the reason why I worked there was because I was going to school full-time to be a secondary English high school uh secondary English teacher. So basically high school, but I had the seventh and eighth grade as well, so seventh through twelve. Um while I was going to school, I needed a job that gave me that flexibility. And someone said, Hey, if you get a job in uh overnight in a hotel, sometimes you can actually do some of your homework, which was a bonus because my sleep was sporadic at best at the time. I was exhausted, nonstop. And that's alright. That's alright. Right now, my neighbor upstairs is uh probably doing Zumba. So if you hear any boom boom boom, it's probably him. I would blame his wife, but his wife's at work, so he's either walking around the apartment with cinder blocks on his feet, or he's dancing. And I would assume he's dancing. Um, cover suites. So it was originally owned by this like conglomerate, and when I mean conglomerate, I'm not talking about like Hilton or anything like that. It was like I believe they were based out of like Rochester, New York, and they might have owned like six or seven properties. I got interviewed by this girl who was going to Niagara University to get a bachelor's degree in hospitality, which I thought was kind of crap. Because I mean, if you really wanted to work in a hotel, you can work in the hotel, and if you wanted to um you wanted to like be a manager, then be a manager, like just work towards that goal, I guess. But um her her dream job was the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. And she actually got it. She got the job, and I'm thinking, oh my god, that that's gotta be amazing, you know, the whatever, the the amount of people you're gonna see, and the beauty of the hotel. And I I have stayed at a Waldorf Astoria, but not in New York. I stayed in New Orleans, and it was like like the architecture and the design of like the littlest things like tiles on the on the ceiling. It was just amazing, amazing. So I can only imagine how the one in New York must be, the original, the OG, right? Well, she was there for about two or three months, came back, she quit her job there. She was getting paid like $40,000 a year, which maybe in 2003, four wasn't bad. Probably wasn't bad, but she said she was working anywhere from 80 to 100 hours a week. And then in New York City, you can't afford an apartment, you can't afford you know all these things because it's so expensive. So $40,000 in New York City, in all honesty, was shit money, right? So she came back and then she was just bitter at the world because she just went to school for four years, and now she's working, probably making two dollars more an hour than I am, and I'm just there because I'm yeah, I have to be there, I need a flexibility. And so I uh when I got hired, I worked at um I worked weekends, I worked nights, overnights, and then every once in a while did a second shift, which was basically like three to eleven. So three to eleven sometimes, eleven to seven on the weekends, and a sporadic here to there, just to fill in hours, and it was it was great, like, especially as it moved on. We had that girl, and we had one of her friends that was also a hospitality person who kinda took the job real, real serious. And I'm not saying that if you don't go into a hotel all night, that's really nice, that they don't take it serious. I guess they do, but this was kind of like a shitty hotel, in all honesty. It was uh, you know, eighty dollars a night, eighty dollars a night. Wait, I gotta get a drink here.

unknown 10:58

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

80 bucks a night, maybe 90 bucks on the weekend. Uh had a pool, had a hundred rooms, two floors, no elevator, which sucked. Um it was a really shitty location. So we were on Dick Road, which was right at then there was an exit from the 33 expressway. And so, like, to get off the 33, you went right on to Dick Road. There's a light there, it was real busy, and then you had to like make a sharp left, almost like a real grandiose U U-haw uh U-turn to get into the property. So it really wasn't a good location, in my personal opinion. Now, me being the security van driver slash sometimes front desk, depending on like who was working, who I was working with, and if I was bored. Um that was my role. Simple, really, really simple. Monda uh Sunday night through Thursday night, there was never any problems generally, but on a Friday and Saturday night, you get some problems where maybe that security hat had to be put on. And the van was good because it got me sometimes out of the hotel, and when I wasn't driving and there was no issues, I literally could do homework probably for five hours of my shift. If I really if I really had stuff to go on five easily five hours, easily five hours. I don't know many jobs that allow you to do that. But when we when I first got there, there were people that that were a little too serious. You know, they thought it was I don't know, I don't even know good hotels, but it was they thought they were like something, and they're not, and they eventually left. And then the conglomerate, the company that owned us was like in Rochester, and I think they owed like seven or eight different types of hotels. The comfort suites, there was like quality in, there was like four of them, if I remember correctly. We were like the third from the top. So if there was like four brands, four shields, I guess you can say. And then there was one that was like it had a real name, you know, it didn't say anything, it was like a person's name, and there was only like a half a dozen of those around the country, so it wasn't like there was a whole lot of that. And I was in there when they had that whole Johnny Cash, I've been everywhere, man, I've been everywhere. I don't remember that stupid fucking commercial, but and I love Johnny Cash and my dude, but it was a dumb commercial, but so I mean the comfort name was out there, you know, it was relatively popular. Um, but these ladies left, and that conglomerate ended up selling our hotel to a group of Indians, dots, not feathers, and they came in and they like everything got calved, I guess you could say. They got they were very, very, very, very cheap. Now, I guess if you buy a hotel and you're looking at like the very bottom dollar of everything, you know, you you tighten those purse strings as well. I didn't really give a shit. It didn't bother me none. It really didn't. I mean, I never got razors there anyways. My razor was like 10 cents, it was so utterly pathetic. But I knew why I was there, you know, I knew I had a goal outside of that, so it didn't bother me. I mean, it didn't help our family much, because I really wasn't bringing any money in. But it it wasn't like um somebody who was looking at a career there, and yeah, there were a few people that wanted that as a career. I don't know why, but you know what, tweet his own. And I'm not and I'm not criticizing that at all. Because you know what? People are everywhere, and they do something, and if that's what you want to do, more power to you, right? So we have a new ownership group, the um Subosh. Subosh, Patel, Subosh Patel, and a bunch of other people. And I would say, oh, why are you saying his last name? Well, Patel, I think, is like Smith in the Indian count in and Indian. So good luck. He listened to his bullshit, anyways. So Subosh was, and I and I was not a bad mouth him either. I actually like the guy. Subash came in, and he actually like, like I said, everything kind of got real um cheap. Um, like the rooms were turned off at night, no, no electricity and all that. Like, they saved everything. It was really kind of a weird thing. So, based on availability, the maintenance had to do certain things, uh whatever. I I really didn't I didn't really care. But I got along with Subosh well because um when I would be at the front desk, I did not subscribe to the notion of the customer is always right. And I'll give you an example. Uh, we had a lot of Canadians that would stay, and I don't I really I don't really have a problem with Canadians, I have a problem with specific Canadians, just like I have a problem with specific Americans, but they're they're the group of them that do come down to at least the Buffalo area, to me, from my perspective, from my stories, and what I was able to observe, they're a bunch of assholes. Because what they do is they come to Buffalo, they criticize that they live and fuck out of the United States, which I find hilarious, but they think that their opinion matters, which it doesn't, it doesn't today, it didn't yesterday. Um, but they go, they come here and they go to like the malls and shopping because if they go to Canada, they're paying a lot more money, right? Or and they have, and from what I understand, and this was told to me by Canadians, they don't have a lot of selection. Now, this is 2026, and these conversations were taking place 2003 through 2008. Okay, so maybe things have changed, but back then it was about the selection. And our foreign exchange student from Germany said the same thing. He said, When you come to the store here, a sweatshirt is in white, black, red, green, blue, gray, you know, tan, whatever, like 20 different colors. And then when he was in Germany, you go to like a store and it's like in three or four colors, so he said there's always more selection here. And Canadians that I spoke to back then said the same thing. And I ain't no problem with Canadians coming down to the United States to shop and eat. I've gone to Canada, I wouldn't have been to Happy Jacks in Fort Airy from time to time, good Chinese restaurant. I there's no issues with that. But when you come down and then you criticize right to people's faces, and you know that, well, you think you know, that that person can't say nothing back to you, you know, it's it's a to me, it's being a little bit of an asshole. Or you expect all these things, and then like we have a group of guys come down and they have six and seven bags, golf bags, and they're gonna go down to South Carolina uh golfing, and you put them in the van, and you're carrying them in and out and to the curb and all this other shit, and they just walk away. And then you get a businessman from uh Tulsa, Oklahoma, and he doesn't even have anything, and he gives you a $10 bill. That's like, dude, and it wasn't just one group of Canadians, it's every family that's gone to Disney World, every f everybody that's ever gone anywhere. I would say eight out of ten Canadians don't tip. And then these fucking Canadians, when they come down to the United States, at least back in 2003 through 2008, quote unquote, they would go to the gallery of mall and they would go to the local places and they would come back with all these boxes and whatnot. And then what they would do is they would throw the boxes in in uh in the parking lots. They would throw the bar the the the they would leave the boxes in the in the hotel rooms, they would take the the boxes and all that, and they just throw them everywhere. And I've and it's been in the in the parking lots, I've seen them do this. Not just from the hotel point of view, I've seen Canadian cars there and they've just dumped shit. And they do it so that when they drive back over to Canada, they don't have to claim it, they don't have to pay taxes on it. But again, they're throwing their shit all over my country. And I'm so I'm like, go fuck yourself, in all honesty. And I still I it it still makes me bitter about it. But those were certain that was a there was a sect of of Canadian people. There's there's also now on the other side another sect of Canadian people, and these guys, I think they were all guys. There might have been a female in there, but they're for I think they're all guys, and they worked for CN Rail. So Canadian National Rail, they would bring the trains over the bridges over the Niagara River, they would park them somewhere off of Broadway, which is not far from where the hotel was, and they had a contract with our hotel, and I would go to the train yard, and they were super cool, they were super down to earth, but they weren't from like Toronto, they were like from Bury and Thunder Bay and like kind of outside, like far outside of Toronto, but but they're Canadians and they were like real, it's like it's like someone coming to fucking the United States, going to New York, and meeting some asshole, and they're saying, Well, everybody in America is a dick. Well, no, because if you really travel the country, you realize there's a lot of great people, and I think that's what's happening right now with the World Cup. And same thing with Canada. You know, I go to Toronto, to me, Toronto is a bunch of assholes. But when you go into like, say, the real Canada, like outside of that metro area, I meet some really, really good people. And the CN Rail guys were awesome, they were absolutely awesome. And uh funny as hell, they're blue-collar guys, they're older guys, you know. I'm I'm 53 now, so maybe the youngest guy then was maybe my age, maybe a little younger, but they were all like within, say, five or ten years of retiring, and it was an easy gig from what I understood for Canadian National, those guys. Like it was the gig that when you had seniority, you wanted this run because they did it like twice a week. They were home, like I think Saturday, Sunday, Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesdays. So like it was like a Tuesday, a Monday, Tuesday, and then Thursday, Friday, you know, back and forth. But I got to see these guys like sometimes twice a week for five years. So I really liked them. I really did. I really had good relationships with these guys. There were things that I would allow these guys to do that that I wouldn't allow other people to do because I I had these guys overnight. Sometimes these guys wanted to go to the casino. Um, and back then it was only in uh Niagara Falls. And I would take the van and I'd be like, Well, I can do this for you, but I might not be able to pick you up, or I can do this for you, but if I get a call, you know, you're gonna put me in a tight spot. And they'd be like, Oh, don't worry, man. I'll I'll I'll I'll hook you up with some money. So I would go to like the front desk and say, Hey man, or her, hey, if you can help stretch this time out a little bit, I'll race there, I'll race back. So it's gonna take me like an hour, but maybe we might be able to work this out and make say 50 bucks out of it. We did, we did it a lot. I did that trip. Now, granted, it might have been later in the shift, you know, 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock in the morning, when we weren't getting a lot of people coming in from the airport and stuff like that. But it was an easy way to make money. Tips. I was good at that. I I I mean, I I'm not saying that I'm a good orator or a good conversationalist. I'm trying. I mean, I'm talking on a podcast for 45 minutes in a basically an empty apartment with maybe my cats and a either a cup of coffee or a Sprite Zero Sugar. Delicious, mind you. But it's really just um I like talking to people. And so when I was in these vans and I got to talk to certain people, and they were somewhat reciprocal in this, I had some great, and I would I would do whatever the hell you wanted if you if you wanted to go somewhere. If you were cool, if you were a dick, I'm sick and by the friggin' the rules. A mile away from the hotel, no more. That's it. You know, uh the you can't do this, you can't do that, you can't do this, you can't do that. Dude, I won't let you do anything. But you know, if if you're kind of like kind of cool and you're you know you're you're you're personable and you and you kind of have that ability to like see outside the box, yeah, man. Like let's let's have these conversations and let's let's go. And it wasn't just the CNRail guys. Now, Cyan Rail was up had a contract with the hotel, so they they had like say six rooms every night. And I got to see those guys, and those guys were great. They introduced me to the trailer park boys before uh anybody in the United States knew who the trailer park boys was. It was strictly a Canadian TV show. They would bring things down from Canada that we couldn't get here in the United States, and then on turn, I would find things here that they couldn't get in Canada and bring them bring them in there for them, or we would go to like liquor stores that they couldn't find shit, and they would find like a green label. Oh, I don't even know what the hell this shit was. I don't know, was it Jack or or I don't know, some kind of whiskey, but there was things that they couldn't get there. I don't think at one point they couldn't get accetrin or something like that. It was like a medicine they couldn't get, and so the guy's wife's like, Hey, can we run to Wegmans or something? I'm like, Yeah, I'll stay for you, not a problem. So, like, you know, again, we built these relationships, we built these bonds, they wanted to go to a special restaurant or something like that, or they wanted to watch something on the TV, and you know, I'd be like, Hey, you know, we can get pizza and wings. I you know, we would get pizza and wings and share it together. And these are guests of the hotel, but again, I got to know these guys. They were very, very down to earth. That was one contract that we had. The other contract that we had was with uh these regional airliners. So when you are, this isn't necessarily New York, Chicago, LA, Atlanta, but when you're in a smaller town and you're taking a US Air or uh Delta or American or whatever, these these small planes, these commuter planes, those are not US Air or Delta or American pilots. There's like a subs like these little companies, these regional airlines. So we had contracts with one was called Chautauqua Airs, one was called Frontier. I think there was one more. Now, some of those guys were really cool. There it was usually two pilots and two flight attendants. Some of those people were very, very nice, and just like with CNR, where do you want to go? What do you want to do? I would take them, I would take them all over the place. Some of them weren't, and then there were some that weren't, and they like to drink. And they like to drink when they had to get up at five o'clock in the morning because they have a 6 30 flight to uh Chicago or New York or Detroit, I don't know. And yes, we've contacted their um their businesses, and yes, I can say myself, I think I got two of them. They were they were at and even if they were at they were nice, even if they were nice, if you were drinking the night before, I I wouldn't want to be on a flight like that, all right. So I think I was responsible at least for two people get losing their licenses or loose losing their jobs with that company because they come down, you smell the breath, you you know, because like I said, I worked 11 to 7 a lot of times. So 4 30, these guys come down and they're sweating alcohol. Fuck that. I'm calling. I know I did it twice. I think I there was another guy who did Monday through Sunday night through Thursday night, and he said he did it a bunch of times for him. But um yeah, I mean flight attendants I got oh, it got it got real real close. Like sultry fucking you know they were on the prowl, they're on the hunt, they're looking to fuck, they're looking to whatever. Some of those, not all, some of those flight attendants deserved the stereotypes that some of them get. I'll tell you that right now. Very promiscuous, very, very, very some of them very and that not not talking about the 22-year-olds, I'm talking about the 48-year-olds. Very, very promiscuous. I caught a flight attendant who sneaked into our pool. Our pool area like probably closed at like 10, and we just turned the lights off. That's how we did. We just turned the lights off. And I'm like, I don't know, I was at the front desk for something, and the way the pool is, and you'll see these in a lot of these types of of apart uh hotels where like there's like windows that go out to like the parking lot, and then you have the pool like in a little building, and then you have the the hotel. And we had windows that f showed us the pool, but then through that pool room you could see part of the parking lot. So there was lights, there's stra you know parking lamps out there. And I'm just I don't even know. I'm just happening to be looking that way. I mean, there's not like I'm staring at dark, but I see a shadow go by. And I'm like, did I what did I just see? And I saw it again. I'm like, I go to the person I'm with. I don't know. I'm not gonna say their names. There's a couple of them that probably don't like me that much, and that's fine. But you know, I talked to the one of the one of the females that I worked with, and I uh I would say, I gotta go see what's in there. I think there's somebody in the in the pool room. And you know, they're like, okay, go, you know, go check. And I would turn the lights on, and on two occasions I had one was just a single flight attendant, nude as could be, coming out of the pool. And then the other time I had two flight attendants, females, and they were making out in the pool. Um, yeah. And they weren't not bad looking. But yes, they had to go. And I had to make sure that they left. And I stayed until they left. And I watched them leave, and I asked them if they needed a towel. Ha ha ha ha. Uh uh going back to my boss, Subash, he was so cool. So we're talking about Canadians earlier, and we would have people complain. We had like I think they were professional complainers. We would have people that would come up and say, and this happened, it's happened to me multiple times, but you get a bad room, right? So maybe you're next to the elevator, which didn't happen at our place because we didn't have an elevator, which meant I was the elevator. I had to carry up the bags, which whatever, it was what it was. No elevator, so you didn't have rooms that were near that ding, but we did have ice machines and pop machines. So, hey, sometimes it happens. You're in that room, right? And especially if it's sold out. But there have been equations where we had, say, half half capacity, and I would have this Canadian come up and she's like, The room outside or the area outside of my room is too noisy. She literally just checked in, checked in like 10 minutes, 10 minutes, easily 10 minutes, before she complained, which is kind of cool. I'm like, oh, you just you know you noticed it, you you came and acknowledged it. So do you want me to move you, right? No, I want my room for free. And I'm like, well, we have empty rooms. I can just move you to another room down the hall, and you've only been there for five minutes, so I know you're not like it's you're on day two or three, and even then I'd tell you no, but like you're she'd kind of be in a dick about this. And she's like, I want my room for free, I want a comp. I want this, I want this, I want this. Now, Subosh lived in the hotel, and so he would just come down and do paperwork. I think he's in all honesty, night his wife was nice, but I do believe he came down, especially when I was working, because we would have we would shoot the shit, and it got him away from his wife. But that's that's just my perspective or my opinion. But he would be down and he's sitting in the back room and he's like going through paperwork, it didn't matter, right? And I'm at the front desk, and this lady's like, I want to talk to your manager, and I'm I kind of like turn my head because you kind of can see in the back, and Subash looks at me, I look at him, and I look back at her, I go, I am the manager. And then I look back and Subash cracks a smile because he knows I if it was valid, if it was valid, and you were nice, I would help you. I would help you to the tenth degree. But if it's something that I can fix and you're just not being, you know, you're not you're not being reasonable, or you're just an asshole. You were that was a fucking hard no every fucking time hard no. So I'm like, well, no, I'm not uh I can either give you a different room or you stay in that room. She's like, Well, I want, you know, we went back and forth, and then she's like, Well, I want a manager. I'm like, Well, I am the manager, and she's like, Well, this is this is very unprofessional. I'm like, Well, it is what it is, and I I know that's a cliche saying, but I've said it so long for so many years. I well, it is what it is, and that's what you know, I can either move you or you're gonna be stuck in that room. She's like, Well, I want a refund then, I want out. I'm like, nope, no refunds. And she was so pissed, and so she went back to her room, and you never heard her heard from her again. But then there would be other people, other nights, to do the same thing. So I I knew it was a thing, and I wanted those people, I wanted to say no so bad. I loved telling people no, because the look of astonishment on their faces, like, you're telling me no? Fuck yes, I am, because all those years in customer service, and I know I have Lori's listening, and I don't know if Sean and Derek and Caleb and Jason, I don't know if these guys are listening, but we've all been there where you're answering these fucking phone calls, 100 fucking calls a day, and these assholes are asking for the world, and you kind of just pressing buttons, so you didn't care, and you didn't really want to lose your job back then because we're even younger. So you did whatever you had to do, but now it's kind of like I had a boss that really didn't give a shit. He really cheap, he was cheap, and so if I could save him money, he was happy, and that's what I kind of looked at it as. So, oh man, I told people no all the time on things. But but he was cool. Then there was a girl that I and she knows who she is if she's listening, who I worked with a lot. She was a handful, she knows she's a handful, but a lot of drama, a lot of lot of drama with um exes and things like that, and then it got intertwined into work. Like he would show up, he would show up and argue with her while we were trying to check in gas. And he was like a hundred pounds soaking wet, and I'm security. So I'm like, dude, if you don't leave now, I'm throwing you out. He's like, Well, I'd like to see you try. And he's I'm like, okay. So I get up and I come around, I open the door, and I come around, I go, Do you want me to put my hands on you and throw you out, or do you want to walk out? And he walks out because you know, all barking, no fucking bite. That that guy was a problem. Real and he worked at a real fancy whole uh real fancy restaurant in um Buffalo called Salvator, so I won't go there just because of the story she told me about it. Now, if you're listening, Salvatore, Russ Salvatore, you are good. Russell's support, uh, his his his place, A1. But his kids now take over took over Salvators, and that's a shithole. It's just as bad as these half half fucking uh you know, these chains, you know, bag bag sauce and all this other crap. So I'll never go there. But this guy was a uh a chef there, he was a dick. I had this um other woman, older woman named Mary, and she was very, very nice. She was a lot older. She was kind of like maybe like in a retirement age, and she was I'm not saying she was slow because she wasn't, but she was she worked at her own pace, right? And she was very gullible. So the one year for Halloween, one of my Halloween parties, I I was um remember uh I think it was State Farm So Easy A Caveman Could Do It? So I was a caveman, I was the guy. I had like I had like a folder, I was in a like a suit or whatever, I had like a dress shirt, but I had my like caveman beer um headgear on. So I bought it at like Halloween store or something like that, or Party City, maybe. Bought it when I was at work and took it back, and I was opening it up, and I'm in the back room, and Mary's up front, and she's just like going through paperwork. She's she never did anything wrong. She was so she was like quiet as a church mouse, but she was real timid and real like gullible. And I go in the back room and I go, I start growling. She's like, hello? Like, I'm the only freaking person there. I go, and she goes, Hello? And then I jump out. I'm like literally like right in the middle, like right behind the front desk. And I got this caveman, this like Wolfman mask with hair and shit. And she screams, and I'm like, Mary, it's just me. It was so fucking funny. I she goes, I think I peed my pants. I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But like I I had fun. I mean, because it sucked. We got shit money, we worked with shitty customers most of the time. And we always had to be there every day of the week. Christmas. Well, I never work Christmas, but you know, every holiday, all this other bullshit. People are like, Oh, the football players got to work on Christmas Eve. How bad? That's like, bitch, how many fucking other companies? I'm not even talking about firemen and nurses, like those like and police are I know you gotta work, but you're making good money. There's people making shit money out there that are working those holidays, and they're they probably got little kids and all this other shit. So I don't feel sorry for none of those fucking people because there's those people at the very bottom that get shit on every year. So you know what? We did what we could to have fun, and I would like to say I was a part of that. We had maintenance guy, we had a maintenance guy and this woman, you know, he looked like cousin uh like Uncle Fester. He had like a he was bald, and he had like Roatia, I think. So like his he was bald, but like his face was real red. He wasn't an alcoholic, I know that look. I got friends that have that look. This wasn't alcohol, this was like something else. And then he had his partner, and she was, I believe, a lesbian, butch, not lipstick. And but I think they fucked. Like I know they bathed together. It was re and he was really weird looking, really creepy. Nice guy, but real like if I saw him walking down the street, even I would probably cross cross the other side. And he was he's been to Halloween parties, but both of them been to Halloween parties. Because they were nice people, they were just weird. Um the the housekeeping staff. Oh some of them are so nice, and we had I don't think I don't think any of my Caleb and and and Jason and Um Sean and Derek would been there. I don't know if Richie would have been there for this, but we had her name was Holly, so nice, such a nice kid. She moved somewhere else, I believe. But it was Holly and someone, Marie or something like that, if I remember correctly. So they found out about my home party and they showed up. And this Holly, now, granted, I you know, she was easy, I need a you know, Richie calls me a Lackawanna one, which she's probably spot on. She was an LA7, she was smoke smoking, smoking, super nice too, very nice personality. And she came to the Halloween party dressed as like a cowgirl, so she had like a half shirt and like the like the Daisy Dukes and a cowboy hat. And I'm looking at my friends, like, especially my married friends, they're looking at me and they're like, Why the fuck are you inviting someone like that to this party? I'm like, Well, I work with her, you know, I bring my co-workers are all invited, but she was so like the only thing better than her her beauty was her personality. Like whoever, whoever ended up marrying that girl lucked out because she was nice. And but I make it gave all of my married friends like a fucking heart attack because they're here they are, they're with their wives, and then this girl walks in right by them, and she was super nice, but it was like you know, again, she had like teenage drama because I think she was like 19 or something, and it was just like so you kind of like giving them advice or trying to help them through, and it wasn't just her, it was other younger you know, workers and and people like that. And I maybe that was because why I went into teaching and what I did at Green Pack and kind of what I did at Buffalo Games, and I mean I'm I'm not always good at following advice, but I'm good at giving advice. I don't know, I think that sounds weird, but I I tend to give good advice, but I don't always follow that rule. So it gets me in trouble with certain things. But very nice, very, very nice um house housekeeping staff, very nice people. Yeah, I'm sure housekeeping manager would say otherwise, but I never had any problems with them. But like the people I worked with, I liked. There was a guy who was like a really he was a born-again, a born-again uh Christian, and he was like militant. I'm a Roman Catholic, and I don't like I might bust Greg's balls a little bit about it, but like I don't preach to people. I mean I believe who I believe in, and I'm very strong with that, but like I'm not gonna sit there and say you're going to hell, and he would. And so I had to tell him, like, shut the fuck up, and and he ended up getting fired for whatever reason. I don't even know what he did. But that was like my like one of the few. Oh, oh yeah. There was this woman, big, b older lady, like maybe like I was in my 30s, she was like in her 50s, but she had jugs, like she had watermelons, man. Watermelons, blonde hair, party girl, party girl, party girl. But she didn't fuck with her because her husband was like high up with the chosen few. No, the kingsmen. He was high up with the kingsmen, which is a motorcycle gang, which are affiliated under the Hells Angels, I believe. We have two motorcycle gangs here. We have the we have the um Kingsmen and we have the chosen few. I think the chosen few are a little bit more mellow. They can be at, you know, they can do what they gotta do, but I think they're more mellow. The kingsmen are like bad. Like, like, you know, what a what a biker gang would be. But she was like married to like a high-up guy in their like clubhouse. So nobody fuck with her. I know I wouldn't. Um The guests. I mean, I'm already at 40 minutes now. I I could probably talk for about another hour here, so I don't know how long this one will go. Um I'm gonna talk about some of the guests before the I won't get into the drugs, I won't get into the deaths and the murder, won't go into the prostitution ring or the propositions. I won't talk about the Canadian nurses yet. I won't talk about the hockey parents yet. Uh, I do have a couple stories more on flight attendants, which I'll I'll I'll I'll uh get into on a set on our second. This will be the first one for the hotel. But I will talk about some of the famous people that I've met there. So it always kind of struck me as odd when I would meet somebody and and what your degree, I guess, of celebrity is, is it's not like it's um Brad Pitt or or Julia Roberts staying at this hotel. Um, these are the days before Comic Con in Buffalo, so we didn't have like, you know, we didn't really have a lot of people that came in. But Triple H and China stayed at our hotel, and I believe they were married at the time, so they were like WWE wrestlers, so I met them, very nice people, and they drove in their own car from place to and this was like 2003, I think, 2004, right at the beginning. Then then I think Triple H exploded, and then it like I think they divorced or something, but they were together. That was the first uh famous person that I was able to meet. Then there was Rick Dudley, who was a coach of the Buffalo Sabres, he was a dick. I'm like, oh Rick Dudley, you coached the Sabres. Like, yeah. I'm like, oh never mind. Like, you know, like the way he said it was like, go fuck yourself. Like, you know what, dude, go fuck yourself. I think he was like a a scout or something at the time. Um there was a tight end for the New England Patriots who killed the Bills back in the bad years. His name was Ben Coates. And I'm checking him, checking on, you know, big this big black guy comes in, got hands like baseball gloves. And he goes, uh, Coates, and I'm looking it up. You know, it was like we did a paper and an electronic version of it. So I'm looking, I'm looking for the paper so I can I forgot if I had it like to put I don't know if I did an impression of the credit card. I think I just swiped it and it went into the computer. So I don't think there was no impression of the credit card, but there was a sheet of paper he had a sign. Oh, and I made a photocopy of your driver's license. That's what I did, and I put that in the paper, and then we put it like in this little shoe that we were supposed to take if there was ever a fire, so we knew who was in the hotel. But uh I'm looking coats, coats, coats. There it is. Grab it, look, and I see Ben Coates, and I'm like, Ben Coates. And I look at him, and he's like, Yeah, that's me. I'm like, man, you you really screwed us. He's like, Yeah, I know, I'm sorry. He's like, Well, what are you doing in Buffalo? He goes, Ah, funeral. I'm like, uh, that sucks. And then we went about, I got his card, and I didn't like say anything to him necessarily. Didn't ask for any autographs. I've never asked, I never asked for any autograph until there was one thing, but I didn't ask for it, his daughter asked for it. Um the English beat. So it's a band, and I actually got a little part of their song here, because you probably know who the English beat is, but they were like some band from like the 80s, and they were touring. And so I'm gonna play a little ditty of this. Yeah, they got a couple songs. They don't really care for them that much. But I I mean obviously I'm not gonna say that to them. They were there. Um, and then my f um then well my favorite, I'll say for last. Then I'm in the back and I'm working with a girl. I'm in the back and I'm playing solitaire. So I think it must have been during the summer months, because I I I would never play solitaire unless uh because if I was at work and I had free time, I was always doing school work. So I know I was playing solitaire, so it had it been the summer months, and it makes sense that it would be. Because I'm sitting back there and I hear a woman's voice, and she goes, for Trotcher. And I don't think nothing of it, because we got a lot of Canadians, and then she's like, it's probably under my husband Brian. Now I know 99.9% of you out there don't know who Brian Trotchier is, but Brian Trotcher is a Hall of Fame hockey player. He won four Stanley Cups with the New York Islanders, and I think he won two with the Pittsburgh Penguins, like during the Lemieux when Lemieux is there. I think he's won the M MVP. I know you think he's won the con Smite. The guy's in the Hall of Fame, he's amazing. But I knew my hockey, so I hear Brian Traccier, and I didn't know if it was him or not, but I literally, literally, which is funny, fell out of my chair, stumbling to get to the front. And so my coworker's there, and she's going through that file cabinet looking, you know, the files looking for Traccier. And the wife's there, he's there, and then a daughter who's like college-aged. So I think what was happening is I think the daughter was going to UB and they were bringing her to school. That's why they were there. And I I'm at the far end of the tape of the desk, and I'm just like staring at him, like I'm like not drooling or anything, but I'm just like enamored because I know how significant of a hockey player Brian Trotche is. He's amazing, awesome, hall of famer. And his daughter looks at me, and then she looks at her mom, then her mom looks at me, and then goes, elbows toward Brian Tracey, goes, Brian, he's obviously, and then he goes, Oh, hey, hi, I'm Brian Trotche. And I'm like, Hello, sir. I'm sorry, I didn't want to interrupt you guys. She's like, Oh no, he was the nicest guy in the world. He goes, he he they went, you know, they chucked in, and I was just like, I'm gleaming. My the girl that I was working with, she's like, Who the hell is that? I'm like, you wouldn't understand. And she goes, they go out to the car to get their bags, and then when they come in, he comes in with this this like folder, and I still have it to this day, and he pulls out this like eight by ten uh picture of him with the islanders, and he goes, What's your name? I go, Matt. He goes, To Matt, Brian Trache, you know, uh good he I forgot what he says exactly. He puts something on there. I'm like, oh man, I go, thank you so very much. He's like, Oh, no problem. I go, hey, you have a great day. If you need anything, you let me know. He's like, Thanks, man. And that was it. But like it was so awesome that I got to meet Brian Trache, who was an absolutely really good um hockey player, very good. And then there was the guy that I really, really fanboy over, and he's a Buffalo native, and I got to talk to him for like good 10 to 15 minutes. So I'm I drive my van back from like so dropping somebody off at the airport or whatever. And as I'm walking in, there's this guy smoking a cigarette. And I'm looking at him and I'm like, that guy is his name is William Fickner. And I know him from, and you know him, whoever you are, you know who this guy is. He was the uh he's the guy that's kind of like opposite of Bruce Willis in Armageddon, the guy who flies the other space shuttle. He is the banker in the Dark Knight Rises, where he's like, Do you know who's you're messing with? And he gets shot by the Joker. He's in that TV show mom, where he's the the boyfriend of the mom, the older mom, and he's like in the wheelchair. He's in Crash, he's in a movie called Drowning Mona. He's he's in tons of stuff. He's not like the main guy, he's always like a supporting actor, but I always liked him, and I knew he was a Buffalo guy. He's from Maryville area of Cheektawaga, so I would assume he was staying there because we're right down the road from Maryville. So I sit in there and I'm talking to him. He was thinking and he shakes, you know, he holds out his hand. I shake his hand. He's got that gray hair, it's grayer now, but he's got that gray hair like he's always had. And he's like, I'm like, what are you doing in town? He's like, Oh, I'm back home visiting family, and and we just started shooting his shit about little stuff. And he was like, We're talking, I guess we were really what we were talking about were the Bills and the Sabres. We didn't talk about like any of the movies or anything like that. But I didn't ask for an autograph, but I was just just the fact that he took, you know, he was like I said, he was out there. I think he he might have been smoking a cigarette at when I first walked up, but we we ended up talking for probably a good 10 minutes, and um he was a really, really down-to-earth, real Buffalo guy, real down to earth, real nice guy, and um so ever since then I've always been like an extra big fan of his. But yeah, I know it's time to go. Alright, so it's 52 minutes long. I'm gonna I'm gonna consider this a part one of hotels. I'll call it the hotel. The hotel. That's what I'll call this episode, and we'll have a second one, just like we're gonna have a second one for some of the other ones that we talked to. Again, I need to bring in some uh guests so we can expand on some of that, okay? Um, like I said, we still got a lot to cover, but I don't want this going too long. So I'm gonna I'm gonna nip it in the ass right now. And uh wish you guys a very good week. Uh you'll hear from me in about a week, and uh who knows, who knows who'll who come into the studio, aka the apartment, um, to share some more stories. So goodbye and uh have a good day. Thank you.