Puttin' on the RItz

I recently attended a business event at a Ritz-Carlton hotel. As someone whose life is more of a Hampton Inn kind of story, I'd never been to a Ritz before. Granted, this was just for a breakfast, not a stay, but I was curious to experience the place, even if only for a couple of hours.

The fawning pretty much begins at the front door, but I will say, everyone works very hard to make a personal connection with each person who walks in. They don't even know whether you're a guest. You just get cordial treatment. There's something almost unnatural about it. The world is just so impolite by comparison. I'm not used to pampering.

My meeting and breakfast was in one of the hotel's ballrooms. Aside from having coffee accidentally dripped on my pants by one of the servers (it dripped on my crotch, and without either of us saying a word, we both recognized that for him to dab at it would have been questionable), and nobody clearing the fruit plates from the table (so the table got stacked full of dishes very quickly), the meal was lovely.

But the one thing that grabbed me (no, it wasn't the server -- haw haw haw) was a card on every table in the ballroom. It outlined Ritz-Carlton's service standards, but, most notably, one panel of the card said in large, bold lettering:

WE ARE LADIES AND GENTLEMEN SERVING LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.

To me, the phrase is at once memorable, tasteful ... and really funny. Not because it's ironic. It's just the wording: "We are ladies and gentlemen ... "

It reminds me of being a child, and having an adult address my elementary school classmates and me: "Okay, children. Now, everyone is to act like proper little ladies and gentlemen."

I stared at the card for quite some time, wondering what the ladies and gentlemen are really like, say, in the breakroom or in a lunch room. Nobody gossips? Tells jokes about bodily functions? I'd pay to see a lady or gentleman on a smoke break.

Eh, who knows. Maybe I'm not gentleman enough for the Ritz. I still take home the travel-size shampoos from a plain old Sheraton!