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11 Prairie SPRING 2025 BILL CARDONI No seeking autographs. No appearing starstruck. No preferential treatment. That's what the employee handbook section on celebrities stated. This was impossibly difficult. Yet another part of being a successful concierge at a five-diamond hotel was the art of looking cool when helping the likes of Mick Jagger, Shaquille O'Neal, President George H. W. Bush, Cameron Diaz, and any number of other megastars who strolled through the Rittenhouse lobby. When Dean Cain, the dreamy Clark Kent in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, walked up to my desk, my racing heart tested my ability to look cool. "I need a rental car to Princeton University," he said. "It would be my pleasure to assist you," I said, half smirking, half terrified, with a lump in my throat. I hoped I didn't smell from my uniform being overdue for dry-cleaning. Dean was registered at the hotel, but most celebrities, I learned, used a fictitious name. I handed him a pen and asked him to fill out a form, and I let him know I'd need his driver's license number and credit card. I wanted to be his personal escort to Princeton and show him the back roads to get there. Since my college was right around the corner, I would have been a perfect tour guide. But of course I couldn't say any of that and watched him walk out the front door. My racing heart tested my ability to look cool. At the Ritz-Carlton in Sarasota, Florida, I find my way to the ballroom. Now a hospitality consultant, I am the keynote speaker for a travel company's semi-annual educational summit. A hundred audience members applaud as I'm introduced. "Good morning," I roar. "I'm excited to share with you today the five keys to service excellence that made the biggest impact on the customer during my decade-long career as a concierge." [After the event] I ask for help printing my boarding pass at the Ritz's concierge desk, a task I performed hundreds of times at the Rittenhouse. Brylee, a young woman in her early twenties wearing a crisp white blouse, a scarf that matches her brown hair, and a name tag, greets me with a smile. I want to tell Brylee all the things I'd learned about true hospitality and how I grew over that ten-year span. But that was my story. Her story is just beginning. ■ Excerpts from True Hospitality: Lessons Learned from Behind the Concierge Desk were used and edited with permission from Girl Friday Productions.

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