These CHEAP PRICKS are going to save the world!LOL
This group of elite assholes from around the world, are the problem not the solution!
Diplomats Check In, Security Hits a High and Tips Hit a Low
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
The concierge has nothing to do — no plays to book or restaurants to reserve for this crowd with a higher purpose. The maids have only 20 minutes to clean the most important rooms, and are trailed by Secret Service officers who watch them, and their cleaning supplies, with suspicion. The tips are terrible; the doormen try to call in sick. Almost everyone in the place dreads this week.
These are scenes from the Millennium U. N. Plaza Hotel during the yearly visit by heads of government to the United Nations General Assembly, scenes repeated at hotels around the city.
While weighty issues of international import are discussed on the East Side, the foreign leaders' presence here reverberates in ways big, small and surprising for the equally international array of workers who serve them.
The comings and goings of prime ministers, presidents, kings and their bodyguards hold about the same appeal to Bob Puccio, a doorman at the Millennium, on East 44th Street near First Avenue, as the Oscars might to a weathered limousine driver in Hollywood.
"I was impressed for the first two years," said Mr. Puccio, who has experienced 18 of the conferences, known as General Debates, since he began working at the hotel. "Now it's like, `Here we go again.' "
It can be tough on the guests, too: just ask the Chilean military general — wearing his full dress uniform with golden tassels — who was asked one year to hail a cab by another guest, according to two doormen at the Millennium. And, they recalled in high cackles, there was the Japanese dignitary who was told to follow a bellhop for his luggage and followed an employee on his lunch break instead to the cafeteria one floor below.
Certainly, for some, the conference brought more business than bother. Pizza delivery businesses were buzzing with orders to offices on streets blocked off by the police yesterday, when the General Debate began. Innovation Luggage on East 42nd Street sold $3,174 worth of luggage — mostly cheap, large suitcases — on Monday, roughly a third more than the store's average sales. And while hotel employees might have grimaced, their sales staffs were of a different mind.
"This is the highlight of our year with the General Assembly," said Anthony Amendola, director of sales at the Millennium, where most of the 427 rooms were booked by delegations. "It's a lot of work for our staff, but it's rewarding. It's exciting. You're part of history, really."
For one maid at the Millennium, being a part of history translates into making beds in the presence of dignitaries while security officers follow in close observation.
"They watch every step you take — how you put the sheets on the bed," said the woman, a 46-year-old immigrant from a Caribbean island who spoke on the condition that her name not be used.
She does not normally make beds in front of an audience, she said, but she has learned to do it without embarrassment, by squatting carefully in her black and white uniform.
"You don't want to bend too low," said the woman, who demonstrated a neat curtsy in one of the hotel's public bathrooms, which she had been cleaning. "You have to be courteous."
On the street outside, dozens of security officials — recognizable by their short haircuts, suits and ear pieces — stood alongside a long, gleaming row of dark sport utility vehicles. Some of the men were Secret Service agents; others were with the State Department. They talked among themselves, or into hidden microphones in their sleeves.
Staring hard at them was Johnny Perez. Mr. Perez, a driver for Miho Flowers, had passed through three checkpoints to get to the store on East 44th Street and was now late for a delivery. He stood leaning against the guard rail, along with four other employees, holding four bouquets of Ecuadorean roses.
He was waiting for permission to cross the street and retrieve his van from a parking garage.
"I spent four hours delivering to three different places yesterday," said Mr. Perez, 37, of Queens. He was finally granted permission, but then made a big mistake: he parked the van short of the road block exit so his co-workers could load the flowers. A Secret Service agent threatened to arrest him if he reappeared on the street the next day, Mr. Perez said.
"Hopefully, tomorrow he'll be in a better mood," he added.
With President Bush's visit to the United Nations yesterday and more than 70 heads of government expected to attend the debate, security was ubiquitous: pedestrians had to navigate their way through checkpoints to get to work, traffic slowed along the East Side and city sanitation trucks served as road blocks to key streets, pulling back only to let dignitaries and police through.
That was Albert Pizzonia's job for the day — alternating with another driver on East 42nd Street at Second Avenue.
"It's not fun, really," said Mr. Pizzonia, 52, of Brooklyn, his reading glasses low on his nose as a still-unread newspaper sat at the wheel.
Suddenly, a police officer signaled to Mr. Pizzonia once again to put the massive white truck into reverse. A veritable parade of 20 New York police officers on motorcycles — four of them carrying Dunkin' Donuts coffee cups — swept westward.
The regulars at the bars of area hotels were largely replaced this week by hurried diplomats and political advisers who often expected bartenders to bring espresso when they ordered coffee, said Eddie Rivera, 37, a bartender at the Crowne Plaza at the United Nations, on East 42nd Street.
"I feel like I'm Starbucks," Mr. Rivera said. "Cappuccinos and espressos. I guess that's what the Europeans drink."
In a job that is rarely lonely, the concierge at the Millennium said she was feeling oddly solitary.
So far this week, she had not made one phone call to book a helicopter tour of the city, a dinner at Smith & Wollensky or tickets to "The Lion King." The delegates' schedules were instead packed with private banquets and parties, arranged by each country's United Nations mission, she said.
"I'm just a body here," said the 52-year-old Hungarian immigrant, who asked that her name not be used. But she did hand out more than 100 courtesy umbrellas yesterday. "If it wasn't for the umbrellas, nobody would have said hello."
Get home delivery of The Times from $2.90/week |
