YOU DO NOT KNOW WHO SOMEONE IS BY LOOKING AT THEM.
Below it were several questions.
Could this guest be grieving?
Could this guest be frightened?
Could this guest have spent months saving for one night here?
Could this person have nowhere else to go?
Would your behavior change if you discovered they owned the building?
If the answer to the last question is yes, start again.
Margaret looked up.
“He wrote this?”
“With training.”
She read it again.
“Use it.”
The final line became part of orientation at every Whitfield property.
Not the story of Margaret.
The lesson.
Years later, new employees sometimes heard fragments.
The owner once visited in disguise.
A manager charged her eight thousand dollars.
Somebody called security.
A bellman defended her.
Depending on who told the story, details grew larger.
That irritated Margaret.
She corrected them whenever she could.
“I was not disguised,” she would say. “I was dressed normally.”
Someone would answer, “For you, maybe.”
She would ignore that.
The point, she insisted, was not that rude employees had accidentally mistreated a wealthy woman.
That interpretation offended her.
The point was that they believed mistreatment became acceptable when the person had no status.
One evening several years later, Margaret visited the Aurelia again.
No announcement.
No test.
She wore a navy coat this time.
Good shoes.
Her usual handbag.
The revolving doors opened.
A new receptionist looked up.