Houseman at the El San Juan Hotel ordered to handle GM’s dirty underwear

Managers of hotels do not, however, enjoy the status of guests in the hotels they manage, and they have no business thinking they are entitled to the services their employees render guests–particularly where managerial dirty laundry is involved.

Michael Platt, general manager of the El San Juan Hotel, lives in the hotel. Several months ago, Migdalia Feliciano, the assistant housekeeping director, directed Luis Lugo, an employee on the hotel’s housekeeping staff, to go to the general manager’s living quarters and pick up his laundry.

Mr. Lugo had been asked to collect laundry on earlier occasions as well and set off to the general manager’s room, assuming all he was being asked to do was pick up the bagged laundry and take it to the hotel’s laundry.

Such was not the case.

Instead of being neatly bagged, the general manager’s dirty clothes were still residing in his laundry hamper. Mr. Lugo, whose job duties do not include serving as valet, launderer, or other personal assistant to any hotel manager, was faced with the distasteful task of digging his hands into the general manager’s clothes hamper and fishing out his dirty underwear, socks, and other clothes and then bagging the soiled items.

There are some things no employee should ever have to do under any circumstances. Dealing with your manager’s dirty underwear is indisputably one of them. Yet this is what Mr. Lugo was called upon to do. If proof is needed that El San Juan management lacks the most basic respect for its employees, the fact that such an incident was permitted to occur, even once, amply provides it.

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