Indeed, if the first credo of a good concierge is to say yes to almost everything, the second is to maintain a poker face and keep the prying to a minimum. Lemaich, the breast-milk hunter at 60 Thompson, says that one day he found himself shipping a pink gorilla suit back to a guest’s office in Italy. “I’m not going to have a reaction to that if that’s not what they’re looking for. I had to treat it like a normal, everyday task. Hey, great, no problem, I am shipping this gorilla suit to your office in Italy,” he deadpans.
When one guest asked the staff at the Times Square W to help purchase a double-decker bus and have it shipped back to her home in Dubai, Surerus says, “the only question that we had to ask was what color.” (Through the bus-tour company Gray Line, he found a dealer in England who let the guest order a bus by phone.)
For the most part, concierges claim that the challenge of fulfilling their customers’ wacky or over-the-top needs is part of the job’s appeal—though everyone, of course, has his limits.
Says Lemaich, “There are definitely days when I want to hide behind the desk.”
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