Disclaimer. Before you continue reading, I’d like to point out that this post isn’t in any way aimed at saying that someone didn’t do their job, and I sincerely hope no one gets in trouble because of this. This is just meant to uplift you, you know, in situations when you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing and reassure you: nobody does. We’re all faking it, it seems. And I don’t mean the “fake it until you make it” bullshit. I mean just faking it, all along, because the game is rigged and the house always wins, only the house isn’t even at the table.
Let me explain.
These days I’m in Venice. I’m prospecting for business, I have a couple of people to meet, some friends to visit, and a show I really wanted to seet. So I’m staying here and I have a couple of hours to kill before my next appointment, I could go and see a museum (which eventually I did) but I walk in front of the Hard Rock Café and I tell myself ‘Why not?’
So I step in.
There’s a group of Americans in front of me, they mumble something to the girl at the entrance, grab a dépliant and turn around. I walk into the small room at the entrance, which is some sort of antechamber with a cloakroom. “May I?” I ask, pointing at the main bar room to my right. Which is something I do even at the pub next to my house, where I’m a regular member. It’s just basic courtesy.
And the young woman at the entrance is very courteous. “Of course,” she smiles. “May we take your coat.” Which, in retrospective, might be a bit weird but hey, it’s the Hard Rock Cafè in Venice: what do I know? I graciously accept and give her my overcoat. The bar room is empty. There’s a buffet, some high tables, and that’s not what I’m looking for: I want to sit down, have a beer, answer to some messages on LinedIn, maybe continue reading my book. She doesn’t speak. Nor do I. I smile, and confindently climb the stairs.
Upstairs, people are buzzing around, preparing for some kind of live thing. Tables are arranged in groups, it’s not what I expected but again, what do I know. Everybody ignores me, the random woman who walzed in and is just trying to ger beer, until I make eye contact with a lady. She smiles, welcomes me, and she’s very friendly. She tries to get me seated, but another colleague tells her the room is not ready, so she apologises and tells me we’re going to have to settle for going downstairs. Again, what do I know? She’s very welcoming and very friendly. Which is… fine, I guess?
Almost immediately, she asks me from which hotel I come from. It’s weird, but for some reason I don’t find it completely out of line, so I answer. I’m staying at the Nolinski, a five-star establishment near Piazza San Marco, and she reacts with raised eyebrows and an expression that I can’t translate in English but in the vernacular of Rome would be ‘me cojoni’. She walks me downstairs and, tentative, she says maybe we know each other. She asks for my name. I give it. It seems to ring a bell. Asks for my surname. I give it. That does not ring a bell.
That’s where things get weird.
Downstairs, all I can get is water and fruit juice, and the very nice lady says she doesn’t follow my hotel anymore, and she lost touch with them, and inquiries what’s my job. By this point I know what’s happening: I walked right into a private event, they think I work for the hotel. The best part? She introduces me to people, and people pretend they know me. They’re also pretending to know each other. “Oh yeah, I remember you! Remind me, what’s your hotel?” Nobody knows anybody. Nobody remembers anybody. I can only give credit to one guy, who asks me which other hotels I covered and hey, I can answer that: Jerusalem, Amsterdam, Saint-Vincent. Only not in the way I think you’re expecting. Well, this guy was the only one who admitted that perhaps we didn’t know each other after all. We were all pals with each other. The girl with the guest list clearly didn’t want to say that she either didn’t have my hotel or my name in the guest list (of course she didn’t). I could have bluffed my way through the whole evening. I should have told the nice lady that it all was a big misunderstanding. I did neither. I made an escuse and left, and I’m currently sitting somwehere else, with my beer, and a hysterical laugh that threatens to surface at any point. And I thought you should know.
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