As in undercover law enforcement agents looking like they belong in a narcotics movie and not at my beautiful 5 diamond facility but here they were, flashing their badges and scaring my staff half to death (me included).
Yesterday at around 10am I get paged by my Spa Front Desk with a 911 on it, I was in the employee cafeteria in the Hotel building having coffee with the HR Director. My staff does not use the 911 code lightly, they had only used it once before when we had a small fire in the Spa. I assumed it was serious so instead of calling them, I told my HR Director to alert security and have them meet me at the Spa (better safe than sorry) and I ran to the Spa. As I approached the Front Desk and I saw three very scruffy (as in they really looked like they needed a shower) dangerous looking men. Greg at the Front Desk looked like he was about to faint, so I got behind the front desk just in case these guys where dangerous. I am thinking this has to be a robbery or something like it. Greg turns to one of the guys and introduces me as the Spa Director; I greeted them and asked how I could be of service. They all pulled their badges and one of the guys stated that he was Detective Williams, with the 'Vice Division for the LA police department there for an inspection'. He then stated they had to enter every treatment room and locker area. I said, no way, this has to be a mistake; we are a high end Hotel with a Spa, why would they need to do an inspection or go into the treatment rooms? He says that in our county the Spa is regulated by vice and that they received an anonymous tip indicating we engaged in illegal activities.
I could feel my mouth opening but no words coming out, so I tried again and with my heart pounding really hard I told them it had to be a mistake. No way we engaged in any illegal activities. I explained to them that I had to call Hotel Security and the General Manager before I could let them inspect the facilities. Apparently they did not like my answer and asked to see my Spa facility license and my permit to operate it. I explained again we were part of the Hotel and all the required permits and licenses where handled by the company. I needed to call the GM's office to get any of the information they required. These guys were upset, Detective Williams, the leader, raised his voice and pointing his dirty finger at my face said "Listen Miss I don't care who you have to call, or where your paperwork is, we are here to inspect and like it or not with or without permission we are going into your treatments rooms. Read your city ordinance and realize that we have the right to do so, that we can shut you down in a second and take your little ass to jail, because we have no record of you having applied for the license to be in charge of this place." Now I am pissed beyond words, scared that he may be saying the truth and I could really end up in jail, and super annoyed that Hotel Security was not there yet. If this had been a dangerous situation we would have been dead by the time they got to the Spa.
I decided to try being sweet and nice and not letting my anger show to buy time and to see if I could make this go away without disrupting my guests' experience. I walked from behind the front desk to stand next to these guys and in my softest, sweetest voice I said "Gentlemen, I am so sorry for the misunderstanding, let's try to figure this out, I do want to cooperate let's not be hasty. Would you like some coffee, tea, water? How about we go into my office to discuss what you need from us and how to do the inspection." Before Detective Williams was able to respond my Director of Security and one of his agents showed up and to my relief he was friends with one of the officers. So the mood suddenly shifted and after all the pleasantries, the walking them to my office, getting the coffee etc, they were in a mellower mood but still insisting on doing the inspection.
I excu
sed myself to go to the restroom and instead went to the Front Desk and asked Greg to go into each occupied treatment room and alert the technicians to end the treatments with a complimentary re-booking and a huge apology. I went back to my office and convinced them to let me escort them through the Spa. During teh tour I told them what a shame but we had no treatments currently going on, just a few Hair and Nail Services and we could start there. They wanted to question the guests and the employees. The Security Director, Frank, had already agreed to it. So I said 'no problem you can talk to all of them but I need to be with you at all times'. The guy was really annoyed with me, but his officer (the one that knew Frank) was trying to make things go smooth and kept bringing up the fact that we were a very high end hotel and Frank and I were cooperating that maybe we could do it this way this time, blah, blah. It seemed to be working and Detective Williams was trying to be more polite but he was still scary.
Two hours later they were gone. I had an order to go to the Vice offices at Police Headquarters the next day with my managers and anyone that acted as a Spa Supervisor to get fingerprinted and apply for Spa operating licenses. The Hotel got a citation and a notice of a possible fine to be decided after the report and all the necessary paperwork was reviewed. As per Detective Williams we had been operating without a Spa Establishment Business permit as required by this city. It did not matter that we belong to a Hotel; we are still supposed to have all these permits, pay the fees and follow vice guidelines. Mr. R could not believe that this was actually a requirement so he called the Corporate Legal department and told us not to worry about a thing. At 6pm Mr. R called me to let me know we had to do everything as Detective Williams stated, to gather my team, get petty cash and show up at this guy's office at 7am the next morning or we could really go to jail. He had tried to make it go away but legal had found out that the city had its own ordinance (applicable to our specific zip code) and they treated all Spas as if they were massage parlors of the other kind so we had no choice.
I was upset, not because of what had happened or what I needed to do but because this great company, with a Spa corporate division and access to legal resources, had no clue of what was required to operate a Spa in this city. How could they know everything they needed to know to operate a Restaurant, sell liquor, protect our guests, follow fire codes, hotel permits, etc and not done due diligence when it came to the Spa? I had a feeling we probably did not know of any specific requirements the city had for our massage therapists or some of our disciplines in the Spa. I needed to do the research and make sure that we were all in compliance. After today I was never going to assume corporate or the management team knew what we needed, it would be up to me to know everything and get it done.
Lesson learned; each state, county, city and even some zip codes can have different requirements to operate a Spa Establishment and different permits for Massage Therapists. In some cases the government offices do not even know what these requirements are, or they contradict each other depending on who you talk to, but in the end it is either managed by the Sheriff, Police, Vice or the Licensing divisions of the City Hall. There is always a written document and I was able to get copies of all the ones that applied to where I was located, but it was difficult and it took a lot of perseverance and patience. The best thing is to get copies of the laws or ordinances and try to do what they require by the letter. Mr. R ended up having to authorize a check for $8,000 to pay the city, which was the total fine for not having the necessary permits and documents. It could have been worse; they could have shut us down, put me in jail, or come and done an unannounced inspection every day if they wanted to make our lives miserable. I guess Detective Williams was not such a mean guy after all.
Stay tuned.........
Important Note: "Between the Sheets-A Spa Director's Diary" is Copyright 2005-2007 by Zahira J Coll. All rights reserved. No part of these stories shall be reproduced in any form or by any means, without written permission by the author. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of information contained herein. The stories are autobiographical; however names, characters, places and incidents have been changed to protect identities
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