One stormy night many years ago, a man and his wife entered the lobby of a small hotel in Philadelphia. Trying to get out of the rain, the couple approached the front desk hoping to get some shelter for the night.
“Could you possibly give us a room here?” the man asked. The manager looked at the couple and explained that there were three conventions in town.
“All of our rooms are taken,” the manager said. “But I can’t send a nice couple like you out into the rain at one o’clock in the morning. Would you perhaps be willing to sleep in my room? It’s not exactly a suite, but it will be good enough to make you folks comfortable for the night.”
When the couple declined, the manager pressed on. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be just fine here in the office,” he told them. So, the couple agreed.
As the couple paid their bill the next morning, the man said to the manager, “You should be the boss of the best hotel in the United States. Maybe, someday I’ll build one for you.”
The manager looked at them and smiled. The three of them had a good laugh.
Two years passed …
The manager had almost forgotten the incident when he received a letter from the man. It recalled that stormy night and enclosed a round-trip ticket to New York, asking him to pay them a visit.
The man met him in New York and led him to the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. He then pointed to a great new building there, a palace of reddish stone, with turrets and watchtowers thrusting up to the sky.
“That,” said the man, “is the hotel I have just built for you to manage.”
“You must be joking,” the manager said.
“I can assure you I am not,” said the man.
The man’s name was William Waldorf Astor, and the magnificent structure was the original Waldorf Hotel.
The person who became its first manager was George C. Boldt. He never foresaw the turn of events that would lead him to become the manager of one of the world’s most glamorous hotels.
“Your attitude, not your aptitude, determines your altitude.” – Zig Ziglar
