32: VIP

Am I a VIP?

Usually, the answer would be no, unless I hold a boarding card or an ID card or an invitation that specifically says that I am.

Several years ago, I was ejected from the British Airways VIP lounge at Heathrow. Even though I held a platinum British Airways VIP credit card, was a member of the British Airways Preferred Travellers Club and held a business class ticket (free upgrade), I was told by a uniformed official - who will one day die under painful and mysterious circumstances - that they did not allow just anyone in.

So, I guess I just don't have VIP stamped on my forehead, a lack that which causes no discomfort, but does explain why it did not occur to me yesterday morning to enter the VIP room on the 9th floor of the Wilmington Hilton for a continental breakfast. The sign clearly said VIP lounge. It could have had a sub clause explaining that anyone with a room on the 9th floor had a silver key - and that a VIP was anyone who held a key of that color.

Did it?

No.

Perhaps it's my status as a computer professional and the required level of precision in the way that I think - or maybe I'm just anal - but I often fail to understand what other people take for granted. I see signs all the time that are ambiguous and could be taken in several ways, or just plain wrong. Walmart has two signs on the same side of their doors. One says "No Entry," and the other, placed right underneath, proclaims, "Enter Only". Every door is the same. What is the intended effect and what moron placed mutually exclusive instructions next to each other?

Anyway, I digress...

This morning, armed with new and empowering knowledge regarding my status in the Hilton hotel, I visited the VIP lounge, expecting to be removed at any moment and wondering whether my Wado-Ru qualification (9th Ku, red belt) would in any way protect me from the wrinkled matron whose job it was to inspect keys.

I needn't have worried.

Either she was closer to death than anyone suspected or simply enjoyed an IQ in single digits. Any interaction caused her to smile in a vague, far off manner and tilt her head slightly to the side, as she murmured to an unseen location in mid-air somewhere beyond my right shoulder. I have no idea what she said, but the sounds could be useful to George Lucas if he were ever to make a sequel to Close Encounters, so I took it to mean "Help yourself to anything you see within these four walls."

It could also have been a warning. She might have been trying to say, "Don't even think you're getting over your hangover in here chum, because I'm about to turn on the giant flat screen TV at full volume and the bozo with the camouflage jacket is going to start an argument with it."

So I left.

I relinquished my VIP status, trudged up the road with my hangover in place and sat outside the Port-O-Java with a real coffee, watching a mad street vagrant doing a Bojangles impersonation in the middle of the road for change flipped into the street by other coffee drinkers.

What a job; limited life expectancy, but easy money.

I bet he doesn't worry about VIP status.