What's the difference between a hotel operator and a governor?

This is not a joke. Well, it sort of isn't. In the early 1990s, I worked for a couple of years as a hotel operator in a large chain hotel. Like most corporate entities, this hotel chain had firmly laid-out policies and codes of conduct for employees. There were infractions for which I could be officially disciplined, be put on probation, and be fired. This was a union job, so firing someone was pretty difficult--but there was one thing our union couldn't protect us front-line customer-service grunts from: the No-Call, No-Show.

If you didn't show up for work and didn't call in sick, you got fired--unless you had a very good excuse. (That is, a comatose-in-a-hospital sort of excuse.) And the No-Call, No-Show happened more than you might think (unless you, too, have worked a full-time job that involves dealing with the public--if you've done that, you may understand). We'd occasionally hear of a coworker in another department who'd gone AWOL, who'd contemplated his 9-hour shift carrying room-service trays to rude and ungrateful conventioners, said to himself, "Dear God, I can't face it. . . I just can't!"--and left immediately for a three-day nature hike, say, or unplugged the phone and sought out the self-annihilating embrace of a new lover.

He couldn't even bear to pick up the phone and speak to his supervisor. Even to lie, "I'm sick; I'll call tomorrow." And, well, he paid for that decision with his job.

So that's what happens when you work in a hotel. When you're a governor, the punishment for a No-Call, No-Show seems to be uncomfortable media scrutiny.

So the difference between a hotel operator and a governor is, perhaps, that one is held to a higher standard of professionalism than the other. Maybe more hotel employees should be considering careers in politics.