Marietta daily leader. (Marietta, Ohio) 1895-1906, 1901-04-03
THE KEYFITTER.
An Employe who Is One of the Most
Important Men Around
Hotel.

sour keyfitter is one of the most inn
portant men on our staff" said the
manager of a large New Orleans hotel,
reports the New Orleans Times-Dem-
ocrat. "He is kept busy every day Of
the year, and sometimes he is so
rushed with work that he has to call
in an assistant. 1t is no eXaggeration
to say that he averages from 25 to 80
keys day." but l would suppose" re.
marked listener "that even big ho-
tel would acquire a sufficiency of keys
in the course of time" $50 it does"
replied the manager, ''if the public
would only let it keep 'em; but it
won't. 1t would astonish anybody not
in the business to know how many
guests walk off with their room keeps
when they leave the the house. When
the average man gets ready to depart
he packs his valise, locks his door and
then goes directly to the cashiers
wicket to settle his bill. When that
formality is attended to he is gener-
ally in rush to get to the depot, and
is quite apt to forget that he has
omitted to return his key at the clerks
desk. That, at any rate, is the way
account for so much absent-minded-
ness on the subject. The clerk doesn't
discover that the key is gone until the
chambermad applies for it to clean
up the room, which is probably an hour
or two after the guest has taken his de-
parture. Then nothing remains but to
call in the keyGtter and tell him to pre-
pare duplicate as quickly as he can.
Formerly the hotels tried to guard
against this innocent kleptomania" !"
the manager went on, "by having their
keys made very large and cumbersome,
and attaching them to enormous metal
tags, the idea being to render ii impos-
sible to put them in ones pocket. To
that end they were probably a success.
but they were such an unmitigated
nuisance otherwise and guests com
planned so bitterly at the annoyance of
handling them that they were gener-
ally discarded. You will still find the
plan popular in the country, however,
in small houses that have no locksmith
on the premises, and only week or so
ago | dropped into "A quaint little es-
tablishment where the keys were at
tached to brass disks fully as large as
dessert plates and serrated at the edge
like circular saws. At present most of
the big hotels use modest metal
check stamped with their address and
a request to forward through the mails
if accidentally carried off. All that is
necessary is to attach a three-cent
stamp to the tag and drop the key in
the nearest letter box. Incidentally
/ may say that about one man in fifty
takes the trouble. But aside from the
room keys carried away by guests a
vast number of all kinds disappear
through the mysterious channels to
oblivion that exist in all large hotels
They vanish and that's the end of it
keys to furniture, wardrobe keys, bath.
room keys, keys to the helps lockers
paddock keys from the outside store.
rooms, the big coal bunker keys and
keys of every imaginable size, shape
and style. They are continually miss.
ing and have to be replaced. If lost
key turns up later the duplicate is care
fully ticketed and laid away in 8
drawer reserved for that purpose. But
they seldom turn up. They have gone
to the limbo of lost pins, last seasons
birds nests and the SHOWS of yester
year"