Keith Rutledge, a 25-year-old librarian's assistant in Houston, was out for a laid-back night on the town. He had some Tex-Mex burritos and a few drinks, and then headed for the men's room at Sherlock's Pub.
Suddenly, his relaxed night took an awkward turn. "Hello, sir," said a smartly dressed bathroom attendant, as Rutledge ducked into the stall. When he emerged, the man squirted Dial soap into his hand and turned on the water for him. Rutledge knew he had to cough up a tip. "You could be filthy and a buck richer," Rutledge says, "but if you want to wash your hands you have to go through him."
Until recently, bathroom attendants — whose job is to linger in the bathroom and hand out everything from hand towels to breath mints — seemed to be going the way of the chimney sweep. But a growing number of bars, restaurants and nightclubs are now hiring them for both men's and women's restrooms — often to the chagrin of their embarrassed customers. Rutledge says even his favorite sports bar, Tavern on Gray, has stationed attendants in its bathrooms.
Bathroom attendants are showing up all over — from Milwaukee and Cincinnati to San Francisco. They're in national chains such as the House of Blues and Jillian's, a 35-unit chain of restaurant and game centers. And demand for bathroom attendants is creating an industry devoted to staffing restrooms. Royal Flush, a New York company that specializes in bathroom-attendant staffing, says it has put attendants in 10 establishments in the past year and a half and now has 40 such clients. Chazz Ward, a bathroom staff entrepreneur in Florence, Ky., has placed what he calls "lounge hosts" in 16 establishments and is now attempting to franchise the business. Many bars and restaurants are trying to update the tradition by hiring attractive young bathroom attendants and keeping their stations minimalist in style, not cluttered with toiletries.
Terrance Ward, who began as a bathroom attendant at nightclubs in Ybor City, Fla., now has attendants working in eight nightclubs and two restaurants in Milwaukee. On a good night, Ward himself can pull in up to $150 in tips, he says. The rest of his time he devotes to managing his bathroom staffing company, A Touch of Class, a task he says has gotten tougher in recent months because of increasing competition.
The uptick in hand-towel help can partially be explained as a low-cost method of adding panache to an establishment. "It elevates the perception of the club. It's a prestige issue," says David Van Kalsbeek, a marketing executive for the MGM Grand hotel and casino in Las Vegas, which has bathroom attendants in both its Studio 54 nightclub and Tabu lounge. Attendants keep bathrooms clean throughout the night by picking up paper towels and wiping down wash basins; they make sure the toilets aren't clogged and keep toilet-paper rolls replenished. Mopping and scrubbing are usually done at the end of the night by a separate cleaning service.
Adam Jed, general manager of Matrix Fillmore, a nightclub in San Francisco, installed an attendant as part of his "broken window" theory. "If you let the bathroom get shoddy, people will continue to treat your place like that," he says. The extra set of eyes, he says, "prevents illegal activities," such as taking drugs. At Have a Nice Day Cafe, a '70s and '80s retro nightclub in Milwaukee, the bathroom attendant stands vigil against the least little thing, such as stealing toilet paper, a manager says.
Accustomed to privacy in the restroom, some patrons don't appreciate the extra help, citing feelings of pity for those working there and discomfort with being watched. "The best comparison is waving off those guys who try to clean your windshield in traffic," says Brooks Hamaker, a telemarketing manager in New Orleans.
Some restaurateurs are aware that patrons dislike bathroom attendants but say they are taking a new approach that eliminates the downside. Van Kalsbeek of MGM Grand says, "there are the ones who turn on the water for you and try to dry your hands — we don't do that." Rainer Zach, director of operations for new Chicago nightclubs Y and Sound-Bar, says the bathroom attendants at both properties are good-looking, friendly people in their twenties. Their stations are not cluttered. "The only thing they do," Zach says, "is make sure the place is clean and hand you a towel."
Chris Heilgeist, a 25-year-old filmmaking student and attendant three nights a week at Y, says he makes $200 to $250 a night, including the minimum wage and tips. "It's only a bad job because people think that," he says. His boss Zach says that men's rooms attendants tend to make slightly more than the staff in the ladies because men tend to be bigger tippers.
That's not to say that attendants are always easy to keep. Crobar, another nightclub in Chicago, also tried staffing its bathroom with hip, young people when it reopened in October after a remodeling. "They walked out," the director of operations says. Management turned to a longtime bathroom attendant at another property to staff the place.
Part of the reason proprietors are willing to provide a service that isn't a surefire winner with customers may be that it is cheap. Staffing agencies say every deal differs, but that in some cases establishments pay as little as $20 a night to staff a restroom. Some attendants get a small hourly wage. Others work for tips alone. The most common tip is a dollar.
Chazz Ward, the Kentucky entrepreneur, was working the door at a Jillian's near Cincinnati five years ago when he got the idea to provide the company with bathroom-attendant services. Today, his company, Black Tie Services, staffs bathrooms at 16 restaurants, clubs and entertainment centers in northern Kentucky, Cincinnati and Indiana. His newest effort: franchising the business. He says he is in negotiations with four potential franchisees around the country to buy into the formula he has created. Ward has a theory, developed after logging "thousands of hours" in bathrooms, about why people feel so awkward about bathroom attendants.
"There's not enough respect going on in people's regular lives," says Ward. Then suddenly, they go into the bathroom and a lounge host pulls out the hand towels, the mints, the top of the line colognes. "It's like if someone were never told they were loved, and they go into a relationship, and they are told they're loved," he says.