Dear Alma, You gave me bad advice

Dear Alma,

I took your advice last week and it got me into no end of trouble.

At the hotel where I stay for three weeks at a stretch while teaching, I asked the receptionist out for a drink. One thing led to another and we were soon kissing in a taxi on the way back to her place.

She asked the driver to stop for a minute so she could buy stuff at a pharmacy. While she was gone, a man got in the front seat and told the driver to head west. On the outskirts of town, he hauled me out of the cab, dragged me to a cash machine and made me take out a thousand Euros for him. By way of reward, he gave me a couple of punches in the kidneys and a kick in the balls, telling me all the while to leave his girlfriend alone. I heard him cracking jokes with the cabbie as they drove off. It took me two hours to make my way back to the hotel.

The following afternoon, the receptionist was at her post, smiling at me as if nothing happened. Clearly, I had been set up.

So what am I to do now? I can’t go to the police without looking like a complete idiot. If it came to court, my reputation at the conservatoire would be ruined. I’ve got three more nights to stay in this hotel and I don’t think I’ll sleep much. I have revenge fantasies, but there is not much point in that.

I am sharing this with you because I think you should know we all get it wrong sometimes. Also, as a warning to musical nomads like me not to mess with hotel staff, any time, any where.

Hote dweller

Hotel Dweller

Holy Moly. You have got to be kidding! That is the craziest thing I have ever heard. Sorry for my bad advice, it’s terrible what happened to you.

Here is my next, possibly equally terrible advice. I hope you don’t end up dead or in prison because of it.

Get out of the hotel. Get another hotel for the next couple of days. If your employer pays for your hotel, ask them next time for an Airbnb. It’s probably cheaper for them anyway, and you would be able to make your own meals and not feel strange about receptionist fraud.

Chalk it up to a good story you can tell your friends at some point in the future. You lost some cash, self-esteem, got punched, and had an evening walk. It’s not the worst thing in the world. I wouldn’t take it to the police. You are correct there.

Here is where it went wrong, and several things that I would not have done in your shoes (and probably no woman would have). I would have made a lunch-time date. An open, populated sandwich place close to the hotel. If things had gone well, we could have made a next date. I would start there. I would have then possibly invited her to a concert or something like this. That’s not to say that this professional operation would not have gotten me in the end. But with a slower approach she might have gotten a little bored and given up.

If I did end up in a cab, I would have made sure to turn on the video of my phone. Just in case. I also would go ahead and make detailed notes about the incident in case there is any follow up in the future. I would, also, consider contacting a lawyer to talk about what happened and see what could be done to protect yourself in the future without involving the police.

I have, myself, wound up in sticky situations that I had to wiggle out of. It happens to all of us at some point. When I was younger, I was bumming around and ended up in Amsterdam with a friend for a couple of days. We rented a room at a cheap but clean hotel, and the proprietor said he was full up and had to move us to his second location, which was very nice. When we got back late that night, we realized we had made a terrible mistake and the hotel was far from safe. We got to our room, and there were 2 men in the next room who started to pound on the walls and threatened to break our door down. We took the bed frames and blocked the door, held our knives in our hands, and stayed up all night as they continued to threaten us and pound on our door. In the morning, we carefully put on our backpacks, silently moved the bed frames, and on the count of 3, ran from the room and down the stairs. We went directly to the train station and got out of there. What did I learn from that experience? Trust your instincts, not what other people tell you. We should have turned away as soon as we realized the hotel had a bad vibe.

Hotel Dweller, whatever Alma or anyone else says, you must trust your instincts and protect yourself. In the end, getting ripped off by 1,000 Euro and punched in the gut is probably better than hitting on your students and losing your job and reputation. Not the best way to spend an evening, that’s for sure, and I do feel badly that it turned out this way for you.

I do, however, stick to my first advice about joining a chess club. Probably not going to end up sucker punched and dumped in the outskirts of town after a tough game, even if you did use the Albin Counter Gambit.

Questions for Alma? Please put them in the comments section or send to DearAlmaQuery@gmail.com