I had forgotten about the Caesars Palace china.  I’ve had a couple of weeks at home, which gave me the time to catch up on some long put off chores.  One of them was to clean the inside of the kitchen cabinets and to do that I had to take everything out.  So when I got to the dish cupboard, there it was: a guilty reminder of my crime-ridden past.  A complete place setting of Caesars Palace china.

I have a dinner plate, side plate, soup bowl, cup and saucer, cream jug, and my favorite - the little rectangle dish made especially to hold packets of sugar and sweetener.  And I had pinched every piece of it from Caesars Palace room service.  Not all at one time of course.  They would have noticed that.  But one piece at a time, over a period of about two years, I had appropriated a little souvenir off the room service tray to remind me of each trip.  Well, not always little – the dinner plate took up quite a bit of space in my suitcase.

I hadn’t gone in to Caesars with larceny in my heart.  No, at first I had just admired the prettily and ornately embossed china.  In fact, I was surprised to see that Caesars had their own china pattern.  It’s a white relief of Caesars’ arch with chariot horses and a whip brandishing charioteer.  Looking at it you can almost hear the thundering of hooves in a Roman arena (or the music and tinkles of slot machines on Caesars’ floor).   What a nice touch, I thought while enjoying my first room service meal at Caesars.  I ate a truly remarkable breast of chicken, after which I dutifully put the plate back on the cart, and pushed the cart, complete with all the crockery it had come in with, out into the corridor for pick up.  There was maybe a bit of coveting going on in head, I’ll admit.  But it never occurred to me to take any of the china.

The stealing started on my second trip.  And it honestly wasn’t my original intent then –not at first; I was set up in fact, by a series of events.  Not my fault, and it’s not really stealing.  I mean, if Caesars didn’t want the occasional cup or plate to go missing they wouldn’t make them such tempting collector’s pieces by putting their brand on them.  Right?  Anyway, on my second visit I left Caesars with a cup and saucer in my luggage. 

The degradation of my morals started when I ordered afternoon tea from room service.  I was taking a break from a brutal session at the slots, back in my room to lick my wounds, and I thought I’d console myself with a nice cup of tea.   I was alone, so I ordered tea and desert for one.  However, when it arrived the tray was set for two.  No big deal, the other cup and saucer weren’t in the way, but as I sipped at my tea I realized I had a use for it.  I found out on the first trip that there was no coffee maker in the room so I’d brought my own little single cup plug in machine.  I had not thought to bring a cup, though.  That morning I had improvised by using a bathroom glass (worked okay as long as you didn’t fill it up because if you did it was too hot to pick up).  But here was this empty cup sitting on the tray, much better than a glass!  I took it off the tray and set it next to my coffee maker.  I used it the next morning and washed it, leaving it to dry in the bathroom where it still sat when I came back.  The maid never did remove it, so it was still there on the last day.  As I packed up my stuff the cup and saucer kept catching my eye.  A nasty little idea started to form.  It occurred to me that room service maybe didn’t keep a real close inventory of their dishes.  If they did, the maid would be duty bound to get an item back to the kitchen as soon as possible.  Or not… perhaps the final inventory happened at the end of the stay… nooooo!  That’s just too time consuming a system for a huge hotel to set up just to track its cheap ass crockery.  And what are they going to do, anyway?  Accost a departing guest at checkout: “Excuse me, ma’am, but we have reason to believe you have one of our room service dishes somewhere on your person.”  Then comes security, two large men in suits approach, one talks into his wrist, “We’ve got the target in sight.  Request a female escort, we’re going to do a cavity search.”  No, of course not!  And that was my train of thought as I wrapped up the cup and saucer and placed it in my suitcase.  Nobody’s a thief until they think they can get away with it.

Now, I do not have the temperament for a life of crime.  I was sweating as I approached the check out desk.  The polite desk clerk clickity clicked on her keyboard, paused, looked at the screen, scowled… oh my goodness, did Caesars really have that inventory system after all?  Was she looking at the final tally right now, and flashing red on the screen was the fact that they were down one cup and saucer?  I know!  I could say that I’d broke it and thrown it away, that’s it, I’d put it on the edge of the table, knocked it off… darn the room was carpeted… no, I’d had it in the bathroom (true) and I’d swiped it onto the marble floor with the cord of the hairdryer…

 The lady looked at me and smiled.  She’d caught a mistake on the room tax, she explained, but she’d fixed it.  I finally let myself breathe, garbled a quick thank you and farewell and beat feet for the exit and the getaway vehicle – a cab to the airport.  But I HAD gotten away with it!  The great cup and saucer caper, I had triumphed, it was mine.  And after that first big step it was easy.  Next came the creamer, then the soup bowl.  The dinner plate was just brazen, I didn’t even “put it to one side to give the maid a chance to get it”, I just ate its contents, gave it a quick wash and put it in the drawer ready to pack with my undies.  Robbing Caesars of its dishes only stopped when I stopped going to Caesars – there were several years when we just couldn’t take a trip to Vegas, then when we could it had become a Harrah’s and we just didn’t want the hassle of having to work our way back to diamond level so we went to the Bellagio instead (where they are smart enough not to emblazon their logo on their plates).

But the hotel stealing didn’t stop.  I was working on the Beau Rivage’s top of the line Villaroy and Boch dinnerware until hurricane Katrina hit.  Then there’s the really nice Marriott bed cover that the maid had changed out for a new one, but forgot to remove the old one from the room… oh, and the pillow case.   That same hotel furnished me with a little container to hold my salt and pepper shakers in.  Now, the basket my hotel soaps sit in… well, you get the picture.  And it all started with Caesars Palace.  I don’t know if they still have that decorated dishware for room service.  If they don’t it’s probably because far too much of it went missing.  But I am proud to say I am reformed now.  I no longer take things from hotels (or people’s houses – ha! Just joking!).  The airlines haven’t had anything decent to pinch for years now since the cutlery is plastic and you have to pay for everything else, so that ended my brief foray into airline souvenirs.  I am cured.  If I find anything at a hotel that I like, I ask if I can buy it.  I have often gotten stuff given to me like that, and that feels much better that sneakery.   On the other hand though, how many people can say they stole from Caesars palace and got away with it?

Tags: Caesars Dishware Room Service

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