One Lucky Soul: The Day I Became Bill Gates’ Elevator Boy

The Day I Became Bill Gate’s Elevator Boy by Omar Cherif, One Lucky Soul

One day while working for a recently opened five-star hotel in Cairo the Director of Room Division, Rady Mamdouh, called me up to his office to meet two secret service agents from the American Embassy. I came to find out that the following week Bill Gates will be having a TV interview and a meal at the property. The agents were there to check the building out in terms of security. I was a 25-year-old Manager on Duty then, and being that employee who had graduated from an American University and spoke proper English, the job was assigned to me.

  I took the two gentlemen around the hotel for a 20-minute tour, showing them all the entrances and exists while answering all their questions. I also took them to the roof on the 42nd floor above the Revolving Restaurant as well as the lower floor by the Nile. We finally exchanged business cards before I escorted them to the main entrance and bid them farewell.
 
The interview with Orbit media mogul Emad Adeeb was to take place in one of the two Royal Suites, so obviously the entire hotel was getting ready for that super-duper VIP visit.

First, it was the immaculate housekeeping which was personally supervised by the Executive Housekeeper. She was a lovely short German woman named Helga who was staying at the hotel and happily working something like 15-16 hours a day, every day.

Then the Engineering to make sure that all lights and electric appliances are working perfectly.

The flower arrangement followed, which was the duty of a captivating blonde lady, Nermine, who owned a flower shop at the hotel.

Finally it was the F&B for the preparation of The meal. The Executive Chef, Patrick, is Belgian and a little mad — probably why I liked him. We often spoke French together and got along jolly well.   Other than the meal, there were also exquisite amenities to be available in the suite, such as fruits baskets and oriental desserts.

Amusingly, the following odd memory about the same property came to mind while writing this story.

By the year 2000 the Internet was still somewhat new to Egypt and not many people were tech-savvy. As such, there was one PC at the Royal Lounge in the 30th floor, which was for the guests of the VIP floors. Sometimes during my shift I would go up for a quick break. The manager, Jaylane, was a friend who always welcomed me with a coffee and a chat. When checking the computer then and there I somehow learned to view the “browsing history”. And Lordy Lord was I repulsed from what would be found: Bestiality and underage porn sites among other disturbing content. This was what some guests, mainly Arabs, were checking when using the PC... in the VIP lounge! Dang. Out of sheer curiosity to know who was that sick, I would eventually check the log book for the names/room numbers, before logging into the system and finding out who it was. Most were married men with beards, often at the hotel with their wives and kids. Once a week or so, I would delete all the history from that infested computer. *sigh

Check Funny Hotel-Related Stories for more lighthearted action. Also Hotel Living: Then and Now about the time abroad when, after living in five-star hotels for two decades, 15 years later I returned to that environment by once again becoming a long-staying guest in a small hotel in Venice Beach.

Now back to Bill Gates….  

Then came the big day. Other than the food, everything was already prepared from before. The Secret Service guys came in earlier and we did another small tour — this time along with my boss Rady. “Omar will be with you all day today. Consider him an enhanced elevator boy,” he joyfully told them as we shared a lift up to the Royal Suite.

A reason why Gates was in Cairo on that short trip was for the official inauguration of the e-government portal (www.egypt.gov.), which Microsoft was chosen to be in charge of its implementation. In addition to visiting the Microsoft Office, h e had also met President Mubarak and apparently also saw first-hand the construction of a Nubian house.

Bill Gates in Microsoft Egypt, 2003

Speaking of which, while looking for suitable photos for this article I found the one above. What’s truly comical is that the guy in a grey suit squatting on his knees pretending to pray to the right of Bill Gates and the smiley woman is a dear funny childhood friend of mine, Amr Fahmy, who was then working for Microsoft Egypt.

At some point around 1:00 pm we got a call that the convoy is entering Down Town and should be here in about 10 minutes. We informed the General Manager and headed to the main entrance to wait. I remember hearing the police siren from afar before the first police motorcycle arrived. And what a convoy that was. It truly was something on the scale of a president. Americans do not joke when it comes to security, so you can imagine all the black cars with the bullet proof glass and tires along the armed personal surrounding the billionaire.

Gates was greeted by the GM and Rady, then it was me who escorted him to the waiting elevator. He got in with a few other men and myself. I was actually the only hotel employee to ever come so close to him.

  Up to the Royal Suite on the 36th floor where Emad Adeeb plus the cameras and media crew were all waiting. For a while then I didn’t know what to do. The interview was to be followed by a meal in the suite. But since I was the one in charge of the whole thing, I decided to silent my phone, entered the suite, and stood there during the entire interview. It was also fun to miss a couple of hours from my shift while still ‘working’.   

After the exquisite lunch, I once again got on the elevator with the man and took him to the main entrance. Then I decided to shake hands with him. He seemed and acted down-to-Earth so why not, or so I thought. And he did shake my hand back. I thought of asking him for like a billion dollars or so, but then realised it may be a tad too soon.

The visit went seamless and that was my experience with Bill Gates — one of the richest men to have ever lived.

Being highly competent, Rady was eventually promoted to Resident Manager. A few years later he then became a General Manager. In actual fact, he is one of very few ex-bosses I worked with whom I respected and still respect; simply because he knew what he was doing and, unlike many in the corporate world, is not plagued by ego complexes.

As for my journey, as some may know, after seven years in the hotel industry three more were spent in corporate before relocating to Canada in 2010 where I took Art in general and writing in particular as vocations. Et voilà.

EDIT (14 September, 2018):

Surprisingly, when during this trip to Egypt I recently bumped into Rady at the beach on the Northern Coast he shared that he had been following my writings as well as drumming news and videos on social media and said to “To keep it up”. It was our first time to meet in 12 or 13 years due to the fact that we had both left the country at some point, so the warm words of encouragement coming from him meant a lot.


Taken by an ex before heading to work in the early morning, 2001 — a couple of years before the visit. I sincerely tried to fit in yet it took a decade to let go of wanting to.