They just do it

especially odd ones, come in during the wee hours.

"One girl called us in the middle of the night and said her boyfriend was snoring and what could we do," says Subotky. "I told her she should probably take him to a physician, but for now she should try those Breathe Right strips."

One concierge told the story of a tenant at an Upper West Side building. The woman was the president of a large "very prestigious perfume company." One night she approached him and said, "I have a dinner dance and I don’t have a date. Can you rent a tux?"

After calling to tell his wife, the concierge accompanied the tenant to her dinner.

Sometimes, a concierge is more like a personal shopper. "I’ve gone out and bought pillows, dog food, picked up their prescriptions. Boy, anything you can think of," says concierge Sean Savage, who works for Chelsea Tower at 100 W. 26th St. "We try not to refuse, but we get some weird ones, tampons, light bulbs."

While we were interviewing yet another concierge, this one in Murray Hill, two All-American-looking models in their late teens or early 20s stopped by, bearing freshly baked cookies.

Although they seemed fond of the concierge, they weren’t just being generous. It turns out that they wanted to know whether the cookies tasted OK, and being thin, bordering on emaciated models, they couldn’t actually consume any of them.

Nice perk for a concierge. And pretty tame compared to some of the stories we heard.

"Once I was called down by a neighbor. This guy had fallen down drunk, passed out in front of his apartment. I got his keys, dragged him inside, made sure he was safe and headed back to my post," says one Upper East Side concierge. "I guess if I wouldn’t have been there, he would have slept there all night."

Tales of intoxication seem to be a common thread when concierges start telling stories.

"Once there was this woman who was so drunk we had to put her in the luggage cart in order to get her up to her room," says another concierge.

Makes it sound like the 24-hour concierge is more of a full-time baby sitter than someone who can secure a table at the latest four-star restaurant. It’s a bit ironic, given that the word itself, concierge, can conjure images of royalty and prestige. Then again, maybe it’s those concierges who have helped the royal and prestigious maintain their squeaky-clean reputations.

"It’s part of this whole take-care-of-me, I’m-rich-enough-to-pay-for-anything mentality," says Letitia Baldrige, author of "Letitia Baldrige’s Guide to the New Manners for New Times." "The very rich want a nanny, and the concierge is it."