The definition of audacity…
Well, I’m back! Two weeks dealing with the TSA, the heat and humidity, teeming throngs of geeks, and my parents has left me even more exhausted than I was before I left. Dragon-Con was awesome, and I actually got to meet a couple of B-List celebs who are A-Listers in my own nerdy little world. I especially enjoyed meeting Aaron Douglas, who plays “Chief” Galen Tyrol on Battlestar Galactica!
Of course, as soon as I returned, my boss took off for a week to enroll her daughter in med school and I was “in charge” of the whole shebang. Amazingly, the Hotel did not experience any major fuck-ups during that time. One thing that really got to me, though, was a complaint we got from a guest via the corporate complaint line. The guests in question had a large party of people (or so I thought) who would come and take over our breakfast room every day of their stay promptly at 8:00 a.m.
Turns out that out of a group of 12 to 18 people, only 3 were actually staying in the Hotel. The others (who took advantage of the continental breakfast reserved for our guests!) were relatives who happened to live in this town! They pushed two of our tables together and proceeded to hold court for two or more hours every day they were here. Not only were they rude and pushy, they never tipped the breakfast attendant. We close our breakfast room at 9:30 so the attendant (who arrives at 6 a.m.) can get the food put away, clean the counters and microwave, then sweep and mop the floors. So the last day of the problem guests’ stay, I waited until about 9:55 before meekly asking them if it would not be too much trouble to move the party into their room, explaining that we need to clean and sanitize the room for use on the following day. They left, and I assumed that would be that.
Not so, gentle reader. About a day later, I’m checking the corporate email and see that we have a complaint that needs to be dealt with. In a message so poorly spelled and full of grammatical errors that I could barely comprehend it, one of the problem people indicated that we were “very rude” and asked them to leave because they “had two tabls“. As if we would kick someone out for that reason!
It seems to me that the only time we get complaints from our corporate complaint line is when a guest knows they are wrong and want to get spiteful that we had the balls to tell them “no”. I don’t care who you are, where you come from, or how old you are; complaining out of spite won’t get you anything. It won’t get us in trouble with the higher ups, it won’t get you a free night’s stay, and it most certainly won’t get you good service the next time you stay. And it’s funny how these greedy, spiteful people always end with “I’ll never stay at your hotel again!”. Good. We don’t need your money if it’s going to come with your bad attitude attached.
Seriously…it’s not funny.
Just when you think it’s safe to go to work…
We got through University Graduation weekend just fine this year, so I was fully prepared for an uneventful monday following the big local happening this past weekend checking happy guests out of my hotel. Boy, was I wrong! Having just spent not one, but two glorious fun and sun filled days at the river 45 minutes away from home, I came in that monday blissfully unaware of the crap about to dumped in my lap. Horrid guest #1 of the day was an physically intimidating, bass voiced man who declared that his room had no hot water that morning. Considering that our hotel has two wings w/ two water heaters in each wing, we usually know when the hot water is out, due to the fact that 30 people would be complaining! I calmly explained that as our hotel has been in exsitence for 20 years or so, some of the shower faucets may have hot and cold faucet markers backwards. This can happen easily when maintenance comes in to fix plumbing problems. He then got gruff with me and barked, “Well you should do something about that!” and stalked away. I should do something about that? What, exactly would you have me do, sir? Leave the front desk unattended to go and switch your faucet labels, leaving a line of angry cranky guests to stare at my “back in 5 minutes!” sign? Should I call up Jose, our wonderful maintenance man on his day off and make him do it? How about you have the common sense to check both sides of the faucet and wait for it… let the water get hot! You are staying in a hotel w/ 30 rooms in one wing… for Pete’s sake, wait a couple minutes for the water to heat up!!!
Horrid guest #2 was a frighteningly blonde (I say this only because her hair made my eyes hurt), and obviously vain Southern Californian woman w/ her (less attractive) best friend or sister in tow. After yelling at me because she also did not know how to check both sides of her faucet or wait for hot water, her friend then meekly tells me that she got the hot water on with no problems. Fine. So I give the neon blonde harpy a %10 discount, which I NEVER do (unless I make a mistake or something is horribly wrong w/ the room) just to shut her up and get her out of my lobby. Then the woman proceeds to ask me a myriad of questions pertaining to the fact that we allow pets in our hotel. She runs me left and right, and when I offer politely to give her a directory of every one of our hotels in the country, along w/ the pet and amenity information for each, she looks at her friend and says, “Oh, I don’t have a pet!” and begins to laugh very loudly and shrilly, like it’s the funniest thing in the world. Seriously. You have nothing better to do than harass me, the super nice and polite desk girl who just gave you a discount? That’s a laugh riot. It’s right up there w/ pulling the legs off a housefly or putting a puppy in an overturned laundry basket. Tip: it’s not funny, it’s just downright mean.
