Checking Out?

Some days, I just don’t know what to think.  Today, for instance, when a long standing guest who never, ever complains came up to the desk to tell me that the facilities are in decline and have never looked so bad.  Yesterday, a long standing guest told me that she loved all the refurbishments we’ve done here.  I can detail all the major problems with the Hotel.  We have only one working ice machine, our refridgerators run a bit loudly, there are random plumbing issues to be dealt with daily, and our cable and wireless reception are known to be spotty.  On the other hand, we have replaced all the bedding with new fluffy comforters, coverlets and pillows, added beautiful flowers to the front walk, and have a maintenance man who actually fixes stuff when it breaks. 

I know it’s hard for people who have never worked in my town to understand, but there are exactly 9 hotels here. That’s right, nine. When you come to our town, your choices of lodging are very limited.  You could choose to stay 10 miles south of us in our larger sister city, but most of the good hotels there are right on a major highway and can get noisy.  Out of the hotels right in our tiny town, you can choose to stay at one of the $50 a night places (motor lodges with numbers in their name…) and sleep next door to the tweakers, or you could spend a little bit more and stay at the place with bedbugs (look it up… they’re real and they ain’t pretty).  That leaves 5 hotels to choose from.  I’ll detail the issues with each one:

1) The gorgeous Historical Hotel – downtown, right in the middle of everything, but close to $200 a night.

2)TradeWinds – Tres nasty. It’s the kind of place you go when you absolutely can’t get a room anywhere else.  I once went to this place looking for a job and was left standing in the lobby for close to an hour.

3)The HJ (you know what chain I’m talking about) – Owned by crazy people.  During your continental breakfast you get to view the crazy close up, with the added bonus of seeing the front desk clerk/breakfast attendant/maintenance man storm out yelling “This is crazy!  I quit!”

4) West’s Best Hotel – One of 3 hotels in our town I would actually recommend! I’ve never actually stayed there, so I’m no expert, but they get good ratings.

5) The Comfy Inn – Our sister hotel (meaning we are in the same brand chain). I worked at this spot for one day as a housekeeper, but then got offered a desk job at the Hotel.  Good service, clean rooms, at about the same rates we offer.

So there you go… out of nine hotels in this town, I would only recommend three.  And when I have a morning like today, when all I hear are complaints, I want to send out this letter my boyfriend came up with the other day. 

“Dear _______, thank you for your (letter/email/phone call/other) regarding your recent stay at The Hotel.  We have reviewed your comments and have communicated your issues to our management.  Big Things are now happening because of your comments.  No, really.  We have fired the entire cleaning staff, rebuilt an entire wing of our facility, and have sacrificed three small Punjabi children to Kali in the hopes of appeasing whatever terrible forces caused your (faucet to run cold/light switch to malfunction/wireless not to connect/other).  Enclosed is a gift certificate for a free dinner for two to the Olive Garden.  Please enjoy your dinner, and we hope to see you again.  Yours truly, the Management.”

Sorry it’s taken so long to get back here, guys.  I’m planning two really big trips, one for this weekend and another for late August, so I have absolutely no spare time!  Although I had a really great 3 day weekend for the first time in forever, I still feel as if I got no rest… No surprise there.

When I got back into work this morning I heard about some major disasters that occured over the weekend.  We were booked up solid all weekend, and when shit hits the fan, it hits when we’re full.  It’s like some sort of Murphy’s Law of hotels… the phone will ring when you have to take a pee, and all hell will break loose if you’re sold out.  I’m so happy I did not have to deal with things, because it got pretty nasty. 

 First, one of the toilets in a second floor room began overflowing.  This is not usually a big problem… however, the super brilliant people staying in that room didn’t have the good sense to switch the valve (you know, the football shaped chrome doohickey sticking out of the back of the toilet?) to the off position.  As a result, when my coworker John finally was able to get away from the ringing phones and other guests at the desk, he found a lovely, shitty mess awaiting him.

John’s a pro, so he merely turned the valve off, got the guests moved to another room, and threw down some towels to clean up as best he could, taking about 10 minutes to do it all.  Wouldn’t you know it, but not half an hour later the guests in the room directly below the poo poo room call him to complain about water leaking from the ceiling!  I know what you’re thinking… and yes, that is horribly gross… if it had actually been water from the leaky toilet.  It wasn’t.  What actually happened was that a water main inside the walls decided to spring a leak at the exact same moment.  I kid you not.  So right now, we have two rooms that smell gross (one due to poopy water and the other due to grimy pipe water) and cannot be sold until they are in much better shape.

Of course, this is also the week we are due to replace all the bedding in the rooms with “new and improved!” corporate mandated bedding.  The new stuff looks horrid with our carpet and all the other decor, and the company that corporate has approved to sell us all this crap keeps sending incorrect and damaged items.  This has put our head housekeeper into meltdown… not only is she dealing with cleaning out the room that smells like someone’s shit, but she has to get all the rooms ready w/ new bedding, plus, as housekeeping is a very unrewarding job, a lot of our newer housekeepers keep quitting.  I guess I forgot to mention the housekeeper we hired whom we later found out was a prostitute!  She quit today. 

All told, it’s been crappy, pun intended.  It’s getting hot here and everyone is cranky.  I can’t wait to get out of town!

I’ll be back w/ a new entry next week!

Apparently the computers here at my job don’t like what I’m telling you guys.  I had a post all ready to go today and even though I’m far from a n00b, I lost it!  I hit “publish” and everything’s gone.  More than likely, this has something to do with the fact that we use a satellite proxy and it hates redirecting.  I’ll repost later tonight!

Alright, I know I promised to get this in on Monday, but it has been a hell of a week!

 I’ll start with clearing up some confusion there may be about just who and what I’m spilling secrets about.  I always use pseudonyms for anyone I name personally in the blog.  I have mentioned before that I live in a small town in Northern California, but you will NEVER know exactly where unless you know me personally and already live there!  I’m sure everyone understands the need for privacy, but I’m also very aware that this blog is not exactly sanctioned by the owners and corporate managers of the Hotel.  Our owners have had the Hotel for about 20 years, and I’m amazed, considering some of the colossal mismanagement that has gone on recently.  They absolutely abhor giving overtime (like every other boss on the planet) and have even resorted to dirty tricks to keep their costs down.  Just recently, I turned in my hours and noticed that my count (89 hours) was one hour more than their count.  I mentioned it to my boss and she informs me that because I clock in at 7:05 every morning, I actually only worked 88 hours.  Bullshit.  We have, at least for the last 3 years, rounded everyone’s clock in and out times as long as it was no more than 5 or 6 minutes.  And alright, yes, I’m not the most punctual person.  However, I am now the senior member of the desk staff, and if I were to drop my pen and walk out right now, they would be up the proverbial shitty creek without a paddle.  In fact, during the disputed pay period, I actually stayed late twice to help elderly guests who were having computer problems.  What do I get for my trouble?  A warning not to help anyone with their computer because if we break it (or the guest says we broke it) we could be sued up the wazoo.  So it looks like the next time 67 year old Mrs. Ying can’t email her son in China, I have to tell her that I’m not authorized to help her with that.  Oh yeah, that’ll go over well.

Other than being pissed over my hour shortage, I’ve been putting out fires left and right here.  Somehow, over the course of a month and a half, I’ve gone from being a cog in the big wheel of the Hotel to the person all the new hires call when they are having a problem.  Take for example, last Tuesday evening when I get a call from Rick, one of my coworkers, who was bitched out by an elderly couple who swore someone took their sweaters when they had to change rooms.  Needless to say, the couple was really old.  So old I was afraid to breath on them lest they shatter into brittle little aarp pieces all over the lobby floor.  Turns out that the sweaters were in their car (I shudder each time I think of them actually operating a motor vehicle).  They never apologized to Rick for calling him a liar and a thief.  So not only do I get weird calls at all hours even though I’m not even an assistant manager, but I have to put up with it for much less than I am worth.  Oy. Vey.  It’s times like these that I remind myself I’ll only be living out here in the sticks for a couple more years… of course, I said that 5 years ago.

Hi everybody!  I’m feeling really happy today… Gamestore Girl just added me to her blogroll! So I guess that means I need to get to work.  Before I digress, though, I have to say thanks to Gamestore Girl and all the other service industry bloggers out there!  It’s been a long two weeks at the Hotel for me, with nary a day off, but now I have blessed 3 day weekend.  My band is playing a gig tonight, so I’ll be back up and posting on Monday!

One of my favorite blogs, Wide Lawns, Narrow Minds is going out of commission. In solidarity, I’ve decided to actually blog, rather than thinking about blogging and never posting. As I’ve said before, I work the front desk at a small hotel in Northern California. On a daily basis, I’m bombarded with requests and reservations, not a few of which are made by rude, ornery people who destroy what little faith I have in humanity, bit by bit. Here’s a taste of what we’re dealing with right now:

Ms. Desmond is a woman I had the displeasure of meeting before I worked at the Hotel, during last summer when I was employed at the Raging River RV Park, which is situated in the same complex as the Hotel. Her usual attire consists of a full length cloak with a hood, scarf, and huge black sunglasses, ala Sunset Boulevard. Keep in mind, we live in a small county in Northern California, where most folks wear bluejeans to attend a wedding! Every other day or so, Ms. Desmond would breeze into the RV Park office/ mini mart to pick up a bottle or two of wine. Now, I’m not throwing stones, cuz I love my wine just as much as the next chick, but let’s just say that some people should not be allowed to drink! Ms. Desmond, a bi-polar with a taste for self medication likes to indulge in pharmeceutical binges (I have no idea specifically what she takes) that usually result in her sleeping most of the day and prowling/cooking/yelling/freaking out at night. When I came to work at the Hotel, she had been staying there for the last year.

Who the hell lives in a hotel, you might ask? Tweakers and Freakers, that’s who. I fully believe Ms. Desmond to be of the tweaker variety, albeit a very glamourous tweaker. Recently, our new management decided that the hotel would no longer accept long term guests and in an effort to “clean up” our image and standing with the corporate higher ups, evict Ms. Desmond. Of course, she freaked out. I got a call from coworker Shane one saturday night… “Ms. Desmond is here in the lobby, threatening to kill herself! Should I call the cops?”. Eventually, she calmed down, took some Valium (or Xanax, or Nyquil, or insert favorite downer here) and went back to her room. Ever since then, we have been engaged in a battle of empty threats with her and her “legal representation”. I know for a fact that this woman has more money than she knows what to do with. What I don’t understand is why the hell she wants to make her home in a second rate, business class hotel, where no one likes her. Go figure.