Hope it's not their honeymoon

"Hi. I need new room keys because my idiot husband de-magnetized these."
"I didn't de-magnetize them."
"Didn't they tell you earlier that if you keep them near a cell phone they could de-magnetize?"
"Yeah..."
"And you kept them in your cell phone holster. With your cell phone."
"You know I don't carry a wallet. Where was I supposed to keep them?"
"..."
"So I didn't de-magnetize them, the cell phone did."
"Like I said, you're an idiot."

To the waitress standing outside of our office door

Saying "knock, knock, knock" over and over and over again until I can get free from the guest that you can clearly see me waiting on and let you in is a great way to guarantee that as soon as that door opens, the first (and last) thing you see is my fist.

Month end

The night auditor, Ms. Jabba, has her game face on because tonight is the month end close-out. That's like the Super Bowl of night auditing...only more important. Ms. Jabba is not a particularly sunshiney person under normal conditions so tonight is REALLY going to be a treat. As of right now, we're 16 minutes into the shift and here's what I've heard so far:

• "I need a copier that works, I need a printer and I need peace and quiet. I got nothing."
• (Upon receipt of her paycheck envelope) "It looks like somebody has opened and re-sealed this. Again."
• "I'm gonna kill somebody."
• "If I find any mistakes, I'm calling people at home."
• "Does anybody...ANYBODY...realize that this is month end?!?"

I have a feeling that by 7:00AM, everybody...EVERYBODY...will know it.

Maybe....

Dear Crazy,
Maybe the reason the elevator got stuck was because you and 12 of your stupid fat friends tried to ride it all at the same time.
Regards,
The Front Desk

P.S. telling me the same story about it 8 times isn't going to make me feel sorry for you.

umm....what????

So, more often than not the hotel is empty. Empty as in maybe ten...twenty rooms a night. It's quiet, you can hear the crickets chirping and sometimes tumbleweeds fly through the lobby. Well...tonight was a different story. I arrived for my night shift (2pm - 10pm) and checked the computer to see what type of evening I should expect. There were 56 check-ins (which at this fine establishment, is considered a lot). I then went on to try and block rooms (which means to assign each reservation to an empty, inspected, ready to go).

Houston, we have a problem.

No rooms. Not a single, clean room.

(Side note, the hotel has been sitting basically empty for 3 days, which in my opinion, is MORE than enough time to clean and have rooms ready for a busy weekend.)

After consulting management on the situation, all hell proceeded to break loose. Maintenance, management and housekeeping all went into a tizzy yelling at each other. The entire hotel went bezerk trying to flip over and clean rooms.

Meanwhile, I stayed at the front and attempted not to cut my wrist with the cheap, hotel razors.

Two hours later, there are still not enough clean rooms to put guests in and the only suggestion given to me (before everyone went home for the day) was to ask if people didn't mind staying in a room with just a king bed....and telling any walk-ins that we can only get them into rooms with one bed.


FML.

Well, that didn't take long

Condom Guy just came downstairs, needing another ride somewhere. Unfortunately, the shuttle driver is off duty at 11. I should have taken him myself; I could go for some Skittles and a Sierra Mist right about now.

Par for the course

All you need to know about how this place is run is the fact that a manager is calling me here at 11:48PM to find out what time he's supposed to be at work in the morning.

Somebody has one classy boyfriend

Our shuttle driver took a guest who desperately wanted condoms to the local Walgreens. The guest showed his gratitude by tipping the driver with a package of Jack Link's Beef Jerky, a bag of chocolate covered raisins and a Coke.

I'm flattered...

...that you think I would know the name of the bar you went to when you were here last year, somewhere by the bus station, that serves food, but how exactly did you expect me to have that information? Just wondering.

What dimension are you from?

I just spent the last 15 minutes trying...and failing...to get a guest to understand that there's no point in trying to set three wake-up calls for 5:00AM because the phone can only ring one time at 5:00AM. We could set one each for 4:59AM, 5:00AM and 5:01AM if he wanted but it's only 5:00AM once daily.
"But...I don't understand...you have 60 seconds."
"So...you want to be called every 20 seconds between 5:00 and 5:01?"
"Yes, but more frequently than that. Like every 5 seconds?"
"Well, that's pretty much what will happen if we go with the one wake-up call and you just let it ring."
"I guess that will have to do"

Yeah, I guess so.

You say good bye, I say hello

I took a phone call from someone asking to speak to a salesperson who was fired by the hotel two months ago. Immediately after informing the caller that they were no longer with the company, that salesperson walked into the lobby, having been re-hired and back on the job since 9:00AM yesterday.

Upper Management Thoughts of the Day

"There are lots of people in this city...whites, blacks, asians, spaniards, French people and non-French people."

Sweet. I love my job.

Please....

Please quit calling to "confirm" your reservation. For one thing, that confirmation number that you got when you first made the reservation...that is your CONFIRMATION number. That means you have reservations. You don't need to call 5 times a day to make sure it's still there. It is really hard to believe sometimes that people are really that stupid that they must constantly call and ask to confirm these things eight times.

Also, quit asking me the same question over and over. When I said the shuttle driver would be back in 10 minutes, I wasn't kidding. So quit asking me where he is, when is he coming back, how much longer, what does he look like, what does the van look like, are you sure he is coming back, now how long exactly until he gets here....I mean, really people. Take a breath and wait.

Good morning...and good luck

So I arrive for my 6AM shift to be greeted by Pablo, one of the night audit workers. (Sidenote: Pablo has a monotone voice and his life seems to be void of excitement).

Pablo informs me that the hotel has no change what-so-ever, and that we owe people money back. Since conveniently, all of the people who have access to make change are absent, I am stuck here with basically nothing. I ask Pablo what he suggests I do if we can not make change when these people come downstairs. He says (with a shrug), "I don't know, just use smaller bills out of your own wallet."

PERFECT! Today is going to be AWESOME.

There is a phone in your room, you know

Of course the guy who doesn't speak english and whose breath smells like he just had a double order of ass nachos needed to use the phone at the front desk instead of his room. Of course.

Ever use a computer before?

A customer using our complimentary computers couldn't get a 10 page document to print so he hit the "print" button 20 times. Guess what happened when I refilled the empty paper tray?

Shuttle drivers say the darndest things

One of our shuttle drivers, Tyrone just asked my co-worker, "Do you want to do something nasty with me? Let's go out to my car, get in the backseat and eat boogers."

In the beginning

The origin of this blog

I’m relatively new to the hospitality industry. I took a job with a hotel because I just want to do my job, get paid for it and go home every day without any baggage. I think that classifies me as what is known as a slacker. I used to have a job where I was heavily invested on a personal level and it just ate me up and burned me out. I now work at a hotel where many people share the same level of commitment...or lack thereof...to their profession and that’s okay with me. At least it was.

The incident with room service...

About a week ago, a guest was staying here who wanted to order some food via room service. She went through the menu and was informed that about half of what she wanted was not available. She finally placed an order and waited for the food to arrive. About 45 minutes later, the food hadn’t arrived so she called down to the restaurant and was told her they weren’t offering room service. She came down to get the food, which of course was cold, and found that some of the items she had ordered were also not available. She was, of course, upset so they offered to make her a free Crème Brulee. Now, I’m not a Crème Brulee kind of person, so if you tell me it’s not made right if the sugar on top isn’t caramelized, I’ll believe you, apologize and attempt to correct the situation. However, when she pointed this out to the people who work in our restaurant, their response to her was “well, it’s free”.
This was the story as she related it to me. I apologized profusely and expressed surprise and, frankly, embarrassment. She told me this situation had tied her up for over an hour, that she now had no intention of continuing to try to deal with our restaurant and that now she’d have to get dressed and go out to get something to eat and that she felt the hotel should reimburse her for her trouble. I told her I understood completely, couldn’t possibly agree more and said, “yes, by all means, go have dinner, bring the bill back to me and we will compensate you for your trouble”. To my surprise, the way I dealt with the situation was not met with approval by my co-workers and some superiors:

• “You shouldn’t give her money back if she didn’t spend it at the hotel.” She tried to spend it at the hotel! Three times! That’s the point!
• “I would have let a manager handle it.” The manager wasn’t there and wasn’t due in until the next morning.
• “She’s a bitch.” Okay, well, great. How do you even argue that logic? For what it’s worth, I’d have been a bitch too.
  

One week later...

I show up to work my shift and within the first two minutes the phone rings. “Just what is the deal on room service in this hotel anyway?” It was the same lady. She was back! And in spite of talking to a manager when she checked in, who assured her that room service was definitely available, she was having the exact same problem again. You know how in monster movies when you think the monster is dead and it’s a happy ending, when suddenly the monster reaches out and grabs somebody’s ankle? This lady grabbed my ankle.
That’s when I got pissed. I apologized…again…and told her I would take her order, get it placed and deliver it to her room myself, which I did. It was right after that I decided to start chronicling stupid shit like this in a blog.

Don’t get me wrong...

It’s not like stupid shit like this hasn’t happened before. It happens all the time. I guess I was just at a tipping point. And since apparently nothing is going to be done to fix these kinds of problems, I figure I might as well share them for entertainment purposes. Also, make no mistake: I’m not presenting myself as some kind of exemplary employee with a deep commitment to customer service. I’m still a slacker who is unmotivated by and disinterested in things that don’t amuse me. It’s just that very little in life is more amusing than peeing on the legs of The Establishment. In this case, The Establishment consists of lazy incompetents, so there you go. My goal is to be nothing more than an irritatingly dedicated loose cannon. I want to be the Hawkeye Pierce (or, more current references, Perry Cox of even Gregory House) of customer service.

Further…

I don’t hold a lot of our customers in high regard either, many of whom should be under constant adult supervision and not be allowed to operate anything as complex as a pair of shoes. These are people who should never, ever be allowed to go outdoors, let alone attempt something as mentally challenging as staying in a hotel. And that doesn't even take into account the rude people. Don't worry, they’ll be getting their share of attention on this blog too. The customer is always right my ass.

More will be revealed over time but this is enough to get us started.