The Customer Is Not Always Right

(an old post that I never finished, so my math is now off. whatever)

In fact, the customer is almost always wrong. Particularly when they try to insist they know the hotel better than I do. Look, lady, I may have only worked here three months (almost four now, actually), but I'm here 40 hours a week, as opposed to the two days you spent here last year. That means I've spent about a month of my life in this hotel. Seriously. 40 hours a week times about 16 weeks equals 640 hours. Divide that by 24 and you get ~27 days. Wow, that's depressing.

But anyway, this woman comes in for a business meeting being held at our hotel, and asks for a smoking room. I inform her that we don't have smoking rooms, but offer to put her near an exit. Best I can do. Well, she turns into a major bitch. She insists that we have smoking rooms, and says last year when she was here she had a smoking room. I pull up her previous reservation and there's no note about smoking. Plus, we're a completely non-smoking hotel.

Despite both myself and my coworker saying that we're non-smoking, she says we're wrong. We both repeat that the hotel is completely non-smoking and the fine is $250 for smoking in the room. She says she doesn't care. Then (since her company was paying for the room & tax), when I ask her for a credit card for incidentals, she tries to get out of giving me one. Uh-huh. You tell me you're going to smoke in the room and you think you're not giving me a credit card to charge when you do? No way. She says she's going to talk to the person in charge of her business meeting, since she knows she requested a smoking room for her.

When I told the GM about it that afternoon, he tells me that after all that, if she still smokes in the room, we'll throw her out and charge her $250 for each day she smoked. Ha! After being such a bitch, she would deserve it.

Ultimately, it didn't come to that. She spoke to the leader of her group, who spoke to our sales team and confirmed the hotel is non-smoking. And then she came by the desk and told me that the smoking hotel she stayed at last year was a different property, not ours (obviously).

And Counting!

54 days of work left to go!!! (yes, I am staring a countdown. I need to get out of this place.)

Not Hotel-Related, But...

Who thinks that a valid excuse for doing poorly on an SAT practice test is: "There were lots of girls in the room and I couldn't concentrate"?

Not me!

I May Sound Like An Ass Here, But...

I'm smarter than my boss. She knows it and I know it. And it's not that I can't respect someone who's not as smart as me. Really, it's not. Especially if you consider that lesser intelligence in the context of more experience in this industry than I have. I consider that experience something I can learn from. After all, don't we all have new things we can learn? Of course we do. I love knowledge. The day I stop learning is the day I die. The problem is, she does not feel that way.

Each day, the morning shift at a hotel blocks guests into rooms. What this means is that we select a room for a guest based on their requests. Connecting rooms, high floor, first floor, quiet area, smoking (not permitted, so they go near an exit). We go through and block accordingly, based on that day's arrivals. However, for some reason our system was doing something very unfortunate in that it was automatically blocking rooms with no consideration to guest preferences. So my supervisor comes out one morning and asks if we are blocking according to requests. I say, yes, we are, and she asks why the rooms guests are currently in don't match their requests. Wellll, that would be because the system blocks automatically and I haven't gone through to fix it yet.

"What do you mean the system blocks automatically? That doesn't make any sense. Someone had to set that up."
I pull up the screen to show her, unblocking several rooms and showing her how the system automatically reblocks. Which she ignores
"That doesn't make any sense. The system doesn't do that."
She goes back into the office, and I ask my coworker what exactly there is to not understand. This isn't brain surgery. Her response: she doesn't want to understand.

I received similar responses from both my parents - apparently I am showing up my supervisor with my superior knowledge of the system, and she doesn't like it. But anyway, I go to the help for our system and figure out how to stop the automatic blocking. Then I tell the GM that I've stopped it. He lets my immediate supervisor know this, and she tells him that the morning shift haven't been responding to requests when rooms are blocked, and that's the problem with the blocking, nothing else.

I heard about this because someone else was in the back office at the time - I didn't hear it directly. And at first I shrugged it off, but the more I think about it, the more pissed off I am. How dare she tell my GM a flat-out lie about me, especially after I explained the problem to her and she decided she didn't want to understand? So I've decided to talk to him tomorrow. And I don't care if it makes her look bad. I'm not going to be here that much longer anyway!

***PS - I know I haven't been posting much lately. Nothing happened at work to make me feel this way, but I become paranoid about being caught. Fellow bloggers, how do you manage to stay anonymous and still tell specific stories about your job?

Be Professional

I rarely write about my co-workers or managers on this blog. This is for two reasons: one, I am worried that one day one of them will stumble upon my blog and recognize descriptions of themselves and two, I likely most of the people I work with. There is one person I am not such a big fan, though. This would be my immediate supervisor, whose title will not be disclosed for reason #1 above.

I am normally the kind of person who gets along with everyone, but she irritates me. The reason for this? I hate liars. Hate hate hate. With a passion. In case you cannot tell, I am a very honest (read: blunt) person. And I consider hypocrites to be liars. And she is one of the biggest hypocrites I've ever met. And closed-minded.

When you talk to her, it's like there's only one acceptable attitude. One acceptable viewpoint. One acceptable way to do things. Any suggestions are shot down. I was talking about my old hotel the other day and she says, "You aren't there anymore, you're here. We're not them. We do things this way here." And yes, they were a less organized property, but that doesn't mean there's nothing that can be learned from them.

And then there's her personality - childish and unprofessional. It's really amazing that she's gotten to this point in her hotel career considering how incredibly petty she is. She is the type of person who holds grudges. And plays favorites. So when her favorite front desk person called out sick and the person who had to cover wasn't happy about it and spoke to the GM, she gave them the cold shoulder, then called them into her office and talked about how she doesn't play favorites. Uh huh. It's like, this is a business. Be professional. If you can't do that, go back to kindergarten and learn how to play nice with other people. It's gotten to the point that I really look forward to the days she's not there.

Why America's Going Downhill

Yes, I know it's been a while since I've written. I've been pretty busy working 70-hour weeks and trying to choose a law school for next year (actually, I've decided. but for my father's sanity, i am "weighing my options"). But this guy's story just begged to be told.

He came in Sunday, and for whatever reason was booked in a suite. Probably because we were sold out this week. He came in Monday to ask about breakfast, but that's a whole different story in itself. So he's in a suite, and at first he tried feeding us this crap about how he "thought all the rooms were like that" and he "didn't realize he was in a suite". Riiight. So he wants a lower rate, but he doesn't want to change rooms. That's not happening. The afternoon shift yesterday tried to get in touch with him all evening, but he wasn't picking up. So guess who gets to deal with this guy when he finally gets all his messages? Me.

He called down this morning and said he didn't understand what the messages were saying. I pull up his reservation and recognize the booking - the guy who wants neither to move nor to pay. I tell him we'd be happy to move him into a new room, and he says that's what he wants. But he's running late and wants to know if housekeeping can move his things for him.

We're really not supposed to do that. No one from the hotel is supposed to move a guest's belongings because the hotel is liable if something is missing. But we've been trying to resolve this problem for a few days, and we've done it before, so I say yes, and tell him they'll move his belongings as long as everything's packed up.

Guest: "So they'll move my stuff for me?"
Me: "As long as everything's packed up, yes."

I repeated this because it was very important that everything be packed. Housekeeping won't/can't gather up and move toiletries, clothes, etc. Additionally, my tone was totally neutral as I said this. Sometimes I say something to a guest and wish later I'd phrased it a little more decorously. But going over it again, I wouldn't say anything differently. But apparently this struck a nerve.

Guest (nastily, in case anyone was thinking otherwise): "You just told me that. You don't have to tell me again. I heard you. And you don't have to be so rude about it."
Me (somewhat surprised on the other end): "I said it again because housekeeping can't move your belongings unless everything is packed."
Guest: "Then you should have said that instead of being so rude! This is why America's going downhill! Everyone in the service industry is so rude! No one knows good service anymore!"

And so on, with several more comments about how rude I was. I think he was hoping for an apology, but I refuse to apologize to such an asshole - especially over nothing. My coworker said I should have told him it was inappropriate to speak to me that way, and I should have, but at that point I was a little stunned. I don't think I've ever dealt with such a nasty, unreasonable guest.

And he thinks the service industry is leading America to its downfall? Methinks otherwise.

Private Things Should Be Done In Private

At my old hotel, I once read a GSS (guest satisfaction survey) that said our public computer should be in a more private area. It was in a very public space - by the front desk, next to the breakfast area door, so anyone who walked by could see the screen - but who cares? These computers are for essential internet usage: checking email, looking up directions, printing out work documents. They aren't there so people can spend hours on Facebook, Twitter, or whatever other social networking site you use to inform people that you're cleaning the house today. Upon reading this GSS, my manager remarked, "What does he need privacy for? So he can watch porn in the lobby?" Apparently, that's exactly what he needed it for.

At my current hotel, we have a business center with two computers, and a wall shielding the space from the rest of the lobby. Last week, my co-worker walked back there and returned to inform me excitedly that a guest was watching porn on one of the computers. Needless to say, I was surprised - though perhaps I shouldn't be, since the only pay movies the guests watch are porn.

"How can he even get to that?" I asked. "Isn't it blocked?"

Our AGM told us grimly that it should be, and she was calling internet support to find out why it wasn't. And that guest became known as "the guy who watched porn in the business center."

Seriously, do your private business in private.