Today I am covering the front desk at the hotel instead of my usual spot at the spa front desk or sitting in my office handling all incoming email, text messages, and more like I usually do on a Saturday. I had known that they wanted me to cover the desk today for about a week, no problem.
What is a problem is that I was left with a mess of things to do and no information about what was expected. We have a HUGE hotel booking and for some reason there aren't any room prices attached to any of the rooms, nor are there the names of all the attendees - I have no idea who is supposed to be going into which room, or if they are expecting anything special. All the bookings show the name of one person (I'm assuming it's the main contact for the group), and the notes simply say "more information to be determined". Now, if I were to put such shitty notes into ANYTHING I touch I fully expect to get told off for being so vague. Plus, one of the important things for tomorrow morning (which I'm also working at the hotel for) is if this huge group is expecting breakfast.
I get onto the hotel WhatsApp chat and ask some very important questions - who is paying for all of these bookings, what are their names, who is supposed to be going into what room, and are they expecting breakfast tomorrow.
One person tells me that our accountant asked for these rooms to be booked and that he was supposed to supply the names and other information. Then the manager gets on and says that she has no more information than I do other than breakfast wasn't part of the plan for this group but if they ask for it I still have to give it to them. So I'm sitting here with a bunch of registration forms that I cannot properly fill out because I have no information. I figure that due to my WhatsApp convo that my ass is sufficiently covered in case things go sideways due to the total lack of information I was given.
Oh, and for whatever reason the spa manager decided to have one of their front desk staff for today bring down a stack of gift certificate email printouts for me to do. Why? Because they're for the hotel. Despite the fact that 1) we use the same program to enter these gift cards into the system, and 2) that I had absolutely nothing at the hotel desk to package these things ujp to go - customers can order giftg cards to be delivered in fancy gold-coloured boxes with our logo on them, but they have to be wrapped in brown paper, have an envelope with the mailing address attached after it's been put through our postage meter, and then all taped up. I had the boxes, but none of the other stuff, so when I got the gift cards processed I had to take them all back up to the spa for them to finish. Oh yeah, real time saver that wasn't.
And it didn't help that the reason the spa front desk person was given for bringing those gift certificates down to me in the first place? Oh, they're for the hotel so they have to be done at the hotel. Umm, how about no? The hotel will help with gift certificates when they are bought by walk-in customers, but not anything that comes through email - because the hotel doesn't have access to the spa email as a general rule. And all of the gift certificate emails go to the spa email address. So I sent a message to my boss to remind her that the spa can process any and all gift certificate orders, that there is no need to have somebody walk down the print-outs fof the 'hotel' ones brouught down. Only to be told that it was done to help spread the load across all of us. Even though that isn't what was said by the missus who brought me the print outs this morning. Not to mention that morning are a bit crazy at the hotel for the first couple of hours as we get set up for our day - printing out registration cards, getting breakfast for guests that want it, answering the pile of emails that came in overnight, listening to and responding to voicemails, and so much more...not to mention that I haven't done this particular job for while.
Oh, and I was originally told that I would be doing the spa confirmation calls for our next day open, as well as handling most of their emails and messages. Once I made it clear how much I was being expected to deal with things got scaled back.
What I was reminded of today though is how rotten the communication is here among those higher up than me. And it's been really bad since the spa manager decided that she wanted her job back...and went to the owner to beg for it back despite all the work I and my manager did to show how ineffective this woman is. I have always made it clear that communication is one of the most basic and necessary things required for any company or workplace to prosper. Yet we're back to spiralling down to where we were before the pandemic hit and even more understaffed.
*sigh*
What is a problem is that I was left with a mess of things to do and no information about what was expected. We have a HUGE hotel booking and for some reason there aren't any room prices attached to any of the rooms, nor are there the names of all the attendees - I have no idea who is supposed to be going into which room, or if they are expecting anything special. All the bookings show the name of one person (I'm assuming it's the main contact for the group), and the notes simply say "more information to be determined". Now, if I were to put such shitty notes into ANYTHING I touch I fully expect to get told off for being so vague. Plus, one of the important things for tomorrow morning (which I'm also working at the hotel for) is if this huge group is expecting breakfast.
I get onto the hotel WhatsApp chat and ask some very important questions - who is paying for all of these bookings, what are their names, who is supposed to be going into what room, and are they expecting breakfast tomorrow.
One person tells me that our accountant asked for these rooms to be booked and that he was supposed to supply the names and other information. Then the manager gets on and says that she has no more information than I do other than breakfast wasn't part of the plan for this group but if they ask for it I still have to give it to them. So I'm sitting here with a bunch of registration forms that I cannot properly fill out because I have no information. I figure that due to my WhatsApp convo that my ass is sufficiently covered in case things go sideways due to the total lack of information I was given.
Oh, and for whatever reason the spa manager decided to have one of their front desk staff for today bring down a stack of gift certificate email printouts for me to do. Why? Because they're for the hotel. Despite the fact that 1) we use the same program to enter these gift cards into the system, and 2) that I had absolutely nothing at the hotel desk to package these things ujp to go - customers can order giftg cards to be delivered in fancy gold-coloured boxes with our logo on them, but they have to be wrapped in brown paper, have an envelope with the mailing address attached after it's been put through our postage meter, and then all taped up. I had the boxes, but none of the other stuff, so when I got the gift cards processed I had to take them all back up to the spa for them to finish. Oh yeah, real time saver that wasn't.
And it didn't help that the reason the spa front desk person was given for bringing those gift certificates down to me in the first place? Oh, they're for the hotel so they have to be done at the hotel. Umm, how about no? The hotel will help with gift certificates when they are bought by walk-in customers, but not anything that comes through email - because the hotel doesn't have access to the spa email as a general rule. And all of the gift certificate emails go to the spa email address. So I sent a message to my boss to remind her that the spa can process any and all gift certificate orders, that there is no need to have somebody walk down the print-outs fof the 'hotel' ones brouught down. Only to be told that it was done to help spread the load across all of us. Even though that isn't what was said by the missus who brought me the print outs this morning. Not to mention that morning are a bit crazy at the hotel for the first couple of hours as we get set up for our day - printing out registration cards, getting breakfast for guests that want it, answering the pile of emails that came in overnight, listening to and responding to voicemails, and so much more...not to mention that I haven't done this particular job for while.
Oh, and I was originally told that I would be doing the spa confirmation calls for our next day open, as well as handling most of their emails and messages. Once I made it clear how much I was being expected to deal with things got scaled back.
What I was reminded of today though is how rotten the communication is here among those higher up than me. And it's been really bad since the spa manager decided that she wanted her job back...and went to the owner to beg for it back despite all the work I and my manager did to show how ineffective this woman is. I have always made it clear that communication is one of the most basic and necessary things required for any company or workplace to prosper. Yet we're back to spiralling down to where we were before the pandemic hit and even more understaffed.
*sigh*
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