Adventures in hospitality

[Moirae]

I've talked alot on here about my managers but have neglected the customers I've dealt with. And trust me, there have been some doozy's. I thought I'd start a thread on some of the things I've seen over the years.

I'm also going to add some advice for people looking to stay in a hotel, or that have had a problem with staying in one.

I've been working hotels since 2002 (gah, can't believe its been that long). In that time, I've seen alot things that have made me wonder about peoples mental capacity. I've worked front desk (6 years), and at the same time small stints housekeeping, and banquets, and currently reservations (3 years).

The quest is where to start. With so many years under my belt its hard to know where to begin.

The first place I started was only a block from my house, so I was able to walk to and from it easily. It was a Travelodge. Now, as we all know, Travelodges are about the equivalent of a Motel 6, so the quality of the guests are about equal to that.

My hotel had a swimming pool, hot tub, bar, restaurant, and convention space. So you'd think it would be high quality right? Lets just say... nope. We didn't accept hourly rates due to the type of people that brings in, but at rates like $49 a night, it wasn't much better.

I started at the front desk there. I have to say... I loved every second of it, and actually miss it quite bad (though its no longer a Travelodge and has been bought and completely redone from top to bottom with brand new staff and is now a 4-5 star hotel and simply gorgeous). Even with the insanity that went on at times, it was worth it. Working with the staff, they became almost like family, even the ones that were aggravating at times. I was with them for 3 years so I'll start with this hotel.

We had a little island type of thing in the middle of the desk area and a chair there that we could sit on and read when it was quiet. So, one night it was fairly quiet, and I was sitting there reading.

All of a sudden, I had someone run down the hallway yelling "there's a fire in the men's washroom". I ran up to the front of the desk and peaked around the corner to look at the men's bathroom and my jaw hit the floor.

Sure enough, big black billowing smoke coming out of the men's bathroom.

I had to evacuate the whole hotel, call the police and the fire department, and the managers.

I was amazed, I stood quiet and calm through all this and handled it like a pro when I'd only been there 6 months.

Ended up that someone had taken newspaper, balled it up, and thrown it into the furthest mens stall and then lit it on fire.

The hotel wasn't damaged other than for smoke. The men's washroom had to be shut down for a week while it was aired, cleaned, and completely repainted (the washroom walls were made of brick so the only thing damaged was paint).

The managers loved me after that.

[Moirae]

At one point, I decided I wanted extra money for Christmas so I went to work for banquets on my days off the front desk. I was a server.

The funniest incident that occurred during that time was the mother of the bride.

Now, as a hotelier, one of the things we hate the most are weddings. They expect the most for the least, and alot of them are really really mean to the staff if they don't get it (I've seen staff cry at a brides abuses).

But this story isn't about the bride. In hotels, you just come to expect the bride to be mean. No, this story is about her mother.

We had two people call off that night with the flu (it was going around and not surprising) so we were short handed and the food was coming out rather slowly for the reception.

Instead of talking to someone about it, the mother of the bride stood up and started grabbing plates of food from our serving trays, then throwing them down the tables toward the other guest screaming about how we weren't being fast enough. The guests were all staring at her like she'd lost her mind. And she had. Especially when the food started hitting people in the chest.

The bride was in tears.

But, the Banquet Manager stepped in, and calmed her down.

Or so she thought.

They were all sitting there happily eating, and we servers were in the kitchen letting them enjoy their meal for a bit, when all of a sudden we start hearing more yelling. This time, the mother was angry at the cook for something and was screaming at him in the hall over it. We never did figure out what it was over. But yet again, the Banquet Manager managed to calm the situation.

Or so she thought.

The rest of the banquet goes by relatively calmly. We've cleared the tables and are getting ready to leave for the night. I go up to the front desk to get my stuff (I'm mostly an FD clerk so I put myself where it normally goes rather than where the banquet staff does), and while I'm up there, the mother of the bride comes down to the desk with the complimentary plate of chocolate covered strawberries and she was angry because the groom was allergic to them and that we had given them to them.

Well, we gave them to the bride and groom because thats what we always do and no one had told us he was allergic to strawberries.

This time it was me that talked to her even though I wasn't on desk. The girl that was at the desk was new, and I didn't want her quitting on her second night alone because some idiot woman was freaking out.

Actually, I did manage to get her calmed down. I contacted the kitchen to get them to make chocolate covered oranges and bring them up, which made them all very happy.

I worked the next morning at the front desk, and the bride came down by herself to apologize profusely for her mothers behavior.

[Moirae]

And then there was the ghost.

Most people thought it was the guest of the original owner who owned it when it wasn't the Travelodge but another hotel instead.

Normally I wouldn't put much stock in this stuff but everyone working there has had some kind of experience at some time or another, including me. From voices where there were no people, music playing when there was no music, things moving around, sudden drafts, and the like, everyone has had something happen.

Me? Well, we had security cameras all over the place, and I was flipping through the camera's one night. I saw something I didn't expect when I was looking at the lounge/bar. Something was floating in the top right corner. No, not something, someone. A woman in an old time dress. She was wayyyyy off the floor. Admittedly, I could have been faked, but the question is... was it.

You see, way back when, the windows in the stairwells actually opened. The story goes that a guest caught her husband cheating on her in one of the rooms around 60 years ago, and she jumped out the window to her death.

Not sure how true that is, but I'd say that definitely wasn't the old owner.

[Moirae]

In 2004, I got off work one night and I was hit by a car crossing the street. I don't remember it at all, and the doctors say I wont because its too traumatic and not to try. I was unconscious in a hospital for a full week. I don't remember much about the month after except for vague glimpses of the hospital. I had a metal rod and plate in my left leg, my memory was really messed up for a long time (I had bleeding in my brain on the front and back of my head and a skull fracture. I only remembered all of my childhood about a month ago. I cried when I did), and a spleen injury. I didn't walk without help for a year.

Needless to say, I was forced to stop working for a year because I couldn't even stand without assistance. By the time I was ready to come back, it was too late. The hotel didn't have a job to offer me, so I went looking for a new one. The people I had grown to know and care about for all that time had moved on, and there were new owners now.

And I found my next hotel. And yes, I loved it there too. I know for a fact that if I had stayed, I'd have been given a management position, but I moved to another country to be with my wonderful American husband.

But that hotel came with a bunch of new stories. This was a higher end hotel and is one of the nicest in the city I grew up in. I won't share the name because it would make it too easy and too personal.

But oh, I miss them. I will never stay any other place in the city because I know and trust them well. I count them as close friends.

It was here that I had my first housekeeping training. One of the teenagers that was working the front desk had been giving housekeeping a hard time. So my management had a bright idea. ALL of the front desk clerks would learn housekeeping. So all of us worked housekeeping for two weeks.

You couldn't pay me to do that job. Its harder than any other position I have ever seen in a hotel because people are pigs. Not only that, but they need to work with very harsh chemicals that can eat away at a persons skin to clean everything properly, do heavy lifting and more.

That leads me to my first story at this hotel.

Now please don't take this the wrong way, but we have a native tribe reservation not far from that city, and to put it lightly... they have alot of social problems. The answer has eluded my gvt for a long time, as help has repeatedly been attempted but nothing has been successful. Please understand that this means nothing about any other reservations than this particular one.

The quality of the people that come from that reservation is a serious problem and in the US, it would be considered the worst kind of slum.

Unfortunately, my bright manager wanted to allow them to stay with us so long as they didn't cause problems. Often, they did. This particular incident was to change his tune and give us all directions that we were to be extremely discriminating on who we rented to. Some people with certain last names were even banned.

My coworker rented two rooms to a family with one of these names thinking they looked clean and polite, so why not.

But to say they trashed those rooms doesn't even begin to cover it. They cost the hotel $45,000 in damage. Housekeeping entered both rooms to find that they had smeared feces over the walls, the ceilings, the floors, the mirrors, and everywhere they could reach. They peed on the beds and the chairs. In BOTH rooms.

Both rooms had to be complete stripped, right down to the wallpaper, carpeting, and linoleum replaced. Everything had be repainted and all new furniture bought.

Yes, people actually do these things. I was shocked when I heard. Years in the industry and I've never seen anything like it before or since.

[Moirae]

One night our night auditor was working alone. We always got free soda when we worked so she was in the closed lounge at about 2 am getting a drink.

She walked back out and someone was standing at the desk, so being the bright girl she was, she thought she'd go through the back door to the back office rather than step directly up to him for safety reasons.

She went back and rounded the corner to see him leap over the desk and attempt to yank open the desk drawer to rob us (security was in another area of the building doing his rounds so he wasn't there to help).

She let her adrenaline get away with her and instead of running, she ran up to him and beat the living crap out of him. According to what I have heard, he was laying on the floor with a black eye curled in a little ball when the police got there.

Needless to say, my manager wasn't impressed. After that day, he got an emergency buzzer for us to wear if we were alone and told us to run so that we didn't get hurt.

I have to say though, I was impressed. How often do you see a girl beat the living crap out of a thief like that?

[Moirae]

At some point, the Housekeeping Supervisor didn't want to do it anymore and we had an opening at the desk for a clerk. Of course, she got first dibs and started working with us (she's still a friend to this day).

As usual, she was given her two weeks of training and then put on her first night alone when it was supposed to be really quiet. And it was.

Unfortunately, me being lucky that this hotel was also a block away from my house, I sometimes got calls from the hotel.

I was sitting there happy as can be playing a computer game and got a phone call from her. It went something like this...

Me: "Hello"
FD: "Help me. Its raining in the lobby"
Me: ".... What?!"
FD: "Its raining in the lobby"
Me: "... Hold on. Can you explain?"
FD: "There's water coming down from the ceiling in the lobby." at this point, she's almost crying.
somehow, this struck me as incredibly funny and I was trying hard not to laugh
Me: "Ok, I need details. Can you explain?"

Ok, here's what happened... there are two sets of doors of doors on both sides of the lobby. Its like an airlock. You enter the first, and then the second. You can walk through the lobby, and exit another set of doors just like it from the other side.

Seems a pipe had burst inside one set of doors, and to her perspective, yes it was raining in the lobby, though not directly on her. And the poor thing was all by herself on her first night and having a panic attack.

Me: "So did you call the managers?"
FD: "Yes" in a kind of tearful voice
Me: "Did you call maintenance?"
FD: "Yes. They said they'd get here as soon as they can"
Me: "Well then you'll just have to wait for them because I don't know where the shut off valve is".
FD: "Ok." She sounds kind of pouty now but she hangs up.

And I promptly burst out laughing. Nothing against her but its incredibly funny, especially in that it happened to her the first night she was alone. Now she laughs about it, but back then, it sure scared her.

[Moirae]

Its amazing, its one of the highest starred hotels in the city but it has its own share of problems.

It was one of those quiet nights where nothing happens. There were two people standing outside the one set of doors waiting for a cab.

Working in hotels, you get used to people coming and going from the lobby alot, and you just start to ignore them unless they do something to make themselves noticed (like start a fist fight, trust me, it happens).

A man walked through the lobby and out the set of doors the couple were standing at and the front desk clerk just didn't really notice. Its not a conscious decision to ignore it, it just happens.

Then the woman at the front started screaming at the top of her lungs. The fd clerk sticks her nose out and looks toward the doors, and the man is laying on the ground with his wife standing over him and the man that had just walked through the lobby was nowhere to be seen.

The clerk runs over to take a look, and the old man on the ground has his hands up to his throat and is obviously bleeding. Of course, the clerk runs to call the police and an ambulance.

The man that had walked through the lobby slit 5 peoples throats that night. The old man was just one of them. None of these people died, and the others were all standing at bus stops within a couple blocks of the hotel.

Yes, the police caught him, in no small part because the security in our hotel saw him outside the hotel, chased him down over 5 blocks, tackled him, then held him there until the police got there to take him into custody. That night, the security guards (who were all police in training) were heroes.

[Moirae]

Being that these were several years ago, they are the ones that stick in my mind and I don't remember other stories very well now (though we did once find one of the elevators stacked with stuff from the pool so full you couldn't enter because a team of teenagers in house decided it would be funny. They broke one of the mirrors and a table doing it).

I've since moved to the United States, and now have brand new stories to tell as I've been a reservations agent for about two and a half years. I'll update with new stories tomorrow since I'm off in 10 minutes.

Have a good night.

[emax4]

Man, I dunno how I would have dealt with stuff like that. The hardest part for me to grasp was the slashing incident, which is ironic because I'm reading Tina Fey's book "Bossypants" and she talks about her scar and how she was slashed as a kid. Scary stuff you have to deal with...

[MoonCat]

And that family smearing crap all over everything. The ceiling?? How do you even do that??

[Enjis]

Also...how does a registered guest get away with trashing a room? How do they not get sued for malicious damage? I never understood that part of these stories. The hotel has this enormous bill for the clean-up (of messes that were not just 'accidents') but the 'guest' never seems to be brought up on criminal charges.
What is management thinking in these cases? (I know that 'management' and 'thinking' do not always go together...but sheesh!)

[Tama]

Well, it did involve people from a reservation, and there's a system to go through, tribal council, etc...before much of anything can be done.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Does anyone else think the title of this thread should be "Adventures in Hostility"? It's much more descriptive of the events described.

[Seshat]

And that family smearing crap all over everything. The ceiling?? How do you even do that??

"how" doesn't bother me: lift a kid onto an adult's shoulders, have someone else pass the substance up whenever the kid runs out.

"why". WHY they do it. That is what bothers me.

[Moirae]

lol

Housekeeping didn't realize they'd done it until they left, and then it had to go through the Tribal Counsel and the police before charges were pressed. But, like I said, these families were very poor and they were from that slum (that I'm aware of, its considered the worst reservation in Canada) so they honestly had nothing.

Personally, I think they should have been arrested, but thats just me. I'm not sure what happened to this family after because my GM never brought it up.

You'd be very surprised at how people treat hotel rooms. It never ceases to amaze me the damage people can do because they just don't care, then they're actually surprised when they get dinged for it.

I honestly had a room at the Travelodge get raided by the police once because they believed a drug dealer was selling out of one of the rooms. And actually, he was. And he even tried to fight them. We were lucky he didn't have a gun.

At the other hotel, I've found people naked passed out in the halls. And we had to call the police once on a man who was beating his wife up.

I've had phone calls that were people trying to talk about sex and saying nasty things. This happened in every hotel company I've ever worked for.

You'd think these things would cease to surprise me after a while but sometimes things still happen that just make your eyes bug out of your head.

I wish I knew why people did this stuff. You'd think it would occur to them that being stupid isn't a good way to stay alive. In ancient times, these stupid people would have been eaten by wild animals long before they could have passed on those genes to the next generation.

One thing I don't get is why hotel guests don't think of these things before they come on. There's a reason why hotel staff are alot less understanding than the guest would like them to be. Because of the crap they deal with every day. Eventually, and I know this is wrong, you just no longer care what the guests want. Now I pride myself in my good job so you will ever know that I'm to the point that most guests just annoy me, but its still the truth. Though I have to admit I'm a little more jaded now that I work in a tourist market because I get lied to a bunch of times a day by guests.

See, when it gets within a week of special event periods, suddenly everyone and their dog died or is sick. They knew they were agreeing to a 30 day cancellation policy when they booked, but if we let everyone cancel within that time period, we'd be out possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars. Quite honestly, I don't believe people anymore when they say it because I've been lied to about it so many times. If you can provide proof, then sure I'll cancel it but most people don't have proof, they just don't feel like coming. And they get really belligerent when you tell them no.

Just a note, agreeing when you make the reservation to the cancellation policy is a verbal contract.

I've also become completely convinced that people don't listen when hotel staff talk. I've had to repeat myself as many as 6 times with the exact same information, in exactly the same way.

One of my great annoyances is answering the phone with our spiel that includes the hotel name and the word hotel, and the person on the other end says something dumb like "Yeah, is this Chase bank/so-and-so hairdresser/so-and-so insurance company/etc".

"No, I'm sorry, you have the wrong number. This is a hotel company".

"Its a what?"

"Its a hotel company. We own four hotels in such-and-such area"

"Its a hotel company?"

.................. what did I just say dimwit?

"Yes"

"oh, ok *click*" or just *click*