SC Busted: or is he?

[Getoutofmylobby]

Wake up calls are the bane of any hotel's existence. One of the worst SC's we deal with is the one who misses his/her wake up call.

That is why smart travelers bring alarm clocks or hey, use the one built in to your cell phone rather than rely solely on the potentially malfunctioning hotel phone system or the degenerate crackheads that hotels like to hire.

Then there is the type of people who look for the slightest problem and, right or wrong, use that as leverage to get a discount/something for free/sympathy.

That is where this guy falls in. For the past week he has paid for three rooms and every night he calls me for a wake up call for all of his rooms. I usually write them down and leave them for the night shift guy to enter as punishment (he is always late) but last night, knowing about the time change, i set them myself. Silly me to think ahead to try to prevent conversations like this one. Instead of calling, the guy walked down to berate me in person.

Me: Hi, can i help you..
Guy: I got a bone to pick with you fella...
Me: (uh oh)
Guy: You didn't give us our call this morning and we were an hour late to the job site today because of it.
Me: That's impossible, i set them myself, hold on a second.

When the wake up calls are set, the time and the room are printed out on an ancient dot-matrix printer. Half the time the thing doesn't work but I was lucky tonight.

I showed him where all three rooms were "set by console" by me just before i left last night and where the next morning all three wake up calls were "NO ANS."

Me: (as i'm highlighting all three "NO ANS") (yeah, i'm a jerk) Looks like you got them, and the phone called each room three times after that.
Guy: Well, somebody here messed up because we were late. Somebody is going to have to answer for it. We could have lost money.
Me: I'm sorry but I don't know what to tell you sir, to us it looks like you just didn't answer them. Let me set your calls for tomorrow morning right now.
Guy: You better hope a manager is working tomorrow.
Me: There will be, and his name is ____.
Guy: Now, how about you get me some bottle waters to take up to my room?
Me: (grumble)

The phone automatically changes the time for daylight savings. Even if this year it is different. And the same printout shows where other people got their wake up calls. And the same manager he is going to yell at tomorrow morning was here this morning. Why didn't he say anything then?

I know exactly what is going to happen. Dude is a Diamond VIP member and as soon as he mentions to the manager that he didn't get his wake up calls, blah blah blah, the manager will give him SOMETHING. Maybe not a free night but a discount at least.

And, even though we have documented evidence that he is clearly wrong, say it with me, the customer is ALWAYS right...

[Shironu-Akaineko]

What does that guy need to wake up, a bucket of ice down his trousers?

I need my Mickey Mouse alarm clock to ring ONCE to wake up. And I'm a pretty heavy sleeper, I can sleep trought any noise, tv, music, a whole party around me...

If I have an important thing to do that morning and I hear a sharp sound next to my head, I will get my lazy lady lump offa the bed.

Guh, you poor dear, you have to actually encourage that immature, selfish behavior. (manager payoffs with discount/free stuff)

[marlovino]

I say someone should check if he pulls the 'NO ANS' thing again. If he does, send someone immediately (if not sooner) to there rooms and give a courtesy wake-up knock on their doors until someone answers.

He may be pissed, but you can then point out that he said he didn't want to miss his wake-cup call. You just made sure he didn't.

[AirHostess]

As a frequent traveller I always take my own alarm clock! Don't want to miss the 3am wake up!

[Zinjadu]

I don't travel that much, but when I do, I always take my own trusty alarm clock with me cuz I know it works! It just makes sense. But we can't expect customers to understand that, can we?

[Kara]

So Mr. Important Businessman doesn't have a cell phone to set an alarm on? Yeah, I work for a wireless provider, I know for a fact that every business customer has 'em. I set my actual alarm clock every night, but I set my phone too, in case of a power outage in the middle of the night that could cost me my job.

[ArenaBoy]

Geez, guy doesn't bring his own alarm eh? Now I have a problem with alarms. I am a heavy sleeper, a very heavy one. I have 6 alarm clocks in my bedroom and they are starting to lose their effect, I can sleep through anything and I mean anything. I once had a policecar up the street from me flashers and sirens on and it still didn't wake me up. 8 alarm clocks here we come...

[Broomjockey]

I can sleep through anything. Fire trucks, police, house-shaking thunderstorms, cars backing through the back-yard fence, all of these have failed to wake me. There is only one thing capable of reliably stirring me from my slumber.



The dreaded ALARM CLOCK. It's the weirdest thing. It's also caused me to desire the imminent and painful death of my roommate on several occassions, as he'll let it ring for several minutes at an obscenely early time, or even leave it set when he goes off for the weekend. It doesn't matter how softly the alarm rings either. Even if it's in the basement. Grrr.

[myswtghst]

I'm a pretty deep sleeper, but my alarm only has to go off once or twice before I'm up. I had a roomie in college who had an alarm so loud that he had it in his 2nd floor bedroom and I could hear it in the basement of our townhouse--it would go off and he still wouldn't wake up. The only sure way to wake him up was to sneak into his room, get him to open his eyes, then put a lit cig in his hand. He wouldn't let it go to waste.

Slightly OT, but...

In our building, they just installed an intercom/buzzer system, which is INSANELY loud (I can hear it when any of my neighbors gets buzzed, and my buzzer always scares the crap outta me). They didn't put names on the buzzers, just apartment numbers. This has led to my neighbors' friends and families hitting my buzzer instead of the correct one. The other day, I got woken up at 4:20AM as some drunk guys hit the buzzers for every apartment over and over again, as they couldn't remember where "Mike" lived. I only know who they were looking for as they were standing under my window, yelling about it the whole time. Lucky thing, they left about 1 minute before I lost it and called the cops.

[Imogene]

My brother and my phone when we lived in St Louis had a horribly loud ringer. I could hear it from outside when it rang, even when it was set to the quietest level it could be. I jumped just about every time it rang, once it got moved to my computer desk from my brother's bedroom.