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always right.

3 (23.1%)

always wrong.

1 (7.7%)

an illusion experienced by those unable to let go of worldly desires.

9 (69.2%)

Total Members Voted: 12

Voting closed: November 11, 2004, 06:29:13 pm

[sailor]

I have, jough, I have!! The next time he does it i'm gonna tell the bartender to bring the fucker an o'douls or something cuase he obviously can't spare the brain cells.

[Carlos del Vaca]

I used to tend bar.  If I made $5 in tips in a night, that was a good night.  That was the kind of place it was.  My most memorable experience was someone threatening to shoot me.

I also worked at a hotel for a while, which was its own flavor of customer service hell.  People need to understand this:  when you ask for, say, a non-smoking room, it's "subject to availability at the time of arrival."  Translation:  if we're all out of non-smoking rooms by the time you get here, you're SOL.

My most memorable tale from that job was a woman who came in with a large party late in the afternoon in the middle of the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, one of our busiest times of the year.  "We have a reservation for two rooms, both doubles, with an adjoining door, first floor facing the courtyard, non-smoking."  I think we had one pair of rooms in the hotel that fit that description completely, and they weren't available.  So I offered her that whole setup on the second floor.  I offered her that setup on the first floor, except one room had a king bed, and we'd bring in a roll-away.  I offered her rooms that were across the hall from each other.  Every time it was "No, that won't do.  This is what we reserved."  I tried to explain "subject to availability at time of arrival"; she accused me of having the rooms and intentionally not giving them to her.  I printed out a list of our rooms, which ones were vacant and which were occupied, and suggested she try to find the exact pair.  Her husband actually suggested I kick someone out of a room so they could have it.  Then the other desk clerk gave one of the rooms I had previously offered them to another guest, and the woman screamed "WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!?"  "Because you said you didn't want it!" was his too-obvious answer.

They finally settled on some "lesser" rooms, but that was the closest I ever came to deleting the reservation on the spot and saying "I obviously can't make you happy.  Get out of my hotel."

[Va]

What confuses me is sushi places. If you sit at the counter there's a tip jar right there but you also have a waitress. Who do you tip how much?

I think it depends on how much work the waitress does.  We generally split a 20% total tip either 10% chefs-10% waitress if we're at a table or 15% chefs-5% waitress if we're at the bar.

[CortJstr]

I also worked at a hotel for a while, which was its own flavor of customer service hell.  People need to understand this:  when you ask for, say, a non-smoking room, it's "subject to availability at the time of arrival."  Translation:  if we're all out of non-smoking rooms by the time you get here, you're SOL.

I guess I don't understand this system. I would think that when I make my reservation 3 months out that a specific room would be blocked out for me depending on what I asked for as opposed to a general admission type set-up.

[Carlos del Vaca]

I guess I don't understand this system. I would think that when I make my reservation 3 months out that a specific room would be blocked out for me depending on what I asked for as opposed to a general admission type set-up.

Well, perhaps things have changed--I worked at this hotel back in 93-94.  Our reservations system noted "preferences," but people weren't booked into specific rooms until arrival (you could block a specific room for a reservation on the day of arrival, but we rarely did so).  Perhaps new and improved computer systems can keep track of requested room types better, but our early-90s crappy DOS-based system did no such thing.

Even with that, if hotels continue the practice of overbooking you could still be screwed.  We would sometimes take more reservations for a given date than we actually had rooms, on the theory that someone would cancel before the date.  On those occasions that everyone actually showed up (it only happened two or three times in the year I worked there), we would have to "walk" the late-arriving guests:  find them a room somewhere else (often at a lower-quality hotel) and pick up the tabl.  Some guests were fine with this--"Free room?  OK."  But often they were fuckin' furious, as you might expect--it's midnight and I have to drive across town to another, shitty hotel?  I found this practice idiotic--in the busiest times, we had no trouble selling rooms to walk-ins. Why overbook and risk pissing someone off, when a same-day cancellation will probably get filled up by a walk-in anyway?

[jough]

Yeah, I don't have a non-smoking *preference*.  It is a requirement, and a hotel that books me for a non-smoking room and then gives MY room, the one I registered for long in advance, to someone walking in off the street is going to have to suffer a little pissed-off-ness, regardless of whether the tool behind the desk is at fault or not.  

That's the thing that people who work in customer service often fail to understand.  To the customer they ARE the hotel.  They may as well be the owner.  They make the decisions about screwing customers over so they should be the ones to deal with the complaints.

Having said that, I've had mostly great experiences at hotels.  Usually the kind of room that I want is available, and there's really very little that is important to me - you're out of rooms with a king sized bed and want to put me in a room with a queen?  Oh well, I guess I'll have to suffer.

Usually when they don't have something I requested on the reservation form (I usually just book online anymore) it's usually something stupid, and they'll usually up- rather than down-grade me.  So I'll wind up in the huge suite with four beds on a higher floor rather than the single little dinky room I requested (and paid for).

Some people have far FAR too specific needs.   The only thing that's important to me is the view (this is really only important if booking a room by the ocean and they try to put you in one overlooking the parking lot) and non-smoking, because let's face it people, smoking rooms tend to stink of both cigarettes and alcohol (and other funk).

Otherwise I don't really care if there's a sofa, how many televisions there are, or if there's a shower-clock-radio (I see this as an option in some hotels more and more now - is that really a big deal?).

[Carlos del Vaca]

True, the vast majority of our guests were happy with their stay.  But, you check in 176 happy guests and 1 bitchy one, guess which one you remember.

I worked the overnight shift on the weekends, during which I wrote up the daily accounting logs.  Graveyard shift was interesting.

[Nabubrush]

I worked the night shift front desk at a hotel for several years, and hotels are run in a manner basically to make the front desk night shift guy want to commit suicide. If everyone on the crew doesn't work together, you get screwed. If one person doesn't stay with the plan, you get screwed. The day shift takes walk-ins when they know full well that the hotel is going to be sold to 110% of capacity. They over-sell all the time. Airlines do it too, but the end result isn't as screwed, because everyone leaves at once. Someone would come into the hotel at 2 in the morning, after their flight had been delayed and they've been flying for twenty hours or so. They'd say "Johnson, king non-smoking" and I'd say "Yeah, I've got no rooms." At that point in the airline model, the airline asks the group of 240 people who is willing to be bumped. In the hotel model, the night clerk might as well say "would you like to just punch me in the face?" because the way hotels are run is indefensible, but the hotel doesn't give a fuck about the night clerk. If I am that customer, I am a little more reasonable, but like Jough I won't sleep in a smoking room.

I can't tell you how many times customers would just heap abuse on me. Screaming, cursing, calling me an idiot, insulting my parents, everything short of physical violence. Toward the end I just started ripping up their reservations and leaving them fucked, because no matter how angry you are, as a customer, you should not be like that.

[slink]

Toward the end I just started ripping up their reservations and leaving them fucked, because no matter how angry you are, as a customer, you should not be like that.

Yea. I'd rather go sleep on a bench than be a dick to the poor guy who has that job. Unless, they are being a dick, in which case, they just brought it on themselves, and I'm not going to be insulted or pushed around either.
it really does amaze me how unreasonable people can be though.

[AlohaDawg]

Toward the end I just started ripping up their reservations and leaving them fucked, because no matter how angry you are, as a customer, you should not be like that.

Yea. I'd rather go sleep on a bench than be a dick to the poor guy who has that job. Unless, they are being a dick, in which case, they just brought it on themselves, and I'm not going to be insulted or pushed around either.
it really does amaze me how unreasonable people can be though.

And the thing is, no matter how you treated him, if there aren't any rooms, you're sleeping on the bench anyhow...

But Slink - you don't actually sleep, do you?

[Nabubrush]

Well, if we didn't have rooms, we had to call around all the hotels in town to find rooms for the customer, and of course we would pay for them. And I really shouldn't have ended my employment there by going out of my way to fuck the customer, but the abuse and scorn just got to be too much. My next step was going to be to commit credit card fraud, because of course all these rooms were reserved with credit cards.

I guess I should have just said to the shitty customers "you realize I have your credit card number, don't you?" or just posted it somewhere on an internet message board.

[slink]

But Slink - you don't actually sleep, do you?

I go through cycles of narcolepsy and insomnia. It would probably be easier to deal with if it was always the same!

And yea, that's what I never understoof about people being total dicks to people in the service industry. If it's food based - nasty things can be done. If it's a hotel or shop or anything, then credit fraud can happen... The only thing stopping these is people not being dicks in general, and yet...