Welcome to the WTF?

I guess Welcome to the Parker, the new show on Bravo, is like working at a real hotel. The show is getting better. All I know is some of the things you wouldn't think would really happen at a hotel of that caliber actually are the most true.

My favorite so far is there is a bellman/reception dude that leads a high-end travel agent (and her girlfriends which is totally believable that someone would cash in on every freebie they could get) who is checking out the hotel in order to sell is, this guy, he takes them to the wrong building and has major issues finding their room! I've seen that happen in a regular old rectangular hotel! My last hotel had no room #911 for telephone mishaps so it was renamed #920, right there between 909 and 913.

What's bullshit is in another scene, after exclaiming that she didn't know how to get back) this Travel Agent is made to wait for 30 minutes in the lobby for a Sales Manager to give her a tour. Fire that person please. But then hilariously true is that the Sales Manager walks in on not one but two occupied rooms! It really shouldn't happen. People get pissed about that kind of thing. The Travel Agent is like "Shit!" That's pretty mcuh the reaction.

So the Sales Manager decides to send her an amenity after other certain things go wrong for the TA. Now she decides to send an amenity? How about at check in, fuckin idiots.

Amenties are like the cool thing to do at a hotel, btw. I mean for us normal people that aren't used to spending $100 on a bottle of Moet. They are annoying because you have to coordinate the kitchen with front desk to make sure to deliver it after the room is ready (we never say clean or dirty, it's ready or not available) but before the guest arrives. It's more complicated than it should be. But the point is, high-end hotels who want to impress send their VIP's (as Miss TA was classified by the GM) amenties!

Oh, I'm not going to go on. But I will keep watching and commenting because it is entertaining. Damn producers stole my idea!

Anger Issues

I have all these stories in my head, but I have been having some problems actually writing them lately. I find that all I want to do is bitch, but I guess I can write whatever I want.
Here are some things I've been wanting to bitch about:

FAKE PROMOS

I assume this goes in a lot of businesses, but I just never realized how rampant they are in hotels.
Example: hotel issues gift certificates

I have become in charge at my new job to print out all the gift certificate requests from my superiors. They get asked say from a charity or something and we send them a free one night stay for promotional purposes. HOWEVER when it comes time for someone to actually redeem the stupid thing I am also in charge of deciding to accept it. The thing is, simply put, hotels make a report of the Average Daily Rate (ADR) every night. There is a goal to make it as high as possible. Having a zero rate on one room will severely hamper that goal, it's simple math. SO I am only really allowed to accept a gift certificate on nights where we are not sold out because if we are we know we are going to sell the last few rooms for thousands of dollars (exaggeration).
What I don't like is that I have to be the one to tell these poor people that even if we have a room for them, sorry, your gift certificate is no good. Oh the fights I've had.

PROMOTIONAL PACKAGES

I could not believe my last hotel really did this. They issued PR statements that our such-and-such company was doing a really cool package for say kids and grandparents or something. For a certain rate you would get a bunch of amenities like popcorn, a movie, maybe a camera, whatever. So then, as any normal person would think, someone buys the package. When it comes time for the hotel to check them in, uh, we don't have the amenties to give them or the front desk agent has no idea what the stupid thing even is. The whole point was that the hotel said we were selling somthing just to make us look good and then forgot to tell the agents about it. Of course, a bellman or concierge is sent to the local store to go buy the stuff and the grandparents get a bit upset for having any kind of frustration. Understandably so.

Anyway, I like to complain about how hotels are run sometimes but what gets me the most on our end is communication or lack thereof. Is it really that difficult for departments to communicate? Even when we do get things said to the right person it's constantly a guessing game that the person will follow up. It's really hard to find good help especially for manual labor and for operations. For every 5 front desk agents hired maybe one will turn out to give fuck about their job. Why? Because they are 19 and still in school and who wants to be bitched out 8 hours a day because every single guest inevitably has some issue?

No hotels are run perfectly. I have worked for like 5 different ones and it just doesn't matter. Certain ones are better at others in different areas. People have expectations because the farther we get away from 9/11 the more we charge for a room. If you are trying to stay in a major city, you are paying something pretty significant for a room, probably paying for parking, and definitely you are expected to tip on top of the gratuites already charged to you for something like room service.

What hotels love are business travelers. All they want is a good bed, free internet, and some coffee. If you are someone just traveling through, and we know we are most likely never going to see you again, and God forbid you're like the 100th person that day that booked third party (Expedia anyone?) you may not get a very happy front desk agent (reminding you, he's like 20 and in college for something else and not getting paid extra to be nice to you and probably already put his two weeks in) expect what you paid for. That's the bottom line.

See how bitchy I feel lately? BUT, hotels suck you in. I love my discounts and being able to travel cheaply and I love that at least now I don't deal with the general public much.

I will leave you with this little anecdote:

My boyfriend got a complaint that some lady was upset that her newspaper was dirty. Who complains about that? Well, complainers do.

Fightin' Round the World

All right. So I decided I'm just going to spill it. I've already told plenty of people anyway so it's only right that I confess just how much I dislike Russell Crowe.

Don't get me wrong. I love Gladiator just like anybody else. He's a good actor. But he's a dick, plain and simple.

One of the first people I met at my new hotel job where I worked for almost 5 years was a blonde girl with big boobs and a big heart. She is now one of my very best friends, and I live with her currently in my new city. She is one the nicest people ever and everybody loves her. She's great at her job and when I first started she was a supervisor and eventually was promoted to run the front office. She and I have lots of stories together regarding guests, good and bad, but this was by far the worst.

One Sunday I came into work expecting to have an easy day as Sundays usually were. You get a shitload checkouts (which means a shitload of complaints), but very few checkins normally. What I didn't realize was that Russell Crowe's band who was playing a few shows nearby that week (you know the one) had a large following, some of the most pathetic type of fans I'd ever seen. For four straight hours I "dealt" these ladies who were trying to check in but because it was well before checkin time and not everybody had checked out yet, and we certainly hadn't cleaned all the rooms yet, plus the linen wasn't ready, and everybody arrived at once, well it was a bit of a mess. The most frustrating part was that it turns out these ladies were sleeping four to a room. That's not the frustrating part. They didn't even know each other! They had met on the internet through some fan club website and decided to split a room. I'm not sure when the last time these people traveled, but some were literally wearing housecoats if that gives you any idea.
Because his band was playing so nearby to our hotel of course these ladies wanted to know if HE was staying with us. I knew he was, but it is (for future reference) illegal for me to give any information about any guest. I only tell this story now because after that day he made it pretty fucking clear he was staying there.

This guy decides to flaunt that he's staying at my hotel. He makes it no secret whatsoever what room staying he's in, and my coworkers and I spend the next day fighting with the ladies that 'no, they cannot not move to his floor to be nearer to him.' One lady even made a shrine of the Australian fuck on her hotel door which we made her remove. Not only that, but pretty quickly these freaks are not getting along. Imagine that! They're kicking each other out of their rooms and people are crying everywhere. But the show they exclaim is amazing. They can't wait to go the one tomorrow!

So us hotel people are looking forward to the day these people are going to check out. Oh no! Russell has added two more shows at the end of the week! Did the fact that they had flights to catch deter them from staying? Yeah, right. In one instance one lady asked me to make a reservation for the end of the week. She was still going to fly home BUT Russell had asked her personally to come back and so she was. I totally believed her too because here he was prancing around and loving the attention. Why wouldn't he ask his fans to spend thousands of dollars on last minute flights and hotel reservations to see him?

Here's where he goes over the top. Every night after his show he makes the venue cater to him hours after the show has ended when they are basically closed. Sources tell me he was getting wasted every night. This is around the time his wife is pregnant with their first child. He did call her everyday at least, as I could tell by his bill. (How tempted was I to sell that phone number!)

So one night (assumingly the venue got sick of him and shut him down) he decides he's going to have our hotel host his little after-party. My friend happened to be the overnight manager that night. When he stumbles back to the hotel he demands 25 hamburgers (for like 4 people), a bottle of Jack and a case of Coronas. The thing is, it was well after the legal time to sell liquor. She had to make a decision. Piss off an A-list actor or piss off the Bar manager who would fear losing his liquor license. What would you do? Well, the other problem she had was that she couldn't get to the locked-up cold beer. She could only find some warm beer, so she iced it down as best she could and hoped it was cold enough. She went up with the room service server as a good manager should to deliver everything.

Russell Crowe took one long sip of beer and looked at her in disgust. "Congratulations on getting the hamburgers up here, but this beer tastes like piss! You can forget the $100 I was going to tip."

Little did he know she wouldn't have gotten the tip, he only screwed our server.

6 months later Russell Crowe threw a phone a New York hotel concierge. The concierge sued and won. Good for him.

My elevator story

Every hotel I have worked at has had an elevator. Even my little Travelodge by the highway with 3 floors had an elevator. People, maintaining these things are a bitch. But not as messed up as maintaining swimming pools. (I'll leave those stories for another post.)

But elevators are necessary so of course the hotel pays a small fortune for elevator repairmen to do maintenance, keep it currently certified, and fix them when they break down. And they always break down.

My last hotel, my funky urban hotel, had 5 elevators. Four were for guests and one for us employees. I always hate the service elevator by the way. Think about it, garbage and food getting transported by the same elevator? Ew. (Don't worry, soiled linens have a chute and do not go anywhere but straight to the laundry. Along with all the lost teddy bears, nightgowns, underwear, and other stuff that people leave in their beds. Oops.)

So I'll get to the point. Most of the time elevators stop working, people are in them. If it's a busy weekend and one malfunctions, well, what are the odds? Of course the hotel always comps them and kisses their ass, whatever has to be done, because for those claustrophobes (and opportunists) it can be a bit of a nightmare for the hotel. But honestly, us hotel workers are rolling our eyes, like, not again.

(Elevators are mostly on lifts these days, so it's not like Speed where the cable's going to snap and everybody goes crashing down. That would suck.)

So when I got stuck in an elevator on vacation I just sat down and hung out. I was at a sister property, I was by myself and felt pretty safe, just annoyed because the bar wasn't going to be open too much longer.

Well, half an hour went by. This elevator is covered in mirrors so it's hard not to pose and make weird faces. The hotel kept in contact with me telling me finally that they had to call the fire department and they were on their way.

When they arrived I realized that they were coming in through the roof. I was going to get rescued movie star style! So some hot sexy fireman (I assumed) sent a ladder down and one climbed down so he could hold it steady. For a brief moment I panicked. Not because of the ladder per se, but I was wearing a dress! I scurried up and two firemen helped me cross from the roof and climb out the shaft. A security lady started apologizing profusely.

I said, "I'm OK. Is the bar still open?"

She laughs, "Oh, I knew you were all right. We had you on camera. We'll keep the bar open a little longer for you."

Fuck!

Tip your bellman please

I've only worked at hotels for a million years and I am just now finding out how bellman make their money. Obviously people tip them. But I'm talking about the money that keeps them doing the bellman/doorman thing for life.

I always wondered about my last Bell Captain. He had like a family of five to feed, and I never saw him actually escort guests to or from their room. Yeah, he'd do stuff like check bags or whatever. He wasn't lazy or anything like that. He just delegated.

So how the hell do you feed all these mouths on $15/hour and a random $2 tip?
I was talking to an old friend who used to be a bellman and a doorman and who just got a new job as a bell captain and what do you know? Bellman get paid to do just about everything. If the front desk has to move a guest for any reason and the bellman has to bring new keys, the hotel is paying them to do that! Not all hotels, but the big ones do.

Another way they make cash is by porterage charges. This one I knew. If a couple who is getting married has their people stay at a hotel, and they want to have some gift bags delivered (and your damn right that if there any "extra" gift bags the hotel workers will distribute them amongst themselves unless they're lame bags filled with bottles of sparkling cider as opposed to champagne) there is a charge per bag for the bellman to deliver them. Or if a big tourist group that's coming in on a bus or something, and they are going to have 100 pieces of luggage, the bellman will get so much per bag to deliver. That makes sense, right? What doesn't make sense is that my friend who now works at this huge hotel said that last year the biggest delivery charge was $19,000. American money! Who has almost 20 grand laying around just to pay bellman???

Anyway, the other way they make their living is to basically extort it. My friend paid for his promotion at our last place! Bellman make good money but doormen make a shitload! When someone drives a flashy car they are not going to have it parked where no one can see it. That's ludicrous! They are going to pay the doorman to "leave it up front." That's easily understood I guess. But to get that job someone basically has to die or get fired. When my friend saw his opportunity for the doorman job he paid our Bell Captain $200 to get the job! Yeah, I know! Was my friend upset? No. Did my Bell Captain take his family out to Red Lobster that night? Probably.

But this does mean that you should not tip! They make like $5/hour like a server. No tips, no rent getting paid, and then they will have to resort to robbing people. And it will be your fault.

Just a heads up

Do you ever wonder what happens to your car when you valet it?

Sometimes the company has to park it a few blocks away. Sometimes they "leave it up front" for a little while maybe as a coutesy, which should be highly tipped for, or maybe cause they're being lazy.

Sometimes these guys get you a damn parking ticket and don't say a word.

Also, the guys they've got parking cars are either young or foreign. If there is a new scratch or dent, it probably was them. If your change is missing or worse, well...

But the worst things that can happen sometimes do. The following things have happened:

- a car got backed into a building.

-keys were left in the ignition of a very expensive automobile, car stolen.

-two indentical rental cars were given to the wrong people.

-a set of keys was left in a car that had already headed home. The driver was four hours away before he realized. Mucho money was paid out.

So I'm just sayin, if you must valet, for the love of God, keep a spare set of keys on you, have car insurance, and don't leave valuables in your car.

The rat, the girl, and the hallway

My new job doesn't allow for nearly enough free time to browse the internet let alone blog about hotels. It's a shame because I often experience things that remind me of my past hotel life. Without getting into too much detail I am working for the same company that I worked for 5 years ago, but I'm getting some of the exact same guests I got for the past 4.5 years. (I know that doesn't make much sense.)

So I will be getting into some celeb stories soon, believe me I dying to tell, but I am just being careful and thinking about how I'm going to publish them without getting anyone pissed off.

For now, you can take a little journey with me as I recall cornering a rat.

I mentioned my boyfriend is a hotel person? I think so. We got to live at his new resort, the same one where the drunk couple stole a golf cart and got arrested for a DUI.
So this same resort is kinda in the middle of nowhere. I was enjoying my last few days of hanging by the pool and using the sauna. I was walking down the hall when I pass a couple who mentioned there was a rat, not a mouse, in the hall. They were so blase that it took me a minute to register. I walked a bit farther and sure enough a rat, not a mouse, was sniffing around. This is by no means a dirty hotel. I jogged towards it to grab the nearest house phone and call my friend, who was the manager at the time, to let them know. The rat, not a mouse, ran away from me and I realized I could just keep walking towards it until it dead ended. I did that, and this is a very long hallway might I add, and it found a way into the game room. I just stood there in the doorway with a threatening look on my face. At no point did I think I had the option to just walk away. Nobody besides that first couple was witnessing this. It was just me and the rat, you know? He was scared of me. I just felt bad because I knew he got in by accident and we both sensed his ultimate demise.

I didn't wait around while the guys who came decided what to do. I had done my part. I had kept the hotel from comping a shit load of people.

The EVIL department

Well, it's happened. I am working at a hotel again. I am not in "operations" which is where all the action takes place, but I'm sure some good stories will come out of this job. However, from what I can tell, this is by far the most smoothly run hotel I have encountered. Ever.

So I am now in the "evil" department. Sales. In every hotel I've worked at the front office abhorrs the sales department. Sales are the spawns of Satan in fact. They book all this business, which is good, but then they get to leave. And the front office is stuck dealing with the egos and the very specific demands that all front office agents can't stand.

Some of our favorite requests:

Late check outs - anyone who's on vacation and has a late flight does not want to vacate the room at the stated time. I get it. I understand. We don't care that you ask. We just care that you don't understand why we say no when we do.
I promise its not because we're mean and find it amusing to kick you out (well, we kind of do want you to leave if you've been a particularly handful of a guest like the guy who complained that the elevator certificate expired two months ago and we should probably look into that) but its because other people need to check in. Housekeeping are people too, with lives even, and don't want to be cleaning rooms til 9:00pm at night.
Anyway, the second we say it's going to be a fee all of the sudden the person is cool with leaving on time, which is noon and is not all that early. Oh, and we'll store your bags. If a hotel doesn't offer at least that then you are getting screwed and/or staying at a Motel 8. (I once had a hotel store a hard cover of a jeep I had rented. That's service!)

Early check in - I don't know of a hotel that won't check you in early if there is a room available. But the only way to guarantee it is to to buy the room for the night before. Hotels are a business. Shocking, I know. If they can sell every room, and have everyone actually show up, it's called a perfect sell. It rarely happens. And yet, people don't understand why when they requested an early check in (key word is request) that it may not happen. This goes for all requests actually. You know why we can't guarantee anything? Because people are self-absorbed flakes. If a person wants to stay another day and the hotel is sold out, we can't force them on to the street. This happens a lot, especially in convention cities.

Oh, I should mention what a "walk situation" is now. I personally can't get over the shock and anger some people go through when they get walked.

So, like I said, people are flakes. So hotels purposely oversell their hotels in order to try and sell out. I am not exaggerating when I say my last hotel averaged like 5 no-shows a night. And these people put down credit cards! I know, it's weird. So when all the peeps actually show up, the hotel is like shit, we have to walk someone. Guess what, the hotel is paying on this one. And if you have another night to spend, you will get treated like royalty upon your return (if the hotel knows what it's doing.) Um, I'm game if someone wants to bump me somewhere and pay for it.

The problem is when either the guest is not paying, maybe their company is, and its late and they just want to go to bed. Tired and cranky people? NO thank you. Or the person had some kind of plans revolving around our hotel and it fucks up their world. This is what happened to me the first time I walked a lady. She started crying because all her friends were staying there and it was like their annual girls trip or something. Anywho, shit happens. It sucks, but life will go on.

When I was an agent I was always trying to be helpful. There was this lady who booked a suite and was having some sort of party. OK, fine. She wanted to know exactly which suite it was. I assigned a room and told her. Fast forward two weeks and she checks in, but it's not the suite I assigned. She asks for the manager. Who moved her suite? Apparently she had printed the room number on the invitations. Now, she was in the exact same kind of room, BUT it was a different floor. Now my manager and the lady are pissed at me. Fuck, I was trying to help. But the people in the original suite stayed another day and it all got rearranged. Yeah, this is why we dont guarantee anything. It's impossible.

Not too long ago my friend who's a manager at a hotel had a guy who was staying a lot while he was shooting a new TV show. He was making a lot of last minute reservations. He calls one day and needs a suite on a day they are sold out of suites. He refuses to take a standard room. My friend says that's his only option. He threatened to call the CEO of the company who is a friend of his. Guess what? He did. He got his suite and some poor couple or family probably got bumped. Fucker.

Anyway, the whole point is that hotel Sales departments get all this business and have all these signed contracts and sometimes they involve getting someone a free upgrade or something, but in the end they are not dealing with it. So I'm a sucky sales person now. But I don't have to work weekends, or holidays, or overnights...

My First DB

OK. I wasn't there. I haven't actually seen a dead body besides at a funeral. There is nothing funny about it. I am not relating the story for amusement but for the sheer fact that it is something that happens.

I was working at Travelodge. I was out of town this particular weekend, and my roommate was nice enough to work a double to cover for me.

Since there was always wacky people staying with us, I gave a call on my drive home that Sunday to ask how the weekend went.

Me: Any crazy shit happen this weekend?

Roommate: Actually...well...I checked in this guy last night.

Me: What's wrong? You sound weird. (My roommate was one of those people that was never shocked.)

R: I checked this guy in to 313. He, uh, Gus had to call an ambulance last night. (Gus was our overnight manager with diabetes who ate too much chocolate, and we were afraid he was going to lose a foot any day.)

Me: Gus went to the hospital? (My first thought is: Poor, roomie. He must have gotten called in to work or something.)

R: Noooo. He had to call 911 for room 313. Apparently the guy called down and asked him to call an ambulance because he was bleeding.

I mentioned in a previous post that my boss was a doctor waiting to start his residency.

Me: Well, what happened? Is he OK?

R: Gus called Rameez after he called 911, and Rameez came right away. When Rameez went to check out the room...it was covered in blood.

Me: Like how much? (I'd never heard my roommate sound so freaked out.)

R: Like the entire room. Floor to ceiling. There was a broken coffee pot in the sink. Rameez says he thinks the guy tried commit suicide with the broken glass and may have lost about 80% of his blood.

Me: (Silent)

I am stunned. I'm like 20 years old and barely even able to understand the concept of death really. When I get back to work the next day my roommate and Rameez are cleaning "the room." (This is a small hotel and the housekeeping sucks, asking them to clean blood would be like asking them to sing showtunes or something.)

I finally see Rameez and he's wearing one of those surgical type masks. He looks tired.

Me: So...he lost a lot of blood?

Rameez: There was a lot of broken glass in the room from the coffee pot it seems. (He gets quiet.) I don't think he could have lived.

Room 313 was out of order for 2 months.

Celebs I have Met

That's the first question people ask me when I tell them where I worked. Something about my last hotel definitely attracted the big names. Of course, if they were musicians and on tour they would come really late because they would be driving in from after their gig somewhere. Lots of them though would just check in under their own name in the middle of the day. You would get lots of guests going, "Is that Dan Aykroyd?" "I just took the elevator witrh James Blunt!" All you could do was smile. I can neither confirm nor deny, sorry.

I've been wanting to write about the really juicy stuff that celebs do like the one A-lister who made my friend cry because he was such a prick (that story will be told soon), but I'm still unemployed and if God forbid I have to work in a hotel again I am going to hold off, just in case.
So here's a brief list of celebs I have had an interaction with:

I ordered a sandwich for Art Garfunkel
I was working an overnight shift and it's a skeleton staff at night, so our cranky Operator takes the food orders for Room Service. Mr. Garfunkel comes to the desk looking all peeved and tells me that he's having communication problems with our order taker, and he just wants a sandwich. I hadn't been working there long, and he looks just like he always did, so I was a bit in awe. My reply? "It's very nice to meet you Mr. Garfunkel." What??? Fuck!!He just kind of mumbled thanks, but "can you take my order please?" (I don't remember what he ordered, but I hope he enjoyed it.)

I asked Ben Harper to sign a paid out slip
I was at the front desk and the concierge told me that Ben Harper and his girlfriend Laura Dern were going to be arriving soon in a limo he had ordered. The limo was to be charged to the room, but I needed a signature to do that so the driver could get paid. The concierge left me the slip knowing he was arriving late. I was so freakin happy I was going to get to meet him that I didn't realize I wasn't supposed to ask Ben, oh no, I was supposed to get the signature from the manager. Well, maybe I did know, but I asked Ben anyway just so I could say I met him. (He said hi and went to sign for it and then it kind of dawned on him that he doesn't do that kind of thing, you know, take care of his own money.)

Kristy Swanson hugged me
I got involved in creating her reservation for some reason I'm still not sure. So when she was checking in I was working, and I got up to greet her to the hotel. She threw her arms around me like we'd been friends for years. Sweet girl.

I brought John Mayer a phone charger
We knew he was coming in. I'm not the biggest fan in the world, but he looks just like my ex-boyfriend so I was intrigued. When he arrived he came to me to check in and asked if we had a box of chargers people left. We do, but it was in housekeeping so I was going to have to go through it. He drew me a picture of it! of the phone charger! I didn't have the heart to tell him that I had the same phone and knew exactly what it looked like. When I delivered it to his room he opened his door, he smiled at me, and he said "Thank you! You saved my day!"
Ha! Take that Jessica!

Bill Murray talked to me
I was a concierge at the time, and I knew Bill was inhouse. For some reason he called me saying how nice we were to extend his stay last minute, but he decided to stay by the airport. He was really just making sure we knew he wasn't going to use the room unlike some assholes who think if they just leave we won't charge them but how do we know it's unoccupied? Anyway, a few minutes later he was about to walk out the front door and he caught my eye (because I was staring), so he changed direction and came over to say thanks again. Then he said, "Are you in love? You look like you're in love!" (Yeah, with Bill Murray. He's one of my favorites.)

I checked in Jason Lewis without knowing who he was
I didn't have HBO like ever in my life, so I was not hip to the Sex and the City until I got them on DVD. One Sunday this incredibly good looking guy and his friend check in with me. I'm looking at him, and I'm thinking this guy is freakin hot! He asks me where to go on a Sunday night, I mention a few places and then I mention he could talk to the concierge. He wanders over there, and my doorman comes up to me. "I think that guy's on Sex and the City." I asked how would he know that. He tells me his sister and his girlfriend watch it all the time. I just shrugged. Years later I'm watching my DVD's and I realize it was him. Fuck!


See these were very harmless stories but still fascinating all the same, right? Well sorry to bore you. They were fascinating to me dammit!

We know more than you think

It was late one evening and I was the supervisor on duty at my old Comfort Inn gig.

The building had two wings. The original one had no separate climate control units, either the heat/AC was on or it was off. In the spring and fall months we tried to check most guests into the newer wing which did have individual units in the rooms.

A gentleman and his wife check in with me, I put them in the new wing, and everything goes A-OK.

In the evenings we did not have an engineer on duty, he was on call. In the event of burnt out lightbulbs and various things like that, we took care of ourselves. If a room had bigger problems, we just switched the guests to a different room.

A few minutes after checking in the couple, the husband calls me.

Great, I think. They only call right away if something's wrong with their room. It's the least desired phone call to answer.

"Ma'am," he says to me. "Our room is way to warm!" He sounds pretty pissed.

I am not about to call the engineer if all it ends up being is some idiot who doesn't know how to turn his A/C on. It happens all the time.

I tell him someone will be right up, and I ask a coworker to cover the desk.

I'm about halfway down the hall when I hear moaning and grunting, the unmistakable sounds of people screwing.

I get to the couple's room, stop in front of it, and realize it's the couple.

C'mon! I mean, I just told them someone was coming to their room. I wonder if maybe they were trying to get in a quickie before someone knocked, to create some kind of excitement I suppose.

I stand there for a moment, listening to the wife moaning really loudly, and I decide I cannot just wait for them to be done.

I go back to the desk, and I am too embarrassed to give them a call. I really don't want to go back either. I decide I'll wait for them to call again wondering where somebody is. They have to call back, right? Not my fault they decided to fuck when they were expecting someone.

They never call.

The next morning I'm back in and the horny couple checks out with me. Fuck! They recognize me.

"Hey! I complained about our room being too warm last night and no one ever came to take a look!"

As I look back and forth from husband to wife images fill my head of them doing it.

"I'm sorry, sir!" I apologize. I am at a loss. If I tell them I tried to help but didn't, what do I say?

He just sort of grunts and they walk away.

Lesson to you: We hotel people know that after we check in a couple that they are probably going to screw immediately upon entering the room. Watch the volume, k?

Option C

The boyfriend started a new hotel job last week. It moved us across the country, and it is a resort, so I figured he would get me some stories out of it. It took 5 days.

Couple Checking In with boyfriend: Would you recommend we rent a car or take taxis everywhere?

Boyfriend (thinks for a moment): Well, if you're only here for a day I think taxis would be best.

CCI: Thank you!

The next day...

The couple found option C.

Apparently the couple did not decide to take option taxis or option rent a car. They proceeded to get extremely drunk and stole a golf cart. They made it 3 miles into town on said golfcart. Mr. Crazy drives up to a very recent accident and asks the police if he can help in some way. Mr. Crazy claims to be an employee of the hotel (as if this qualifies him to perform EMT services.)

The police arrest him for drunk driving.

The hotel charges him several hundred dollars for the damage to the golf cart.

Mrs. Crazy bails out husband and sheepishly pays room bill.

Lesson: Listen to your front desk agent. He may be new, but he's got your best interests in mind.

Best Complaint Ever

We hoteliers hear lots and lots and lots of complaints. It's part of the job really, and at some point you develop a sort of standard reply for every different kind of complaint you can get.

The most popular:

Guest: I don't like my room (either the view, the number of beds, the size, the location).
Reply: your room type (or whatever) is not guaranteed. We only guarantee that you have a room. (People don't really like that answer usually. But it's the truth.)

Guest: I didn't order that movie (um, yeah you did, we even know you ordered Fuck My Wife Please and watched it for 8 minutes but who are we to argue).
Reply: I will remove that from your bill sir.

Guest: I am not paying for this phone call (who uses hotel phones anymore? They are notoriously overpriced.)
Reply: I can take off 40% (this is after we show them that they did indeed make the call to Ireland or somewhere fucking far but they keep screaming about the $500 bill so after while we wear down).

Anyway, this complaint takes the cake, and the most disturbing part of this is that it's not uncommon!

Guest: The water level is too high in the toilet and my balls are getting wet.

Reply: Uhhhh

Employee of the year goes to...

Our overnight Security officer won Employee of the Year. At first I was disappointed, I seriously wanted my supervisor to win because she is the best boss ever. But when you think about it, anybody who has this job, shows up on time every day, and doesn't ever complain is a valuable employee.

This is the guy who has to deal with drunk bar patrons who are insistent that they are not in fact too drunk for another one. He has to catch the thieves who walk in our bar and steal ladies (unwatched) purses. He's the one who gets called to deal with noise complaints which can be anything from a big party to a loud stereo left on to people fighting or fucking. He's probably seen more naked people than any other employee.* He's the guy that has to deal with the drunk crying chick who's been locked out of her room. Or the gaggle of superfans that figure out when a celeb stays with us and stalk the hotel like the lunatics they are. He's the guy that got spit on when a drunk bar patron didn't want to leave because he was cut off and was starting to cause a scene. And the prostitutes! Oh the prostitutes. ** When the police figure out through craigslist or whatever (note to ho's: don't solicit through craigslist) that there is a prostitute running her business out of a room in our hotel, Security gets called to make a report as well. Things in this report may be the fact that said prostitute had a credit card machine. And I won't even go into the dead bodies - or the DB's as we call them in the biz. But I will later.

*An inordinate amount of guests answer their door with little or no clothes on. Bellman and room service people see quite a few as well.

**Even the nicest hotels have things like prostitutes, doesn't mean a thing.

So I tip my hat to my overnight security guy. You protected me when I did my stints on the overnight shift (and damn if you don't worry about getting robbed at gunpoint every once in awhile especially after reading in the paper that it happened to the hotel 2 blocks away last night). You deserve the $500 dollars and 5 paid days off. But while you weren't looking some guy just stole a painting off the wall. Oops.

Please keep yelling, I like it

A gentleman walks up to me with a glass of complimentary wine in his hand and starts yelling at me.

"I don't have time for this! I need someone to help me right now!"

First off, yelling at me without even telling me what the problem actually is isn't going to get you very far, especially because you're dealing with a person who has 2 days left and nothing to lose.

"What exactly do you need help with, sir?" I ask between clenched teeth.

"I need to get in my room!" he bellows. "Whoever the idiot is that checked me in didn't put my name on it because someone else paid for it. The person who paid is at a very important dinner with his family right now and I need to get in my room to get ready for dinner in an hour. The lady at the desk has his number but isn't calling."

I look over. Yes, there is a line and unfortunately one of the girls is on break. The manager is doing her best to get through the line of people. We had very few check-ins for this day but inevitably all 30 of them arrived at once.

I stared at him for a second and then picked up the phone.

In any hotel in this country it against the law to give out a room number or a room key to a person not registered to the room. I don't care if you are their mom, dad, husband, sister, babysitter - your name has to be on that room and you have to have an ID. If you left it in the room a security officer will escort you and you can describe something in the room. It never ceases to amaze me the hissy fits people will throw to get a room key or someone's room number. Lots of people come to hotels to escape or cheat on their spouse or whatever. We don't judge, we just do our job.

Before I can handle the situation the manager calls me and tells me she's got it under control. The man had failed to mention he was extending his stay. I thought his key just stopped working (the bane of all front desk agents exitstences) or he lost it, but no. Someone else is paying so we can't just extend your stay without permission. Drink your wine, buddy, and calm the fuck down.

Plus, calling my colleagues "idiots" makes me want to just smack you.

What I will never understand is how people have utter lack of patience when waiting in line at a hotel registration desk. This has happened at every hotel I have worked.
At this hotel people will walk into my office and ask if anyone else is working or, my favorite, can you help check in? As if I'm not doing anything else important. The funny thing is, I can check people in, but only because I started off at the front desk. But my other concierge are not able to, and I know if I step in I'm going to get stuck at the desk 45 minutes and ignore all the people who need my help. Anyway, you don't see people walking up to loan agents at the bank and asking them to cash their check because they're sick of waiting in line. People aren't (generally) bitching out stock clerks because the line is too long at the register and can't you check me out?

I don't get it.

But like I said before, there is something about hotels that make people forget themselves.

I thought today, anyone who works a front desk must have some kind of sadistic streak. When things go wrong, its the front desk that bears the wrath.

Employee meals and how they all suck

Let's talk about a little thing called lunch. It's fairly important to eat I would say, but your employer doesn't have to feed you. I never cared that I lived on fast food and ramen. I was in college when I started working at Travelodge, so to me the 2 free pizzas from Papa John's was absolutely fucking awesome! It was the first perk I ever had. It was a welcome one too. I was practically starving what with my cigarette and alcohol needs.

Once I went to the morning shift I started eating the leftover Krispy Kremes. Let me tell you, they didn't have them up North at this point. I never in my life thought I would like any doughnut that wasn't Dunkin Donuts. I was wrong.
But I'm not a pig and when I left I was OK without my free pizza and doughnuts. It was nice while it lasted.

Small version of a huge hotel hotel chain

I worked a short stint at this property and not a whole lot of memorable things happened except I'll never forget my first "walk" in which I made a lady cry. We'll talk about walking later, folks. It sucks monkey's ass if it happens to the wrong person.

Anyway, I needed a job because I had walked out on Traveldoge, literally walked out on my shift which is the first and last time that will ever happened, but that is another story for another day.

My best option for work was to stick with what experience I had, I reasoned. I'd be graduating shortly anyway so why not just do it for a few more months? Little did I know that 7 years later...

It was a thousand times nicer than the other place. It was semi-new, had a partial kitchen, a bellman. It was like a real hotel. Besides the usual front desk stuff, part of my duties were to keep a bowl filled with apples and to bake cookies for the guests. (I do NOT bake), but you know, do what you gotta do.
The best part was that partial kitchen. Free Mountain Dew (and cookies)!!! I had to pay for my lunch, but if I was broke as a joke an apple and a Mountain Dew would suffice.
Soon I moved back home to home cooked meals and a fully stocked refridgerator and pantry.

Comfort Inn in a suburban setting

This place did have a kitchen but it was not meant for the hotel. It was meant for the huge banquet hall. Room service food came from the restaurant that was across the driveway, and it was owned by the sister of the Greek owner of the hotel. Not to say anything bad about the Greeks or the Indians or any race but simply when you work for a family-owned hotel, they do not exactly pay well or give many benefits to the employees. I made less as a supervisor than I did at the hotel before that. I understand why, but well. Let's just squash this part of the post before I say something stupid.

The good thing about this place is they had us set up a huge continental breakfast with everything that could be nuked or toasted. Fresh fruit, frozen waffles, yogurt, danishes, that kind of thing. You could always find something to nibble on. And coffee all day long!

Current property in urban setting

When I heard we had an employee meal program I almost shit myself. They're going to feed me? Everyday? And I have a choice? What started awesome almost 5 years ago has become one of the things I am sick of most.

We don't have a kitchen either (which I learned was odd for a hotel of our caliber.) There is a place for prepping for room service orders in which the food comes from a restaurant we don't own. We are strictly forbidden from grabbing drinks or anything like that. The option for lunch was a little voucher for a small store downstairs that we could get a sandwich and chips or we could use it as $3 worth whatever we wanted to buy. I was known for creating little gourmet meals out of my $3. You'd be surprised what you can do with Lean Cuisines, string cheese, and yogurt.

The other option (which became the only option after a few years) was White Hen. (Oh and it was 2.5 blocks away. This city isn't known for its weather.) We could get sandwiches, salads, soup/chili, soda, chips (not all at once). Here's the thing: you have to like sandwiches. I am not a big fan, hence my Lean Cuisines. But then White Hen started doing pizza! Whoo! We were all a twitter.

Until I got food poisoning.

I have never had it before, and it wasn't that bad I guess, but the only reason I could think of for suddenly getting so sick was from that damn pizza. Shit! Now what was I going to eat?

Today I am saving money. My colleague went to White Hen. My list went something like this:
Chkn soup or chili (if they don't have either then plain chips and a Mountain Dew.)
Turkey sandwich with tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber on white.
Hold the salmonella.

May I help you sir?

What would you do if you saw a sleepwalker?

What I have always heard is not to wake them. They may have a heart attack, right? Well, if you didn't know would you want to be the one to find out that's true? This may be an old wives tale, but when the staff had a sleepwalker one night they wondered the very same thing.

So this man manages to sleepwalk out of his room, down the hall to the elevator, and down to the main lobby. With guests and staff looking on, this man walked right through the lobby naked as the day he was born.

I shit you not.

He hung out in the lobby for a bit and then turned around and went back upstairs. They all watched in horror as he walked away.

(This was told to me by my overnight staff and who knows if they were exaggerating about him sleepwalking. He could have just been a pervert. But the fact that a man walked through the hotel in his birthday suit is absolutely true! I promise. And apparently it wasn't pretty.)

Joe Schmoe

I am probably the only one happy to be working, and not watching, the football game in the entire city.
See service industry workers tend to develop a drinking problem. Not all of them but the reasons are obvious. You deal with the general public and work stupid hours long enough you get through the shift with the promise of a (cheap) drink at the end. Luckily there are places you can go that won't break the bank because the bartenders understand. Of course then you have to tip well and the money just goes back and forth among the industry workers.

Anyway, I have a friend in town and have been on a bender for a couple days. I knew coming into work all the peeps at the hotel would be at the game and I could just, well, blog and stuff.
I literally can't even think about alcohol without getting a headache.

All right, let me tell you a story. I have been dying to write about some of the celebrities I have met/encountered what have you, but seeing as I have less than two weeks of employment here I do not need to risk getting fired.

However, I will talk about my first week here because its pretty harmless,yet amusing all the same.

I had just started and barely knew the phones. Well, I barely knew anything really. I knew how to smile and nod and say "checking in?" But this phone was ringing and I noticed nobody was answering it so I picked it up.

"Hello, this is Hotel Worker at the front desk. How may I help you?"

A man's voice says, "This is the manager of Joe McIntyre. I know your gym charges for a day pass. If Joe wants to use it can the fee be waived?"

I'm thinking, Joe who? Oh right. The New Kid who is making a comeback as a Christian rocker.

I say, "Well, this is my first week and I am not sure. I will have to ask a manager."

The thing is, it's not our gym. It's a national chain and they give our guests a "discount" day pass. In the end we would have to pay for it. I didn't know if they ever made exceptions or what.

He says with a smirk in his voice, "Oh? You're new? Well, this will be a great experience for you to learn how to deal with celebrities."

I roll my eyes. Get real, guy. I'm like maybe Joey McIntyre was a celeb for 15 minutes back in the day, but I was not a New Kid fan and to me he's just a person. If this guy thinks JM is such a celebrity then he should be able to afford the fucking $10. Right? I will never understand how people who are famous expect everything for free. What I think is that it's not really the famous person who wants it for free. It's their managers and entourages and whoever else tells them they look pretty all the time that wants to save a buck.

So I tell the dude, "I'm sorry. We can not waive the gym fee. There is a lovely jogging path along the lake if you would like to know how to get there."

"That's OK. I don't think he'll have time to work out anyway."

Yeah, I thought so.

On the other hand, later that week LL Cool J came to me for a room key. He was nice and very good looking in person. I smiled at him and he smiled back. Very good looking.

The Irish and the magazine kids

One day at the Travelodge a family from Ireland decided they wanted to stay at the hotel for awhile. It must have been an extended family because they took up quite a few rooms. It was just getting warm out so the men had found construction jobs leaving their wives and kids at the hotel.
After a couple weeks we started hearing stuff from our maintenance guy that the Irish girls were prostitutes. This guy tended to exaggerate and well, straight up lie, so we kind of blew it off. But he swore up and down that they kept calling him to their room to fix things and while he was in there they would sit in a provocative manner and would not be wearing underwear. I'm thinking he is just trying to get a reaction out of us and then one day I come into work and my boss is just sitting at the desk just shaking his head.

"What's that look for?" I asked.

Rameez goes, "I had to tell one of the girls to put a shirt on this morning."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, one of the girls apparently thought this was a nudist colony and was walking around topless, no bra or anything. I only found out when one of the guests asked me what kind of hotel we're running."

"What the...? What did she say when you told her to put on a shirt?"

"She was shocked! She acted like there was nothing unusual at all about being topless and walking around outside."

Welcome to America! You're so free you don't even have to wear clothes!

So that was one day at the Travelodge. Not too long later we got another big group that wanted to stay for about 2 weeks. Of course, we like that kind of business, steady revenue.

We dealt with a couple people who seemed like they were responsible adults and were there on business. Then we saw the kids check in.

There were 50 kids between the ages of 16 & 18 piling into our rooms. Every phone call was, "I need an extra pillow and blanket." I'm guessing they put like 6 kids to a room to save money.
We asked what kind of business it was. They told us they were selling magazines. I guess they recruit kids with like no future or something and travel around the country selling...something.

One day I drove into work and there were ambulances and police cars everywhere. I mentioned before all our parking was underneath the two buildings and then one of the buildings had the office, laundry, and breakfast/swingers club room. I saw all the emergency vehicles and quickly ran to the office to see what was going on. The office was locked so I found Rameez with one of the police officers and he threw me the keys with a look like 'I'll tell you later.'

A bit later he walks into the office just laughing his head off.

"What happened?" I ask anxiously.

"One of the magazine people fell into the courtyard from the third floor. He was drunk and trying to walk along the railing and slipped."

"I knew one of those kids were going to do something stupid!" I say.

He goes, "No. It wasn't one of the kids. It was their boss. And he's fine. He was so drunk he didn't even feel it."

I just sighed. At least he had his clothes on.

I'll show you professional

Let's fast forward to present day...

I have worked in an urban boutiqe type of hotel for nearly five years. It's not really that much different than the Travelodge except it's owned by an actual hotel company, there's a lounge, a few more employees, a higher class of celebs, but that's pretty much the difference. I don't care how much money a person spends for a room, when they check in they tend to leave their brains on the sidewalk out front.

Every single day I hear someone who has stumbled in our lobby wonder out loud, "Am I in a hotel?" It's odd to me, that a person can walk into a building and not know where they are. Maybe the city is overwhelming, maybe they are drunk, I don't know, but I stopped speculating on that years ago.

So we got a new management company several months ago and they are trying make us more classy or something. Every year AAA has awarded us 4 diamonds, so it's not like we sucked before. Our old company let us have an actual personality. The new company doesn't even want us to talk to each other, which should make for some interesting times. I love staring at the wall. Absolutely can't wait for our new office where I can just stare into space waiting for perhaps one guest an hour because it's January and we're dead!

I certainly am going to have to be careful about blogging.

Anyway, I have worked at 4 different hotels and I am dying to share stories about each place. It's hard to know where to start so I'll probably go back and forth from the past and the present with maybe a little of my friends' stories thrown in.

Let me just close with this, since our new managment took over, they have hired and fired 2 different executive managers (because they sucked ass!), were about to be sued for copyright infringement, and have driven away half of employees that have been here for 2 or more years. We used to have the least turnover I ever heard of so you know its bad when they lose employees that have been here since it opened.

Til the next post!

The beginning

I began working in hotels when I needed a job during college and the local Travelodge was hiring. My friend and roommate at the time had also applied and eventually we both got the job. He in the AM and me in PM. We quickly realized we would be handling a lot more than just answering the phone and checking people in. I was pretty used to handling high volumes phone calls but this fucking phone rang off the hook.

The owners of the this particular hotel were an Indian family, as in India. At first I guess the owner's brother was running the show, but he decided he didn't want to anymore and took off with a bunch of money. The owner was forced to take over management because he had a 50%stake in it. However, the owner and his wife lived in Mississippi running a lucrative convenience store, so he sent his 3 children to take over.

The GM was the eldest son, Rameez, and he had just finished medical school. It was his responsibility to his family to take a year off and run this hotel. His sister, a law student named Sapna, and his brother Safal were sent to help.

Let me paint a picture of this place, located off a major highway and across the street from a crack motel, we got quite a few weirdos in off the street. But we had the Travelodge name and we had...a swimming pool! This was a big draw, this damn pool. It was outdoors and somewhat nice, but it sat in front of an abandon building that had the potential to be some nice suites. (Potential if this family would ever learn to put money back into the hotel.) And let me clarify it only qualified as a hotel because it had 3 levels and the ground floor was all parking.
The building was falling apart, but a maintenace man was hired to keep the place running, as in painting the rusted railings all blue. There was two buildings connected by walkways and surrounded a courtyard with no trees or grass or anything.

So back to the phone. I learned how to make reservations, balance the room types we reserved, handle people's bills. I also learned how to fold towels, deal with smelly Indian food that was always cooking, and say "the check's in the mail." I realized that when the cable goes out it's probably not the cable company's fault.

This family would do anything for a buck, including but not limited to okaying a swingers party in our breakfast area.

Check back for that story and more!

End of an Era

The hotel I have been working for the past 5 years is changing. It is becoming somewhat of a trendier, more upscale type of hotel. That doesn't sound so bad, but if you ask anybody who's ever worked here, stayed here, or just walked in here you would be met with a "What? Why?" and an incredulous look on their face.

As I walk around this shell of a hotel it once was, I am sad, so many memories have been made in my time here, and I don't want to forget them. I start to think about all the crazy things that have happened, and I realize that I can not keep them to myself. Since my college days I have worked in some type of hotel or another and regardless if it's a off-the-highway motel or an urban boutique hotel the guests are always going to provide some sort of entertainment.

(Crap. My new GM just introduced himself to me. Did he notice me minimize this window just now? Ah well.)

Although I think my hotel career is near an end, I still have plenty of friends in the business and I know between my old experiences and their new ones I will definitely have some material to share.

Why is it an end of an era then? Well, at some point or another my 2 best friends and my boyfriend have worked at the place I'm currently at. It's where we all met and where "it" all began as far as my adult life is concerned. One friend was fired, one was promoted and moved away, and the boyfriend was, well, also fired. But that's not the point. I am the last one left!

So if you want to hear about bitch managers, stupid/impatient/rude guests, psycho employees, and celebrities read on...