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.