Bad reviews hurt, but bad reviews read aloud in front of your entire team hit differently.

When a dedicated hotel front desk agent tried to explain a problem to a confused customer, the guests ended up leaving her a bad review.

Things got even worse when her HR Director chose that same review for a company-wide training seminar.

You’ll want to keep reading for this one.

Got a bad review from a guest and HR read it out loud in training session

So a couple of days ago, I checked out a couple who had consecutive reservations, but they had no idea that throughout their two back-to-back stays, that was the case.

I don’t even think I was aware of this at the time — I don’t remember if there were notes on the reservation.

But once I confirmed that this was in fact the case, the guest didn’t really understand what I meant when I tried to explain it.

They were kind of acting like “uhhh… okay” — like I was an idiot and overcomplicating things.

This made the check-in process much more complicated, so the customer made it clear online just how unsatisfied they were with the experience.

The first stay had a company rate and the second stay had a wedding room block rate. Of course, since they are separate reservations, they print as separate folios.

Well, they reviewed me. They said the departure process was like “pulling teeth” and that the “checkout lady was short” with them.

They said I left them “standing there like idiots” while I was just typing on my computer.

In reality, I was going back and forth between the reservations and checking the rate — not doing anything unrelated.

The employee wasn’t pleased, but figured that was just about the end of it.

Anyway, I read this review yesterday and I was hurt by it.

However, shortly after, I came to terms with it and told myself that you can’t please everyone.

But today we had a training workshop about customer satisfaction and solving customer problems. The HR director was conducting the seminar.

She read a couple of guest reviews, including the one about me.

This made the employee feel extremely embarrassed.

Thankfully, the complaint about me was small in comparison to the same guests’ rant about the valet department. But it also made me feel terrible that she read it in front of my peers.

To make things worse, coworkers from other departments were commenting while she was reading and expressing disapproval, annoyance, and disbelief that someone would represent the hotel in such a way.

The employee feels like dwelling on one bad review is dishonoring their history of devoted service.

Anyway, I truly put my heart and soul into this job and this hotel. I work really long hours and I think about the hotel even when I’m not there.

It just really hurt to have the HR director read that one negative comment about me in front of everyone, and have people acting like whoever “checkout lady” was, was such a disgrace to the hotel.

The HR director’s commentary on the review was that whoever was checking the guest out was ignoring the guest and just paying attention to the computer.

But this employee knew the reality was much more nuanced.

I truly believe the guest was just confused about the whole concept of consecutive reservations. I tried to explain to them that instead of having one reservation for their entire stay, they had two reservations immediately back to back.

It just hurts so much to get a bad review, because your reputation is on the line at your hotel.

It especially hurts to have the director of HR read those comments in front of your peers and have them basically mock you and act like you lack basic customer service skills and don’t care about your job.

This employee most definitely didn’t deserve to be embarrassed in front of their colleagues like this.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.

What did Reddit think?

This user thinks this HR professional needs to be held accountable for their actions.

Sometimes customers really need every step over-explained.

It doesn’t seem like this HR professional really did their due diligence here.

This user assures the employee they’re still very good at their job, despite one bad review.

Who knew an HR Director could be so tactless.