If you work in sales of any kind, you have to be careful about doing your research and jumping into a situation that you’ll regret it in the long run…because it happens all the time.

And if you happen to work in group sales at a hotel, you already know that some groups can cause major headaches for staff and other guests.

In today’s story, a hotel worker talked about a co-worker who made a pretty big mistake…that ended up costing her her job.

Doh!

That’s a bummer, but wait until you read about what she did.

Get started now and see what you think!

How the Group Sales person got fired.

“This happened over 15 years ago, but I remember far too much about this.

The Group Sales person for the hotel’s management company at the time was quite good at her job. She was able to get Rack Rate for a lot of wedding and anniversary parties while pretending that they got a huge discount.

Everyone makes a mistake at some point…

The owners loved her and kept her on for at least 10 years…before she messed up royally.

Her own daughter wound up being a front office manager (FOM) while I was a night audit manager (NAM).

One year, the Group Sales person found a group that would guarantee 100 rooms (we had 200) for 6 months. Who wouldn’t jump at that for the 3 months when we would have barely 10 rooms in the off-season?

The hotel business is pretty tricky!

The first problem was that the group wanted those 100 rooms 2 months BEFORE our off-season began. This was a time where we’d get $150/night during the weekdays and $250/night for the weekend.

The second problem was that the contracted rooms only got charged $39/per night per room. Look at the above first problem to see how bad the second problem was.

The third problem was that 2/3rds of the occupants of said rooms smoked. We had one smoking floor that had 30 rooms. So, the other smokers in the group smoked in their room.

Again, this group checked in before the tourist season ended.

No one likes to deal with people who party their brains out in hotel rooms…

The fourth problem: 75% of the group stayed up until 2-3 am. And they liked to gather in certain rooms to party. Every night. Loudly.

The fifth problem: They were all adults so there was only a Manager and Assistant Manager from the company to keep all of the employees in line.

The sixth, and FAR WORSE problem: The group did not have any single floor to themselves. Group Sales seemed to forget that on sold out nights, there would be at least 6 people paying literally 5x per night than this group PER FLOOR that they occupied.

Please forgive the caps, but I think my next statement deserves it…. WE GAVE BACK IN COMPS WELL OVER HALF OF WHAT THE GROUP WAS PAYING US EACH NIGHT …. EACH NIGHT!!

And that’s not counting how everyone from the newest morning shift person to the GM that had been there for almost 20 years dealt with sooooo many people yelling at us about the group.

At one point, the GM told every front desk person to email her our complaints as opposed just to telling her. She wanted the paper trail. She also told us to give neutral/non-committal responses to the Group Sales person and her FOM daughter.

This was a clear case of “Mess around and find out.”

At the end, we wound up charging the group’s company over $15k in damages to the rooms and wound up with one extra smoking floor for almost 2 years.

Oh, the Group Sales person got fired but her daughter stayed with her same position.”

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a young woman who didn’t expect closing her door to study to lead to a sibling blowout.

Reddit users shared their thoughts.

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Another individual weighed in.

This reader spoke up.

And another individual shared their thoughts.

Well, she made a mistake and she ended up paying for it with her job.

You never like to hear about someone being fired but, let’s be honest, some folks having it coming if they make a blunder big enough to warrant termination.

Let’s hope she learned a lesson from this mistake!

She probably should’ve thought this through before she booked this rowdy group…