A busy day at work can make even the simplest tasks seem impossible.

That is what was happening in this story when a hotel manager was trying to turn over to the next shift, but he kept getting interrupted by guests and phone calls.

When he was almost through telling the next shift’s manager about an important guest who would be arriving, he got one more phone call, but the person on the other end hung up before he could answer. This threw the manager off, and he went to make his big point to the other manager, but said, “Good Afternoon, Reception…”

I think this is just too funny, and it was a great way to end the day. Read through the full story below, though. The other manager reacted perfectly, though I doubt he thought so.

Good Afternoon, Reception…..

This happened in the 80s in a large London 4*. 600 rooms.

Sounds like a very busy day.

I was AFOM and handing over to another AFOM from early to late shift.

We’d normally do this in a closed office at the back of Reception, but this particular day was massively hectic with four aircrew rotating in and out, a conference departing, and a load of FIT groups coming in, all in a very tight timeframe.

Sometimes it is hard to get turnover completed because you keep getting interrupted.

Back then we had to control the clean/ready rooms manually via calls from house keeping, so the AFOM role could get really busy on days like this.

I was in the back office area with, lets call him Dermott, doing the handover, and we kept getting interrupted by the phone, which I had to keep taking because it was still my shift, and those calls were likely from house keeping, & we needed the rooms back.

VIPs can create a lot of extra work for the team.

There was an important guest coming in that afternoon from the hotel group parent company & there were particular requirements that had to be met when that person arrived, which I was trying to convey to Dermott.

This was a big deal. After several phone interruptions, I was just getting to the meat of the thing when the phone went yet again.

Oh, wow. This is just too funny.

I swiped the receiver off the cradle, and as I bought it up to my ear I could hear the dial tone & realised the caller had hung up.

I slammed the receiver back into the cradle, turned to Dermott with finger raised to make the big point I had been building up to, & said “Good Afternoon, Reception”

Ouch! I hope he is ok.

Dermott just dies laughing and started hammering his fist on the desk in an attempt to control himself.

Unfortunately, there was a drawing pin on the desk that went fully into his clenched fist.

Great handover.

Sometimes, you just have one of those days where everything goes wrong. All you can do is laugh and try to get through it.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who wasn’t keen on contributing more to a coworker’s gift than originally planned.

Check out what the people in the comments had to say below.

I assume it is a thumb tack.

We’ve got a comedian on our hands.

When you make a silly mistake like this, all you can do is laugh. I bet he is glad that his shift is over, though. At the end of the day, the shift manager knew what was going on (even if he had a pin in his hand).

Hopefully, the rest of the day went smoothly for the oncoming manager. Even if it started out rough.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee whose dietary restrictions caused the whole office to turn against her.