Pexels

Everyone knows that when you’re running a business, reputation is everything. Because folk don’t just rely on word of mouth or recommendations in guides any more. Rather, when you’re looking for a service – whether that’s a restaurant or a hairdresser’s, a golf course or a hotel – you’ll likely check the reviews on Google Maps or some other similar service. And the moment you see that it’s low rated with a number of awful, recent reviews, you immediately start looking elsewhere.

For the hotel front office manager in this story, this is all too real. Because there was a big fire in the hotel recently, and it sustained some significant damage, meaning that long-term remedial work was needed. But counter to the advice they received, the owner wanted the place to re-open right away, and this manager was not okay with that fact.

Read on to find out why.

“Fire/water damage and condemned? I don’t care, sell our rooms!”

The hotel that I work at as Front Office Manager had a decently sized fire last week.

There’s no major structural damage at the moment, no injuries, and thank god it was in the early afternoon, so most people staying were out and about for the day already.

At the end of the initial ordeal, the Fire Marshal sticks the scary red paper on the door and tells us that the building is temporarily condemned.

No one is allowed to stay on site, and we aren’t open for business until we get everything fixed and reinspected. Fairly standard fare.

But that didn’t go down well with the owner.

First of all, the incident happened on a Thursday, and the building owner wanted to have us open by the next day. Everyone on site told him, in more professional words, “you’re crazy, shut up”.

Obviously the building was closed, so he set up a plan where the salaried workers would monitor the building and redirect guests to nearby hotels. Not a massive deal, just a few old people who don’t understand that **** happens.

Fast forward to yesterday, and we all got an update from the building owner telling us that we had to open for business by Wednesday. Obviously, this was a terrible idea, and hopefully illegal, but no one in higher management gave him any sort of push back on the matter.

I suppose rolling over and letting people in the wet-smelling, half-powered, declared-unsafe building was a better idea than risking their positions. I won’t say I don’t understand, but what I wouldn’t do was stand for it.

Let’s see how this worker tried to stand up to this.

Many of our facilities were non-functional or in an uncertain status. Our bar/kitchen was non-operational, as we had to restock all our food items and deep clean the area.

Multiple floors were unusable, and the stench of waterlogged carpet was on every floor. The lobby was humid and damp, and didn’t even have power to elevators, even when building got energised.

I was told to take a few days off because I had already worked five days straight babysitting the property, and it was well known that I’d likely rip the owner/VP apart if I see them. I also made it clear that I would not honour guests’ reservations for as long as that sign was on the door, as I value the safety of my team and clients over revenue.

At the moment, I’m drafting my Letter of Resignation. I don’t think I’ll ever understand how someone can be so up their own *** as to disregard all instructions and try to get money out of people by putting them in a condemned building. The disconnect and greed sickens me.

Good on this front office manager for standing up for what is right.

It’s a horrible situation to put your staff in, forcing them to work in a dangerous building, let alone permit guests to stay there too.

Let’s be real: who would even want to stay there?

Read on to find out what the Reddit community made of this.

This retired fire marshal explained what a terrible idea this was from the building owner.

While others encouraged this worker to get in touch with the authorities.

Meanwhile, this Redditor pointed out how naive the owner was being if they thought this wouldn’t get them all the wrong kind of attention.

Sure, the building owner is probably thinking only about the revenue he’s going to lose while the hotel is out of action. That’s the only reason for not taking the proper time, care, and attention it would take to get the hotel up and running properly again. All he cares about is his profits – he doesn’t care one bit about the folks who will actually be staying in the hotel, nor the staff that he pays to work there.

Well, he needs to think again. Because if he opens the hotel when it’s in no fit state to be open, the negaitve reviews are going to roll in. And sure, his short-term revenue might be sorted, but as his reviews take a sharp downward turn, the poor reputation is going to really affect his long-term profits. If things got really bad – if someone got injured, or the press got involved for example – the hotel might even get shut down completely.

Equally, if all his staff leave, he’s going to have even bigger problems to deal with.