This Hotel Worker Swears Every Shift Has Its Own Theme — And The Coincidences Are Almost Too Weird
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When you are at work, it is easy to notice patterns in the way that the days go.
That is what the hotel worker in this story noticed after a few years of experience. To illustrate his point, he told multiple stories of guests who were upset and felt entitled even though none of their requests had anything to do with each other.
He does a great job of showing that sometimes hotel guests might have reasonable requests, but they react to rejection in an unreasonable way.
Make sure to read through the full story below and see what you think of the patterns that the worker noticed.
“I want it that way”
My colleagues and I have often noticed how there tends to be a general theme across each shift.
Ok, let’s see what this guy is talking about.
This post comes from a variety of interactions I experienced during a recent shift where the overarching theme was undoubtedly “pomposity”; hence, the title.
Sorry if you now have an earworm.
Well, there is nothing wrong with asking.
– The bride of a wedding happening the next day (Sunday) came up to inquire about getting an early check-in for her mom’s room.
We were having this conversation Saturday night, and the hotel was nearly sold out. So, we told her it was very unlikely that the room would get done any faster tomorrow.
She made a face and said: “Well, you know, I was hoping it’d get priority because — mother of the bride and all!” We re-explained the logistic conundrum in the way of her desire, and she gave a half-hearted: “Well, thanks anyway. I’ll talk to the morning staff.”
If he didn’t book properly, that is his problem. But at least he will have a room.
– An attendee of the aforementioned wedding came to check-in at the same time as a buddy of his. Buddy booked inside the group block, whereas this guest, “Gold”, did not.
He didn’t make this discovery until right there at check-in. Gold thought he booked properly and kept referencing an apparent phone conversation where he said, “This isn’t the price she told me it would be.”
Again, it is no problem for the guy to try to get the discounted room rate. As long as he wasn’t rude about it.
The “she” was apparently a call center rep. Nevertheless, Gold was not too pleased at the over $200 difference between his rate and his buddy’s and was trying to dispute it right there at the desk.
I told him the block was sold out and that I was unable to change the rate at that time, especially since he did not have a confirmation to show otherwise. I gave him the name of the sales agent spearheading the wedding, who’d be in on Monday (again, this was a Saturday.) He also wanted my name, because of course.
Sharing a room is quite common at hotels.
– We had a small but vivacious group block that consisted of middle-aged women. Nothing conspicuous about that, but what makes their situation story-worthy was that their room block was full of shares.
That is, 2 or 3 sharing a room. Because of the way a typical hotel PMS (property management system) works, only one card is authorized for the room and tax at check-in.
Why can’t they just split the bill between themselves outside of the hotel system?
They’d all been there a week and now wanted to split the bill before departure the next day. Problem was, the PMS gets very mad when you try to do that and even more mad when you try to do that before checkout day.
This was explained to each guest who came up, and they all took it well except for one. “Quartz” outright said that “the system is stupid, and I want this done now!”
People get so upset over the smallest inconveniences.
We went back and forth for a bit before she demanded: “I want to speak to someone else!” at 10:30pm. When, of course, there was no one else at that time, she then demanded the corporate number.
As I handed her the requested note, I said: “Do with this whatever you please.”
This seems to be a reasonable request as well.
– A pair of women came up asking for a late check-out the next day, as their flight would be in the evening. When told it wasn’t available, one of them, “Iron”, got a little annoyed.
She then asked if we had any sister properties in the area with an outside pool (we do not have one and there isn’t any in the immediate vicinity.) Guess their thought was that another hotel would just let them use their pool?
It isn’t a competition, lady.
Either way, Iron was also annoyed by that answer, and I tried to explain the lack of them is probably because we have some heavy winters.
I showed her a picture of the record snowfall we had just at the top of the year, and she tried to turn it into a weird competition where she said: “Well, where I’m from, we were -25 for weeks, so your snow probably melted within just a few days.”
I told her it actually took about two months, and she curiously didn’t have much of a response for that.
There is no need to argue.
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Pro-tip: Service workers do not want to fight you. If you’re getting a “no” for whatever reason, best believe that 99.9% of the time, that’s simply the answer.
Basically all of these requests were very reasonable, but the guests need to remember that they are just requests. That means that the hotel can’t always say yes to them.
Check out what the commenters on this story had to say:
That would be an unusual name.
This commenter loved his response.
You’ll get better results by being polite.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a longtime bank customer who walked away after the teller gave them a hard time.
This commenter has a great response to these upset guests.
Guests seem to think that they are entitled to every little thing, and they get upset when they are told no. Sadly, so many of them act like spoiled children instead of grown adults.
Standing firm and giving them the honest answer is really the only thing that a worker can do.
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