Saving money can be a good thing, but there comes a point where it’s better not to try to be too cheap, especially when customers are concerned.

In this story, we hear about a hotel whose supervisor tried to cut costs wherever possible and sometimes in pretty ridiculous ways that negatively impacted the guest experience.

One hotel guest even complained to the CEO to try to get what she needed, but the supervisor still managed to mess it up by being too cheap.

Let’s read all about it.

My supervisor’ MC to “save money”

A little backstory – the hotel where I work is at the seaside so sand is everywhere. People bring it on their feet despite showers available at the beach.

Our staff cleans the corridors everyday and to deal with the sand in the rooms it was decided to buy a washbowl for every room.

People filled them with water and put their feet there before going in their rooms, this way our cleaning ladies were relieved from constant nagging of guests to clean the room from sand like every hour.

Also many who were too greedy to pay for the usage of washing machines could wash their clothes themselves. Anyway it proved to be a good decision in previous seasons.

The problem is too few washbowls.

One summer we faced with the problem that the amount of washbowls was not enough to put them in every room. Some were broken, some were stolen (by guests and later staff in off-season probably).

Nevertheless, it was about time to buy a few new washbowls and I informed my supervisor about it.

At first it was OK but when the hotel started to fill up first complains about washbowls appeared.

Most of the guests were understanding, – I am not in charge of acquisitions and as soon as I get anything I give it to guests/put in rooms etc. But one particular guest (let’s call her Alice) was pretty straightforward – when I told her that I have no washbowls and am waiting for them too she somehow managed to get in touch with the hotel owner the same day and told him everything in person.

But the hotel has a rank system.

Here I need to make a little remark. There is a strict and a bit stupid hierarchy in our hotel.

There is a hotel owner who does nothing except receiving some fixed amount of profits. He never listens to common workers pleas, always directs us to our supervisors.

There are 5 CEOs each responsible for their own parts of hotel (kitchen, security, reception & cleaning staff, garden territory, technicians and repairs).

Then goes supervisors and finally me (aka one of common workers).

Getting expenses approved sounds really frustrating.

So if for instance I need something to be bought I ask my supervisor she puts it in a letter of request and gets it to her respective CEO and then they, upper-ones decide whether to give money for that or not.

This goes for literally EVERYTHING that needs to be bought even toilet paper.

As far as I know the amount of profit the owner gets is fixed somehow so for CEOs it is not only a question of how to do the job properly and earn more for the hotel but also how to spend less in any aspect (this way CEOs will get more profits for themselves).

This stupidity still haunts me in nightmares even though I’ve been working in different hotel for a few years already.

How awful! I’d think the guests would complain.

My supervisor was trying to cut expenses in everything, since she received bonuses for doing that (or even stole saved money idk).

One day she decided to hide our water cooler in basement to cut expenses on water (no free water for guests – more profits for hotel).

Sometimes it took weeks to buy light bulbs which were in a store like a minute away, because there were no approval to buy light bulbs and we were waiting for it.

Nobody cared that half of corridors were black at night for weeks. As far as I know nobody cares about anything there still.

Getting approval for the washbowls ended up being really easy.

So back to washbowls.

Alice told owner about the problem. Now we got instant approval since it was not us who asked something from CEOs but the owner himself.

He ordered to buy much more washbowls than needed and the money needed to buy them were given to my supervisor.

Now comes the malicious part.

The supervisor was trying to save money.

She thought that in this matter a good old ”money saving approach” was necessary so she decided to save half amount of given money and still manage to follow the letter of request and buy 30 items.

Half of the money were given to the guy that had to buy them washbowls.

A couple of minutes later he calls her asking what to do. There were not enough money to buy all thirty washbowls specified in the list. He could buy roughly 15 or all 30 but much smaller ones.

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Now there were 30 washbowls specified in the list and that is the list everyone saw, then anyone can notice that 15 does not equal 30 eventually and something is wrong here, so she told the guy to buy 30 smaller ones just to be on the same term with the list.

I guess this will have to do.

So the guy buys bowls so small they are more fit to put a portion of salad than to clean feet from sand.

He brings all 30 of them to me replying to my questions with a poker face and telling me that’s what he was told to do.

The same poker face I show to Alice when I give her a salad bowl instead of a proper washbowl. I tell her if she managed to find the hotel owner maybe she can tell him about the circus that is going on here.

She probably did. Nothing changed.

That is so annoying! I hope Alice did complain again. I hope a lot of the guests complained.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

This person thinks the employees are breaking the law.

Another person has a theory about where the hotel is located.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who found a way around his company’s denial of company time to study for his Commercial Driver’s License.

This person was in a similar situation.

Cutting costs to pocket the extra money isn’t really cutting costs. The supervisor is being selfish and greedy. Instead of caring about the guest experience, she only cares about herself. I hope the guests keep complaining.