Becky and I like to trade work stories, when we talk. Her "war" stories tend to deal with corporate Bullshit (with a captial B) or irrate customers. I always loved to hear about the irrate customers and her interesting stories and now we can compete!

Working in the service industry is interesting, to say the least. There is never a dull moment and last night was a whopper. Anything that would go wrong, did!

I work at a local hotel and this week is Virginia Tech's "move-in" week. The hotel is completely booked for the week, with no free rooms. With the exception, I should say, of the 3 or 4 rooms that were reserved under the GM's name for emergency situations. I'm still in training, but am more or less on my own now (need I mention I love the work, but already hate the management). Last night I got to deal, on my own.

Story #1: I got a call from another local hotel, asking if we have a room. We were told it's ok to release those rooms under the GMs name at 7 p.m. and give them to "walk-in" customers (at an exorbitant amount, I may add), so I said "yes, send them over, we have a walk-in room available". They came in and were so grateful that we had something available. They had driven from NY State, with their 3 kids, one of which was beginning her first year at Tech, and arrived to the news that the other hotel had "lost" their reservation. Apparently they confirmed this reservation 3 times since they booked it. I made their night!  I got them all checked in, with the woman in tears the whole time, at which point they asked "this is for two nights, right?"  "No, no-one had mentioned two nights at all" Chrissie searches for a room for the 2nd night and Yikes..... The only thing I had were two rooms for the next night, which also had been reserved under the GM's name for emergency purposes only, and were not supposed to be used. Here come the tears again and of course I gave it to them and of course I got in trouble. Can't win for losing!  

So that's Story #1, watch out, it only get's better....  A man and his daughter check in from Maryland, again the daughter is beginning at Tech this week. They stayed at the hotel about 6 months previous and enjoyed their stay. The day they got back to Maryland, they made a reservation for this upcoming "move-in" week at a rate of 110.00 per night. When they arrived last night and checked in, the rate popped up to 159.00! (After the fact I learned that the GM didn't change the rates to the higher amounts until after they made the reservation. You would think that he would honor those reservations already in the system, but no.... I wonder how many other people thought they were paying 110?) Needless to say, the man was quite upset, but because my co-worker (person training me) told him all the rooms in this area were pretty much competative with our rates and were also completely booked, he heatedly went ahead and decided to stay. About an hour later they came back down to the front desk, hotter than before, demanding their money back. Apparently, they went to the room and called around and found that our "sister" hotel, on campus no less, had an available room and it was Cheaper! In my mind, fine, go ahead. In managements mind, he could leave, but he wasn't getting a refund, because he had checked in and been in the room for a period of time, he was getting no refund! The man, understandably still very upset, insisted on talking to the GM (at this point it was 10 p.m.), who stubbornly refused to speak to him (I couldn't believe he wouldn't get on the phone). The man claimed he would make "such a stink, we'd never forget him" (Thank God they knew I was the "Good Guy"). He screamed that the GM is a coward (which apparently his is, hence the photo to the right), called our dispute center for mediation from the front desk phone (with no luck), couldn't get ahold of his credit card company and then refused to leave the front desk until we refunded him the money, which we refused to do! It was a stale-mate. After about an hour he said he would stay in the room, but only so that he could confront the GM in the morning. It'd like to be a fly on the wall this morning..... I wonder if the coward showed up? The general consensus, amongst us front desk people, was that he wouldn't.

Sami is off for her first day of school. She looked very pretty today and was ready to go by 5 a.m. She doesn't like the people on her new school bus, so opted to wake up an hour earlier and ride with her friend Lindsey, who also doesn't like the people on this specific school bus, and gets a ride to her grandmother's every morning to ride a different bus. So Sami rode with them to the grandmother's - she is off and in high school! Good Luck little Girl!