Making the guest look stupid?

[bhskittykatt]

Not uber sucky. Just a clueless guest. Some of the suck may have been on our end, since one of my CWs didn't verify the guests claim. I'll just copy the incident report for you.

[Guest] contacted CW at some point during the evening (time unknown) saying that there was a car parked in a handicap space without handicap plates or tags. CW took the plate number and contacted the owner of the vehicle, who refused to move. CW did not actually verify the vehicle was, in fact, parked in a designated handicapped space.

Around midnight, [Guest] called 911. When Night Auditor called back to find out what was wrong, [Guest] said he was reporting the car. When police arrived, they did not do anything because the car was not, in fact, parked in a designated handicapped space. [Guest] thought that the parking spots in front of the ADA rooms (he was in one of those rooms) were designated handicapped spots. NA pointed out that that our handicapped spots are not directly in front of the ADA rooms because they had to be on level ground, and are in fact a few spaces away with large blue markings indicating their status as designated handicapped spaces.

[Guest] feels we "made him look stupid" in front of the police. [Guest] also feels his reservation for tonight is in jeopardy because he called the police. NA told him his reservation would still be honored.

When he checked in a few days ago, NA said she gave him several room choices explaining what each one was, and he picked [room]. He wanted to park his car in front of the room. NA explained that there is a parking spot in front of [room], but it is not designated to that room, and that any guest can park in any available parking space on the property. Non-handicapped parking in the area of [room] is limited but he chose it anyway.

Sorry, [Guest], but I think you made yourself look stupid.

So, in short, handicap-accessible parking is painted blue, with large blue markings painted directly on the pavement (Maint Man just repainted them earlier this week, too!), as well as notices posted in front of the parking spaces. Regular parking spots are white, and don't have any special notices in front of them, because they're regular, boring parking spots.

It does suck that our handicap parking is not, in fact, in front of our handicap-accessible rooms (it used to be, but a few years ago stricter ADA regulations made us move the parking spaces to more level ground, and we couldn't move the rooms with them), and I am mad that CW didn't check where the car [Guest] was complaining about actually was (the handicap parking is just behind the office...if [Guest] gave a vehicle description you'd only have to poke your head out of the breakroom to verify).

But on the other hand, our handicapped parking is so obviously marked...oh right, forgot what site I was on for a second.

[csquared]

When I saw the title of this thread, I thought "You usually don't have to make the guest look stupid. They usually do it themselves."

By the way, did the guest that CW called complain?

[bhskittykatt]

By the way, did the guest that CW called complain?

I talked to CW this afternoon. The guest she called to move the car was irritated, but we didn't get any complaints. Nor did the SC complain (though NA said he kept thinking she was the manager, so maybe he thought he already complained...why do guests automatically assume the first employee they see is a manager?). The SC merely paid his rent, and nothing more.