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This past week has been rather stressful at work. Or rather, for the spa side of the work. I am the front desk manager for the hotel, but I've been helping the spa from my perch at the hotel desk. Normally this isn't a bad thing, but this week the entitlement whores have come out in droves, I swear.
For example, one exchange I had today saw me tell the customer to go to a different spa if she couldn't accept that we were busy and short-staffed after I had politely asked her for a little bit of patience and understanding. She had called in multiple times and each time she ended up getting me, and I had to transfer her to the spa - if she were calling to book an appointment I could easily have helped her the first time, but she was asking about a particular product that the spa carries. I have no idea the stock levels as I am in a different part of the property entirely, and I can't run and look because I'm the only one at the hotel desk. Nor do I have a direct line I can call to get somebody at the spa to go and check. It's not like the desks are right beside each other.
I advised her that if she didn't want to keep calling back after not getting through to the spa, that she could send the spa an email to ask about the product she wanted and they would get back to her a lot quicker. Well, this wasn't good enough. She demanded I leave my post and go up and check, and when that didn't work she asked me why I didn't use my 'direct line' to the spa to speak to somebody - she yelled at me when I told her that the only line I had to the spa was the same one I use to transfer calls up there and I wouldn't have gotten any answer either.
After several attempts at transferring her and explaining the situation to her I finally managed to get through to her that she could have saved herself a lot of time by emailing the spa when I suggested it six calls ago, she finally says she'll email them. This after she says the way the spa does things is bullshit blah blah blah, that we should have a queue system for every call that comes in like other businesses do, and more that I've since blocked out with the help of a few beer. Oh, and when the spa tried to call her back as requested to let her know the product was in stock? No answer, and no voice mail.
Due to the staffing shortage, appointment availability has been really tight. I've even had my own appointments at the spa bumped so that customers can be fit in (I don't pay full price so...), but callers are less than understanding about the fact that we simply can't pull appointments out of our asses. You want a massage appointment tomorrow? Yeah, sorry, the soonest we can fit you in is the end of July. Oh, you want a mani and pedi for two? Looks like the earliest appointment we can fit you in for is in the second week of August. No, we can't fit you in for a last minute facial. No, we can't demand that our one and only gel nail tech work outside of spa hours so you can get your nails done - *I* can't even get my nails done by her right now, ffs, and I work there!
One missus bought a gift certificate today under the assumption that it would somehow magically allow her to dictate when her spa services would be done. She didn't like being told that all the gift certificate means is that she's paid for the service in advance and that it doesn't guarantee her any appointments on any day that she wants and she has to work with the availability that we have. We are refunding her gift certificate tomorrow and firmly requesting that she find another spa to attend as how she spoke to everybody who attempted to assist her today was not tolerated.
I track the callbacks I make for the spa, and more than once today I had callers try to say they never got a callback after leaving messages for us. Every time I would look at my tracking sheets and tell them when I had called them in the past couple of days and what the results of the call was. I may have gotten cursed out for calling at least one person's bluff with that, especially when they were trying to book an earlier appointment than what they already had, and after they were told it was the earliest we could get them in. Ugh.
I'm off tomorrow, and I've already told work that I'm not answering my phone until after 8pm when the spa is closed for the night and the hotel desk agent is off shift. I'm the after-hours contact all week right now because the other after-hours contact person is on holidays until Monday...then we'll go back to alternating - whoever works the close that night is the after-hours contact for that night because the day-shift person will hopefully be asleep by that time.
I'd almost swear it was a full moon with the utter insanity coming out of callers' mouths the past several days. Too many UberKarens for my liking -_-
For example, one exchange I had today saw me tell the customer to go to a different spa if she couldn't accept that we were busy and short-staffed after I had politely asked her for a little bit of patience and understanding. She had called in multiple times and each time she ended up getting me, and I had to transfer her to the spa - if she were calling to book an appointment I could easily have helped her the first time, but she was asking about a particular product that the spa carries. I have no idea the stock levels as I am in a different part of the property entirely, and I can't run and look because I'm the only one at the hotel desk. Nor do I have a direct line I can call to get somebody at the spa to go and check. It's not like the desks are right beside each other.
I advised her that if she didn't want to keep calling back after not getting through to the spa, that she could send the spa an email to ask about the product she wanted and they would get back to her a lot quicker. Well, this wasn't good enough. She demanded I leave my post and go up and check, and when that didn't work she asked me why I didn't use my 'direct line' to the spa to speak to somebody - she yelled at me when I told her that the only line I had to the spa was the same one I use to transfer calls up there and I wouldn't have gotten any answer either.
After several attempts at transferring her and explaining the situation to her I finally managed to get through to her that she could have saved herself a lot of time by emailing the spa when I suggested it six calls ago, she finally says she'll email them. This after she says the way the spa does things is bullshit blah blah blah, that we should have a queue system for every call that comes in like other businesses do, and more that I've since blocked out with the help of a few beer. Oh, and when the spa tried to call her back as requested to let her know the product was in stock? No answer, and no voice mail.
Due to the staffing shortage, appointment availability has been really tight. I've even had my own appointments at the spa bumped so that customers can be fit in (I don't pay full price so...), but callers are less than understanding about the fact that we simply can't pull appointments out of our asses. You want a massage appointment tomorrow? Yeah, sorry, the soonest we can fit you in is the end of July. Oh, you want a mani and pedi for two? Looks like the earliest appointment we can fit you in for is in the second week of August. No, we can't fit you in for a last minute facial. No, we can't demand that our one and only gel nail tech work outside of spa hours so you can get your nails done - *I* can't even get my nails done by her right now, ffs, and I work there!
One missus bought a gift certificate today under the assumption that it would somehow magically allow her to dictate when her spa services would be done. She didn't like being told that all the gift certificate means is that she's paid for the service in advance and that it doesn't guarantee her any appointments on any day that she wants and she has to work with the availability that we have. We are refunding her gift certificate tomorrow and firmly requesting that she find another spa to attend as how she spoke to everybody who attempted to assist her today was not tolerated.
I track the callbacks I make for the spa, and more than once today I had callers try to say they never got a callback after leaving messages for us. Every time I would look at my tracking sheets and tell them when I had called them in the past couple of days and what the results of the call was. I may have gotten cursed out for calling at least one person's bluff with that, especially when they were trying to book an earlier appointment than what they already had, and after they were told it was the earliest we could get them in. Ugh.
I'm off tomorrow, and I've already told work that I'm not answering my phone until after 8pm when the spa is closed for the night and the hotel desk agent is off shift. I'm the after-hours contact all week right now because the other after-hours contact person is on holidays until Monday...then we'll go back to alternating - whoever works the close that night is the after-hours contact for that night because the day-shift person will hopefully be asleep by that time.
I'd almost swear it was a full moon with the utter insanity coming out of callers' mouths the past several days. Too many UberKarens for my liking -_-
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