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This week has just been hell and back, I tell ya. The more this happens, the more I am convinced that my death will be broadcast by media outlets around the company as I go on a rampage, beating people to death with a sack of potatoes while I run down the street crying. Just before I'm shot to put me down for my own good, they'll ask me "Why?" "They had it coming!" I'll say, in the most comical, Leslie Nielson-like voice I can muster through the sobs.
And now that we've made this post dark already, let's go plunging down to the depths of madness! Together.
The Littlest Shits
This one was from a CW, since it happened just before I got in one night. We have a group of kids here with a coach, and they've stayed here before as part of their school team. The last time they were here, they were fine: came in late at night, went right to bed, left in the morning. PERFECT. This time, they came in earlier...and god are they just the littlest groups of shits you could find anywhere. A few examples:
We have a popcorn machine in the dining room, it stays open until the evening, when we clean it out and empty it for the night. Little Ass #1 comes down while the dining room is being cleaned (just before it fully closes) and grabs a bag of popcorn...walks a bit away, makes eye contact with CW, and drops it on the floor before walking away. 10 minutes later, he comes back (she's sweeping the room now), gets ANOTHER bag, makes eye contact again, and drops it again! 10 minutes later, he came back again, but the machine had already been emptied out...so he turns, looks CW in the eye, and screams "YOU HAD ONE JOB!!!" She just rolled her eyes and said "Your parents need to be with you if you're down here from now on. Go away."
Little Ass #2 and #3 worked in coordination with their team coach, and started stealing things from the gift shop. We don't know which rooms they're in (since we don't know their names), but we added it to the team's bill for the stay with a "theft gratuity" added for the trouble. In fairness, the coach may not have known they were stealing things, he was hurrying them to get on the elevator...but they had several items visible on them, so I don't know.
Little Ass #4 has his parents with him...or I should say his "parents" since they appear to have neither the will nor the intelligence to actually perform in that function. Their kid is about 12, and they have no control over him. First, we catch him wandering the lobby flipping every trash can he sees on its side because...I don't know, idiot reasons presumably. We yell at him, walk him up to his room where his parents say the single dumbest phrase in the English language: "Well, we really can't control him, he's just a free spirit."
Me: "You are his parents, it's your JOB to control, discipline, and PARENT him. He needs to remain here in the room with you; if he leaves, you need to be with him. Period."
I left knowing that the problems would not stop there...and sure enough, 30 minutes later, I get a bunch of noise complaints about someone banging on doors. I go up to the hallway, and there's this kid again, just walking from door to door, punching it, and screaming "Time to wake the fuck up!" Strike two...drag the kid (figuratively...) back to his parents, and tell them in no uncertain terms that if he causes a single problem after all this, they will all be evicted from the hotel, and potentially charged the fee for every room that has to be comped because they have a shitty kid. Well, LA4 certainly couldn't take that as a hint. On a hunch, I went back up to their floor to see if things were alright...and walk out of the elevator just in time to see the little jackass pull the fire alarm in the elevator landing right in front of me. At 1am.
Fire department comes out, police are called, the entire family is evicted. A monetary charge from the fire department is being billed to them, as are several rooms that we've had to comp because of their kid (people really should read the small print on their registration cards). The entire time, his idiot parents are making excuses for their kid...and it's obvious they are not going to punish or discipline him in the slightest, meaning that he is going to be an SC for life, not to mention someone who gets mentioned in Cursing at Co-Workers quite a bit. Bravo, good job with that one...is it too late to mail in for a new operating system? Yes? Damn.
I called around to the other hotels to warn them about the family, but found out later that one of them took them in regardless. More on that later.
Thankfully, after that, the child problems went away except for some idiot prank caller (who was too obvious to succeed)...partially because we contacted the coach of his team and told him, in no uncertain terms, that we were not going to put up with any more BS from his kids. He agreed.
The literal shits...
That same night, I walk into the (closed) dining room to set some things up for the next morning. A woman has found her way into the area with no lights on, trying to get soda...and she's brought her dog with her. I rush up, tell her they can't be in that area...then look at the puppy she has right as it takes a nice, giant dump on the floor. See, this woman had been on her way to walk the dogs to go to the bathroom...and had decided, instead, she wanted to get a soda first! Gee, thanks lady.
I made her clean it up too...and mop the floor. I was a bit unhappy.
The prank call, part one
As I mentioned above, this caller wasn't very good at it...
PC: "Yes (bad accent) I wanted to get a room for tonight. We are coming from Nebraska and want to stop. (accent changes midway through)"
Me: (Already know this call is full of shit) "I'm afraid we don't have anything for tonight."
PC: "How about tomorrow?"
Me: (Ok, I'll play...) "We do have some rooms then, how many people would you have?"
PC: "20" (southern accent now)
Me: "Nice try, but you're not very good at this. When you prank call someone, you should really try to keep your accents straight. Once you change accents, you give it away and just make yourself look stupid."
PC: "..."
Me: "Still want to play? I can keep making fun of you."
PC: "Uh....he knows! *click*" (Gee, what was your first hint?)
The prank call, part deux
PC: (Obviously a girl trying to do a man's voice) "Uh, yeah, I-"
Me: "You obviously didn't practice this one either. You don't call back right away, that's just amateurish. And if you're not a man, don't try to imitate one. Remember what I said last time about you sounding stupid that way? Counts double in this case."
PC: "Maybe we should call someone else."
Me: "Oh, but you're doing so well!" (dripping with sarcasm)
PC: *click*
They never called back. Look, I get it, to a kid the whole prank call thing still has some shiny luster on it. They have a few more years before they realize how utterly stupid and fetid the whole idea is, but come on people. Use some imagination here! You might as well ask me if my refrigerator is running. And I'll ask you if you can feel it if I try to slap you through the phone, and you'll say no, and I'll just weep silently to myself.
I...you...oh yeah, this feels sketchy.
I get a call from a guest who is in a room, checked in already, and I still don't know what to make of this one.
Guest: "Do you have any rooms available?"
Me: "(Error, does not compute!! ABORT, ABORT!!!) "In...addition to your current room?" (I said abort you fool! We're all doomed now!)
Guest: "Yeah."
Me: "Well...I believe so. Is there a problem with your current room?"
Guest: "No, I just...want my own room."
Screech to a halt here, as I begin listening intently over the phone. I hear no one else in the room, no wavering voice (like she was crying), no noise complaints from there...so I'm not exactly sure what this is. I mean, it doesn't sound like a domestic, I offer help a few more times and she doesn't say much, so I really can't figure out what's bringing this whole thing up. But it's never a good sign when someone in a room asks to rent a second room. Ooooohkaaaay...sooooo...
Me: "Well, I do have a couple rooms still open...I could do (price) for them tonight."
Guest: "What about tomorrow night?"
Me: "That same room would be (slightly higher price) tomorrow night."
Guest: "Ok...I have a friend who's in (town about 4 hours away) who would pay for it with his card, would that be ok?"
Me: (What in the blue shit is going on with this room!?) "We could do that, but we would have to fax him a letter of authorization, he would have to sign that and fax it back before we could do anything with his card. We could still check you into a room using your card if it authorized, but he would have to do that before we could rent the room on his dollar."
Guest: "Well, my card has no money on it. I have him on the phone, could he just talk to you?"
Me: "No, it has to be written authorization...along with a copy of the card and driver's license." (Side note, the second part is a lie...but I was getting bad vibes from this person, since she was cash paying anyway, and I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on).
Guest: (Suddenly speaking very rapidly) "Oh. Ok, well I'll call him and figure that all out. Thank you!" *click*
OK...so, if this isn't a domestic issue (doesn't sound like it), I really have to wonder what it could be. Maybe she was hoping to use someone's stolen card by having someone phone it in, hoping we would be dumb enough to run it. Maybe she's an alien from another species, but she accidentally forgot she was sharing her room with normal humans, and she needs another room to take her Woman Suit off to relax. It's distantly possible that she is an international Anal Rampage champion, and she has to engage in several hours of unsettling, deep breathing exercises combined with a weird ritual that involves an Oscar stolen from a famous actor, three doses of acid, and a picture of Stephen Colbert. Based on the way my luck tends to go, I think the third possibility is somehow the most likely of the bunch.
Either way, I'm not sure if I should be confused, sleepy, or deeply terrified.
How about all three?
Much later in the night...
Guest: "It's me again."
Me: (Of course it is...and here we go.) "Yes, how may I help you?"
Guest: "We can't have more than five people in a room, right?"
Me: (Uh...what? Didn't you want a second room earlier?) "Uh...no (lies), four would be the max (it's 6 for her room, but...)"
Guest: "Well, can you stop them from bringing in more people?"
Me: "Um, take a step back here. Define 'Them'."
Guest: "Well they want to bring in some girls to the room."
Me: "Ok, but who are 'they'? Are these people part of your party?"
Guest: "Yeah. I don't mind them in the room, they just want to bring some other people up here."
Me: "Let me ask a few things then...are you Ms. Guestnamehere?"
Guest: "Yes, but I don't want them to know it was me telling you not to bring people up here."
Me: "Well, there's some issues there. If you want people out of your room, you need to be the one who's making the demand. Your name is the one on the room, so you are the one who gets to make those decisions, but it has to come from you. We can't just arbitrarily throw people out, you have to stand with us as we do that. If I try to send them away, and you say it's what you don't want to do at that time, I have no ground to stand on."
Guest: "Oh..."
Me: "Now if you want people out of there, I can get them out. Worst case scenario is we get some police here, we have them clear the room out except for you, and send anyone who doesn't have a room here packing. But again, I need you to be standing with me as the voice asking for that, do you want me to have people involved to get them out?"
Guest: "No, I think I can deal with them...I just didn't want them to know it was me doing it."
Ok, so basically, you want me to be the asshole here. Let me remark on some tidbits about the hotel industry for you: our entire business, and in many ways my entire job, is to make the people who come into this building feel like I like them. And Uncle Khiras is, as you may have gathered, not always the happiest of fellows. Now, I know that my obvious charms and Godlike powers always dazzle the simple, ordinary folk, but it doesn't change the fact that those aforementioned awesomeness's don't provide me a paycheck on their on. So I have to fake it a little.
Being the bad guy so you can save face with your friends when you want to sleep? That does exactly the opposite. I wrote a short song about how I feel about this, and I wanted to sing it for you:
"No no no no no, no no no, NO."
Reach deep down, find some testicular...er, labial fortitude, and tell your friends to be blue balled for the night. And leave me alone.
But I like talking to you, apparently!
Why!?
Guest: "It's me again."
Hello darkness, my old friend.
Guest: "They said they're going to change the name on the room so I can't throw people out, can you make sure they don't do that?"
I can't tell if that noise I'm hearing is my brain trying to bash its way out of my skull in protest, or simply the closing of every blood vessel into my brain as a "make me dumber to survive this mess" mechanism.
Me: "Well, they can't really do that. To change the name, they'd have to come down here with you and your ID in person to add you to the room. I'm just gonna ask this again now, do you want me to call someone and have them removed? It sounds like this is going to be a continuing problem."
Guest: "Oh. No, that should be fine."
Me: "Are. You. Sure?"
Guest: "...Yeah, I guess."
I find your noncommittal faith in your decisions to be very reassuring, Wazowski...
And the aftermath...
Now, in all of those calls with the crazy lady, I had not actually seen her face. I didn't know who she was, I just knew that she didn't give me any kind of good vibes, so I was a bit curious (and annoyed) when I had to deliver some housekeeping items up to her room in the morning. I knocked on the door, saw it open...and suddenly, 2 and 2 connected: it was the same woman whose dog crapped on the dining room floor at the start of the night.
Of course it was.
She had wanted to extend for another night, but since she'd told people that her card had no money on it, we were somehow "full" and she had to leave. Things got weirder while I was off though...apparently, the guy who put his card down on the room kept calling back over and over to get it taken off...asking if any additional charges were going to be made to the room. Gee, that's not suspicious or anything. I don't think they got charged extra, and nothing was broken in the room, but the manager bought the housekeeper who cleaned it lunch as a way of saying "thank you for dealing with that mess." It was apparently pretty bad in there, even though it was only a one night stay. Good riddance.
This is how we get ants, people.
Just a quickie...what is it about a pool that convinces people they can take things like popcorn and alcohol in there? I normally only work after the pool is closed, but I helped clean people out of there tonight...and it was awful. Bonus points for the parent who left their crappy "raspberry margarita in a can" on a table, and almost had their 4 year old grab and drink it before we stopped her. Kudos. But even with all the water everywhere, the floor was covered with ants eating leftover popcorn...grr...
Well, I don't know, how about you just answer the question like a human being.
Guest comes into the shop area, grabs some Tums to buy.
Me: "How's it going tonight?"
Guest: "....."
Me: "Just those for you?"
Guest: "That answer your question?"
Me: "*stare* ...it's $(high price because it's a convenience store)
Guest: "Good fucking god." *slams a $20 on the desk*
I just get the change, give it to him, and give him my most saccrine-filled "have a good night" that I can muster, he just stumbles away and out of my life. Seriously, I know it's a challenge to formulate a thought past "Don't eat poop", but couldn't you at least have mustered a grunt when I asked how you were? How about a series of grunts, and physical motions designed to illustrate basic ideas like "Eat. Make bathroom sad. Burn bad"? This is going to be difficult, but together, we can try to make you communicate like the rest of the people.
At least some good
Had two regular guests come back, they stay quite often with their company, and they're always in a good mood. For some reason, the person who made their reservations put the first name as a girl's name instead of a boy's name. Easy mistake (just 1 letter off), but we had a good laugh about it when they checked in, which helped the night progress a little better overall.
Ha. Ha ha. HAHAHAHA! No.
If you recall from above, I had a problem with a kid now known only as LA4, which resulted in his family being evicted, and them getting charged an asston of fines/hotel fees/etc. They tried to come back tonight...since they apparently got evicted from another hotel tonight. I just sort of laughed, pointed at the door, and mentioned that by returning they were already trespassing, and needed to leave. The mother seemed to want to argue, until I picked up the phone and mentioned that they could either leave, or I would call the police back over to remove them. The bolted, I did another call around warning to the hotels near us (the neighbors who also booted them had done the same), and hopefully they won't be returning any time soon. I didn't get the full details, but apparently their son was the one who caused the issue that got them kicked out again.
Real winner, that one.
Not sure if complaint or compliment.
A mother calls down, she has her 12 year old son with her in the room.
Mom: "I just want to see if you can quiet our neighbors down. There's uh...well, moaning, some yelling. Oh, and there's some slaps too. Sounds quite energetic, but we're a little tired.
Me: *snrk* "Uh...I can see how that would be...er...distracting, yeah. Um...we'll have a talk with him..."
Mom: "Heh. Thanks."
I'm still not sure if I should have applauded them or not...but apparently, the guy in the next room was doing quite well. His friend, who works at the bar next door, apparently thought so anyway. We got to have a very embarrassing phone call...made all the better by the fact that this guy's a regular, so we will likely have a laugh about it again later with him.
There are some things I almost wish you wouldn't tell me.
Delivering a rollaway to a room, I pass by a mother in the hallway...who stops me, and lets me know something that I'm not sure I wanted to have to deal with.
Woman: "Yeah...the rollaway is for the daughter of one of the mother's in our group. She wigged out on her daughter, so she's going to stay with her friend in this room tonight."
Me: "I...see...which room was this, in case there's a problem?"
Woman: "I'd rather not say, if possible..."
Me: -.-
Ok, but if I get a call about violence in that area, I'm gonna personally kick you in the shins when I see you next...because hey, what's a weekend without a little bit of child abandonment, right?
Sweet candy monster of doom, take me now!!!
And now that we've made this post dark already, let's go plunging down to the depths of madness! Together.
The Littlest Shits
This one was from a CW, since it happened just before I got in one night. We have a group of kids here with a coach, and they've stayed here before as part of their school team. The last time they were here, they were fine: came in late at night, went right to bed, left in the morning. PERFECT. This time, they came in earlier...and god are they just the littlest groups of shits you could find anywhere. A few examples:
We have a popcorn machine in the dining room, it stays open until the evening, when we clean it out and empty it for the night. Little Ass #1 comes down while the dining room is being cleaned (just before it fully closes) and grabs a bag of popcorn...walks a bit away, makes eye contact with CW, and drops it on the floor before walking away. 10 minutes later, he comes back (she's sweeping the room now), gets ANOTHER bag, makes eye contact again, and drops it again! 10 minutes later, he came back again, but the machine had already been emptied out...so he turns, looks CW in the eye, and screams "YOU HAD ONE JOB!!!" She just rolled her eyes and said "Your parents need to be with you if you're down here from now on. Go away."
Little Ass #2 and #3 worked in coordination with their team coach, and started stealing things from the gift shop. We don't know which rooms they're in (since we don't know their names), but we added it to the team's bill for the stay with a "theft gratuity" added for the trouble. In fairness, the coach may not have known they were stealing things, he was hurrying them to get on the elevator...but they had several items visible on them, so I don't know.
Little Ass #4 has his parents with him...or I should say his "parents" since they appear to have neither the will nor the intelligence to actually perform in that function. Their kid is about 12, and they have no control over him. First, we catch him wandering the lobby flipping every trash can he sees on its side because...I don't know, idiot reasons presumably. We yell at him, walk him up to his room where his parents say the single dumbest phrase in the English language: "Well, we really can't control him, he's just a free spirit."
Me: "You are his parents, it's your JOB to control, discipline, and PARENT him. He needs to remain here in the room with you; if he leaves, you need to be with him. Period."
I left knowing that the problems would not stop there...and sure enough, 30 minutes later, I get a bunch of noise complaints about someone banging on doors. I go up to the hallway, and there's this kid again, just walking from door to door, punching it, and screaming "Time to wake the fuck up!" Strike two...drag the kid (figuratively...) back to his parents, and tell them in no uncertain terms that if he causes a single problem after all this, they will all be evicted from the hotel, and potentially charged the fee for every room that has to be comped because they have a shitty kid. Well, LA4 certainly couldn't take that as a hint. On a hunch, I went back up to their floor to see if things were alright...and walk out of the elevator just in time to see the little jackass pull the fire alarm in the elevator landing right in front of me. At 1am.
Fire department comes out, police are called, the entire family is evicted. A monetary charge from the fire department is being billed to them, as are several rooms that we've had to comp because of their kid (people really should read the small print on their registration cards). The entire time, his idiot parents are making excuses for their kid...and it's obvious they are not going to punish or discipline him in the slightest, meaning that he is going to be an SC for life, not to mention someone who gets mentioned in Cursing at Co-Workers quite a bit. Bravo, good job with that one...is it too late to mail in for a new operating system? Yes? Damn.
I called around to the other hotels to warn them about the family, but found out later that one of them took them in regardless. More on that later.
Thankfully, after that, the child problems went away except for some idiot prank caller (who was too obvious to succeed)...partially because we contacted the coach of his team and told him, in no uncertain terms, that we were not going to put up with any more BS from his kids. He agreed.
The literal shits...
That same night, I walk into the (closed) dining room to set some things up for the next morning. A woman has found her way into the area with no lights on, trying to get soda...and she's brought her dog with her. I rush up, tell her they can't be in that area...then look at the puppy she has right as it takes a nice, giant dump on the floor. See, this woman had been on her way to walk the dogs to go to the bathroom...and had decided, instead, she wanted to get a soda first! Gee, thanks lady.
I made her clean it up too...and mop the floor. I was a bit unhappy.
The prank call, part one
As I mentioned above, this caller wasn't very good at it...
PC: "Yes (bad accent) I wanted to get a room for tonight. We are coming from Nebraska and want to stop. (accent changes midway through)"
Me: (Already know this call is full of shit) "I'm afraid we don't have anything for tonight."
PC: "How about tomorrow?"
Me: (Ok, I'll play...) "We do have some rooms then, how many people would you have?"
PC: "20" (southern accent now)
Me: "Nice try, but you're not very good at this. When you prank call someone, you should really try to keep your accents straight. Once you change accents, you give it away and just make yourself look stupid."
PC: "..."
Me: "Still want to play? I can keep making fun of you."
PC: "Uh....he knows! *click*" (Gee, what was your first hint?)
The prank call, part deux
PC: (Obviously a girl trying to do a man's voice) "Uh, yeah, I-"
Me: "You obviously didn't practice this one either. You don't call back right away, that's just amateurish. And if you're not a man, don't try to imitate one. Remember what I said last time about you sounding stupid that way? Counts double in this case."
PC: "Maybe we should call someone else."
Me: "Oh, but you're doing so well!" (dripping with sarcasm)
PC: *click*
They never called back. Look, I get it, to a kid the whole prank call thing still has some shiny luster on it. They have a few more years before they realize how utterly stupid and fetid the whole idea is, but come on people. Use some imagination here! You might as well ask me if my refrigerator is running. And I'll ask you if you can feel it if I try to slap you through the phone, and you'll say no, and I'll just weep silently to myself.
I...you...oh yeah, this feels sketchy.
I get a call from a guest who is in a room, checked in already, and I still don't know what to make of this one.
Guest: "Do you have any rooms available?"
Me: "(Error, does not compute!! ABORT, ABORT!!!) "In...addition to your current room?" (I said abort you fool! We're all doomed now!)
Guest: "Yeah."
Me: "Well...I believe so. Is there a problem with your current room?"
Guest: "No, I just...want my own room."
Screech to a halt here, as I begin listening intently over the phone. I hear no one else in the room, no wavering voice (like she was crying), no noise complaints from there...so I'm not exactly sure what this is. I mean, it doesn't sound like a domestic, I offer help a few more times and she doesn't say much, so I really can't figure out what's bringing this whole thing up. But it's never a good sign when someone in a room asks to rent a second room. Ooooohkaaaay...sooooo...
Me: "Well, I do have a couple rooms still open...I could do (price) for them tonight."
Guest: "What about tomorrow night?"
Me: "That same room would be (slightly higher price) tomorrow night."
Guest: "Ok...I have a friend who's in (town about 4 hours away) who would pay for it with his card, would that be ok?"
Me: (What in the blue shit is going on with this room!?) "We could do that, but we would have to fax him a letter of authorization, he would have to sign that and fax it back before we could do anything with his card. We could still check you into a room using your card if it authorized, but he would have to do that before we could rent the room on his dollar."
Guest: "Well, my card has no money on it. I have him on the phone, could he just talk to you?"
Me: "No, it has to be written authorization...along with a copy of the card and driver's license." (Side note, the second part is a lie...but I was getting bad vibes from this person, since she was cash paying anyway, and I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on).
Guest: (Suddenly speaking very rapidly) "Oh. Ok, well I'll call him and figure that all out. Thank you!" *click*
OK...so, if this isn't a domestic issue (doesn't sound like it), I really have to wonder what it could be. Maybe she was hoping to use someone's stolen card by having someone phone it in, hoping we would be dumb enough to run it. Maybe she's an alien from another species, but she accidentally forgot she was sharing her room with normal humans, and she needs another room to take her Woman Suit off to relax. It's distantly possible that she is an international Anal Rampage champion, and she has to engage in several hours of unsettling, deep breathing exercises combined with a weird ritual that involves an Oscar stolen from a famous actor, three doses of acid, and a picture of Stephen Colbert. Based on the way my luck tends to go, I think the third possibility is somehow the most likely of the bunch.
Either way, I'm not sure if I should be confused, sleepy, or deeply terrified.
How about all three?
Much later in the night...
Guest: "It's me again."
Me: (Of course it is...and here we go.) "Yes, how may I help you?"
Guest: "We can't have more than five people in a room, right?"
Me: (Uh...what? Didn't you want a second room earlier?) "Uh...no (lies), four would be the max (it's 6 for her room, but...)"
Guest: "Well, can you stop them from bringing in more people?"
Me: "Um, take a step back here. Define 'Them'."
Guest: "Well they want to bring in some girls to the room."
Me: "Ok, but who are 'they'? Are these people part of your party?"
Guest: "Yeah. I don't mind them in the room, they just want to bring some other people up here."
Me: "Let me ask a few things then...are you Ms. Guestnamehere?"
Guest: "Yes, but I don't want them to know it was me telling you not to bring people up here."
Me: "Well, there's some issues there. If you want people out of your room, you need to be the one who's making the demand. Your name is the one on the room, so you are the one who gets to make those decisions, but it has to come from you. We can't just arbitrarily throw people out, you have to stand with us as we do that. If I try to send them away, and you say it's what you don't want to do at that time, I have no ground to stand on."
Guest: "Oh..."
Me: "Now if you want people out of there, I can get them out. Worst case scenario is we get some police here, we have them clear the room out except for you, and send anyone who doesn't have a room here packing. But again, I need you to be standing with me as the voice asking for that, do you want me to have people involved to get them out?"
Guest: "No, I think I can deal with them...I just didn't want them to know it was me doing it."
Ok, so basically, you want me to be the asshole here. Let me remark on some tidbits about the hotel industry for you: our entire business, and in many ways my entire job, is to make the people who come into this building feel like I like them. And Uncle Khiras is, as you may have gathered, not always the happiest of fellows. Now, I know that my obvious charms and Godlike powers always dazzle the simple, ordinary folk, but it doesn't change the fact that those aforementioned awesomeness's don't provide me a paycheck on their on. So I have to fake it a little.
Being the bad guy so you can save face with your friends when you want to sleep? That does exactly the opposite. I wrote a short song about how I feel about this, and I wanted to sing it for you:
"No no no no no, no no no, NO."
Reach deep down, find some testicular...er, labial fortitude, and tell your friends to be blue balled for the night. And leave me alone.
But I like talking to you, apparently!
Why!?
Guest: "It's me again."
Hello darkness, my old friend.
Guest: "They said they're going to change the name on the room so I can't throw people out, can you make sure they don't do that?"
I can't tell if that noise I'm hearing is my brain trying to bash its way out of my skull in protest, or simply the closing of every blood vessel into my brain as a "make me dumber to survive this mess" mechanism.
Me: "Well, they can't really do that. To change the name, they'd have to come down here with you and your ID in person to add you to the room. I'm just gonna ask this again now, do you want me to call someone and have them removed? It sounds like this is going to be a continuing problem."
Guest: "Oh. No, that should be fine."
Me: "Are. You. Sure?"
Guest: "...Yeah, I guess."
I find your noncommittal faith in your decisions to be very reassuring, Wazowski...
And the aftermath...
Now, in all of those calls with the crazy lady, I had not actually seen her face. I didn't know who she was, I just knew that she didn't give me any kind of good vibes, so I was a bit curious (and annoyed) when I had to deliver some housekeeping items up to her room in the morning. I knocked on the door, saw it open...and suddenly, 2 and 2 connected: it was the same woman whose dog crapped on the dining room floor at the start of the night.
Of course it was.
She had wanted to extend for another night, but since she'd told people that her card had no money on it, we were somehow "full" and she had to leave. Things got weirder while I was off though...apparently, the guy who put his card down on the room kept calling back over and over to get it taken off...asking if any additional charges were going to be made to the room. Gee, that's not suspicious or anything. I don't think they got charged extra, and nothing was broken in the room, but the manager bought the housekeeper who cleaned it lunch as a way of saying "thank you for dealing with that mess." It was apparently pretty bad in there, even though it was only a one night stay. Good riddance.
This is how we get ants, people.
Just a quickie...what is it about a pool that convinces people they can take things like popcorn and alcohol in there? I normally only work after the pool is closed, but I helped clean people out of there tonight...and it was awful. Bonus points for the parent who left their crappy "raspberry margarita in a can" on a table, and almost had their 4 year old grab and drink it before we stopped her. Kudos. But even with all the water everywhere, the floor was covered with ants eating leftover popcorn...grr...
Well, I don't know, how about you just answer the question like a human being.
Guest comes into the shop area, grabs some Tums to buy.
Me: "How's it going tonight?"
Guest: "....."
Me: "Just those for you?"
Guest: "That answer your question?"
Me: "*stare* ...it's $(high price because it's a convenience store)
Guest: "Good fucking god." *slams a $20 on the desk*
I just get the change, give it to him, and give him my most saccrine-filled "have a good night" that I can muster, he just stumbles away and out of my life. Seriously, I know it's a challenge to formulate a thought past "Don't eat poop", but couldn't you at least have mustered a grunt when I asked how you were? How about a series of grunts, and physical motions designed to illustrate basic ideas like "Eat. Make bathroom sad. Burn bad"? This is going to be difficult, but together, we can try to make you communicate like the rest of the people.
At least some good
Had two regular guests come back, they stay quite often with their company, and they're always in a good mood. For some reason, the person who made their reservations put the first name as a girl's name instead of a boy's name. Easy mistake (just 1 letter off), but we had a good laugh about it when they checked in, which helped the night progress a little better overall.
Ha. Ha ha. HAHAHAHA! No.
If you recall from above, I had a problem with a kid now known only as LA4, which resulted in his family being evicted, and them getting charged an asston of fines/hotel fees/etc. They tried to come back tonight...since they apparently got evicted from another hotel tonight. I just sort of laughed, pointed at the door, and mentioned that by returning they were already trespassing, and needed to leave. The mother seemed to want to argue, until I picked up the phone and mentioned that they could either leave, or I would call the police back over to remove them. The bolted, I did another call around warning to the hotels near us (the neighbors who also booted them had done the same), and hopefully they won't be returning any time soon. I didn't get the full details, but apparently their son was the one who caused the issue that got them kicked out again.
Real winner, that one.
Not sure if complaint or compliment.
A mother calls down, she has her 12 year old son with her in the room.
Mom: "I just want to see if you can quiet our neighbors down. There's uh...well, moaning, some yelling. Oh, and there's some slaps too. Sounds quite energetic, but we're a little tired.
Me: *snrk* "Uh...I can see how that would be...er...distracting, yeah. Um...we'll have a talk with him..."
Mom: "Heh. Thanks."
I'm still not sure if I should have applauded them or not...but apparently, the guy in the next room was doing quite well. His friend, who works at the bar next door, apparently thought so anyway. We got to have a very embarrassing phone call...made all the better by the fact that this guy's a regular, so we will likely have a laugh about it again later with him.
There are some things I almost wish you wouldn't tell me.
Delivering a rollaway to a room, I pass by a mother in the hallway...who stops me, and lets me know something that I'm not sure I wanted to have to deal with.
Woman: "Yeah...the rollaway is for the daughter of one of the mother's in our group. She wigged out on her daughter, so she's going to stay with her friend in this room tonight."
Me: "I...see...which room was this, in case there's a problem?"
Woman: "I'd rather not say, if possible..."
Me: -.-
Ok, but if I get a call about violence in that area, I'm gonna personally kick you in the shins when I see you next...because hey, what's a weekend without a little bit of child abandonment, right?
Sweet candy monster of doom, take me now!!!
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