Kids and Counting and EWs Oh My

[WishfulSpirit]

So since I work in a hotel, Black Friday wasn't really a thing. Still we had our share of interesting stuff yesterday.

First was a group of tweens / young teens who decided that playing hocky in the halls was a good idea. They had a little net set up and everything. Now my hotel is atrium style. The rooms are arranged around a central open area that goes all the way to the top floor. This means that the kids were playing near a railing over a common area and were dropping the crumpled up paper they were using as hocky pucks onto customers trying to eat in the restaurant. And this was when we were giving out our "weekend" keys in the packet that has "watch your damn kids" (not in those words) written on it. Not that customers read anyway. Another group thought it was cute to have their 10 year old set up a shuttle run to the mall for them. Said 10 year old was quite competent and easy to work with, but still, be a grownup and do your own business, OK?

Also, one of our shuttle runs to a restaurant, who told me they had 3 people in their party, ended up piling 9 into the van, so another group booked at the same time (going to about the same area) now had to wait. I'm pretty sure I learned how to count before I was in kindergarten and knew that 3 and 9 are different numbers. Grumble.

And a Bonus EW.

We found out that one of our incoming guests was going to be celebrating his 40th anniversary. So we arranged for some chocolate covered strawberries and sparkling cider (where I live that's basically carbonated apple juice in a wine bottle) to be delivered to his room. On us of course. Well I don't know how, but he found out about it ahead of time (probably due to a coworker who blabbed or who thought he ordered the items rather than it being a spontaneous gift from us). We were going to bring the items to his room at 7pm. Instead of being grateful, he called the desk when he checked in complaining about how they weren't there and demanding champagne instead of the non-alcoholic stuff. That he didn't order and didn't pay for. I'm going to ask about billing his room for the booze. I'm having to fight my impulse to just stop being nice to people.

[Slave to the Phone]

So, lets see if I've got this right. Out of the kindness of your heart, you arranged to have a gift delivered to him. Instead of doing the polite thing when receiving a gift that doesn't suit him (accept it with thanks, then use or dispose of it as he wanted), he called to bitch that he didn't get his gift when he wanted it and it wasn't what he wanted, so give him better free stuff?

The mind boggles.

[eltf177]

What a bunch of losers!

The tweens should have been given a choice - knock off the noise and return to their rooms or be evicted.

The Shuttle customers who can't count should have been the ones to wait, not the other group who apparently CAN count.

Mr. Ungrateful should have been told to shut up and accept the free gift or pay for an upgrade. A perma-ban would be in order as well...

Shining examples of humanity - NOT!

[figgyx]

I too work at a hotel with an open atrium. Several of our rooms surround this area. Whenever we get the hockey groups in the parents are more interested in drinking at the bar and letting their kids run amok. The kids feel free to do whatever they want including: hopping over the locked gate after hours to go swimming, pulling up plants, jumping off the second floor balcony into couches, and just running around causing noise complaints. None of the parents care and sometimes they make just as much noise.

[WishfulSpirit]

WOW. I haven't seen any shenanigans like that. I don't work as closely with new Bossman (whom I am now calling Fearless Leader for lack of any clever nicknames) but I have a sense he would not have stood for jumping off a second floor balcony. Cops would be called and that group would be leaving. Hospitality isn't for everyone but I really like where I am now, except for my 90 minute commute. It's a great place to work.

[Mytical]

Hold it, think my brain stopped working.. so your company sent a free gift, and it was not good enough? *Blue screen of death, computer error, shut down in progress*

[Sparklyturtle]

I too work at a hotel with an open atrium. Several of our rooms surround this area. Whenever we get the hockey groups in the parents are more interested in drinking at the bar and letting their kids run amok. The kids feel free to do whatever they want including: hopping over the locked gate after hours to go swimming, pulling up plants, jumping off the second floor balcony into couches, and just running around causing noise complaints. None of the parents care and sometimes they make just as much noise.

I am just stunned. Back when I was a kid, my sibs and I behaved when we were out in public because my mother didn't tolerate it. If we'd committed any property damage my parents would have paid for it, and we would have had to work off what they paid, even if it took years. That's what we were told, anyway, but none of us ever did anything worse than losing a library book. If we'd been caught jumping from the second floor onto a sofa on the first floor, we'd have been lucky if the police got to us first, because we'd have been loaded into the car and driven home with her lecturing us the whole way, then we'd be in trouble when we got home. (I know Mom was capable of this. Once she and my dad argued all the way from Sioux City, Iowa to Omaha, Nebraska when we were on our way back home to Topeka, Kansas. In Omaha she stopped the car and made my dad get out, but then relented and let him get back in. That was a fun trip.) Not that we were total angels, but we'd been taught how to behave, and we did, mostly out of fear of my mother.

A story: One night my older sister came in way late. My mother started yelling at her, and when Sis yelled back (they were both hotheads) my mother yelled, right outside my bedroom door at 1 a.m., "Be quiet! People are trying to sleep around here!" I yelled, "Yeah, Mom!" After that there was total silence.

[wordgirl]

The hockey kids grow up to be a-holes like the ones who attended an annual convention of my college group.* (That year, my chapter was one of three that was hosting). The words "atrium hotel" brought this all flooding back ... you'll see why in a minute.

That weekend, there was a massive, lavishly provisioned insurance conference with a few thousand attendees and our group which was about 400 college students, run on a significantly more spartan budget. From the start, we had to work overtime to ride herd on members of some chapters to keep them from gate-crashing the insurance group's events; we caught one group of morons sitting in the lobby eating from an ice bucket they'd filled with stolen shrimp and lobster claws; I don't even want to think about how much liquor they probably stole.

Our conference organizers went to meet with the insurance convention folks and said we'd do everything we could - threaten discipline through our organization, confiscate any insurance-convention badges (twas a simpler time, the "badges" were just stickers and their members were careless about peeling them off and leaving them in accessible places) and eject anyone who misbehaved. But we were really at our wits' end and each plea to that small, dedicated group of jerkoffs only seemed to inspire them to do more. By more I mean worse.

Unfortunately, the hotel would not cooperate by physically kicking out those people we'd ejected from the convention.

Our convention ended one day before the insurance event, and that last night hotel staff were setting up for the huge swanky insurance party. There was a net strung across the atrium near the top (IIRC it was about a 50-story hotel) full of about 10 gazillion balloons. For a balloon drop. Which ended up happening - just about 15 hours ahead of schedule.

Who knew balloons cost that much?

There wasn't any direct proof that people from my organization were to blame, but we didn't really have much ground to fight it either. Until the balloon incident, hotel staff were being pretty kind, recognizing that we were just as frustrated as they were and really trying to keep our renegades under control. But after that they threw the book (yeah, the bill was that long) at us, including damage to an ornamental fountain (yeah, probably) and the swimming pool (in a northern city, in January - not likely).

All three of the organizing chapters ended up essentially going bankrupt. The national organization almost followed suit. It actually made the local news. That's when we found out about the stray/feral cats that some people had trapped and shut up in an unused conference room. For hours. Oh, so THAT explains the very large, custom-loomed carpet on our bill, thanks. No cats were hurt, thank goodness.

Effing morons.


*There were basically two kinds of chapters in this organization; some (including ours) operated like college-based service clubs; others operated as fraternities and some even participated in the Greek system at their campus. Guess which chapters supplied most of the problem children?)

[wolfie]

Unfortunately, the hotel would not cooperate by physically kicking out those people we'd ejected from the convention.

There wasn't any direct proof that people from my organization were to blame, but we didn't really have much ground to fight it either. Until the balloon incident, hotel staff were being pretty kind, recognizing that we were just as frustrated as they were and really trying to keep our renegades under control. But after that they threw the book (yeah, the bill was that long) at us, including damage to an ornamental fountain (yeah, probably) and the swimming pool (in a northern city, in January - not likely).

So your organization had told the hotel "These people who arrived with our group have been acting like idiots, and we've ejected them from our convention", the hotel didn't kick them out, and when they continued to act like idiots the hotel stuck your group with the bill? Too late now, but the hotel failed to mitigate damages (if they'd booted known troublemakers, the troublemakers wouldn't have been around to mess with the balloon drop and bring in the stray cats).

[wordgirl]

So your organization had told the hotel "These people who arrived with our group have been acting like idiots, and we've ejected them from our convention", the hotel didn't kick them out, and when they continued to act like idiots the hotel stuck your group with the bill? Too late now, but the hotel failed to mitigate damages (if they'd booted known troublemakers, the troublemakers wouldn't have been around to mess with the balloon drop and bring in the stray cats).

We considered that. The reality was that we didn't have 100 percent proof that it was even our group who did any of the vandalism we were asked to pay for (nowadays there'd be cameras everywhere) and certainly no solid proof that the vandals were among the people we officially ejected from the proceedings. Still, our chapter president really thought that having a few bad apples be forced to gather their things and do the walk of shame would make other people less likely to act out. Instead we were stuck with them right there in the hotel with us, but banned from participating in any of our activities ... bored+humiliated=trouble.

The bottom line is that the co-hosting chapters were "good kid" chapters and very hard-wired to take responsibility (and still sort of trying to figure out how to adult). We had no idea of the magnitude of the damage bill the hotel would hit us with.... and I have a strong suspicion that hotel management was willing to let us slide until the balloon incident. The hotel manager kept stressing that installing the balloon net was a somewhat dangerous proposition. And his other big complaints were about rudeness and messes his employees were asked to clean up. All in all, that manager seemed like someone who would be pretty good to work for, and he certainly went out of his way to give us as nice an event as we could afford when we were setting everything up.

The insurance people were surprisingly chill too -- they were more like "Look Wilberforce, those scamps are at the buffet again, how droll!"

For both the insurance group and the hotel, the balloons were really what flipped the switch from Bertie-Wooster-like tolerance of hijinks to :::UNLEASH THE KRAKEN::: I do think that once that worm turned, they padded the bill a little, or maybe a lot -- but again, no way to know. And at that point, honestly, who could blame them?

[HawaiianShirts]

Instead of doing the polite thing when receiving a gift that doesn't suit him (accept it with thanks, then use or dispose of it as he wanted), he called to bitch that he didn't get his gift when he wanted it and it wasn't what he wanted, so give him better free stuff?

For our tenth anniversary, Mrs. Shirts and I received a bottle of wine as a congratulatory gift from a B&B host. We choose not to drink alcohol. We thanked the host for the wine, took it home, and gave it to a friend who was having a party a month or so later.

I learned this when I was six! I whined too much about a birthday gift that wasn't exactly what I wanted (not big enough or something), and several of my things were taken away. I'll admit that I sometimes fail to say "thank you" when I should, but that's different from being completely ungrateful.