Saturday, September 16, 2006

Customer Service Industry

Well. I can now fully appreciate why Receptionists in the hotel industry has the highest staff turnover rate for any job. Let me reveal the secret... BECAUSE PEOPLE ON HOLIDAY ARE RUDE! Yes, I have finally revealed the secret for all to see.
Example 1.
A bloke (I will not call him a gentleman because he is NOT) does seminars for companies all over the country. He is doing a seminar for a company in the NT, and is staying in my hotel, as well as conducting the seminar in the hotel's function room. So essentially he has yet to leave the hotel since checking in 5 days ago. He has proceeded to abuse the staff - and this is no simple shouting, it is full on screaming at the top of his lungs, profanities streaming out of his mouth and fist slamming on the bench, seriously intimidating stuff if he wasn't so irrational - for the stupidest things. Here is his list of complaints:
-Having to wait 5 minutes (yes, FIVE MINUTES) for the porter to get back from the other side of the hotel to lock the funtion room up.
-The hotel not providing an in-house laundry service so he doesn't have to wash his socks. We have guest laundries but, being a 4 star hotel and being in DARWIN, we like most other hotels in this city don't provide a laundry service. He abused me for 15 minutes because of this. We have never pretended to have anything but guest laundry. No other person has ever complained about this.
-The restuarant was booked out. Oh yes he did. Like we can control THAT.
-Our staff are extremely unhelpful. Its a little hard to offer help when he doesn't stop for breath to allow us to help. And frankly, why the hell would we help a prick like that? (Pardon my French).
-We don't take care of our business clients, we only cater for tourists. We have regular business clients from all over Australia, lawyers, accountants, etc staying with us all the time. There's a British GENTLEMAN with a black Amex card who stays with us all the time... you'd think with something like a $100,000 limit on the card he'd buy a house in Cullen Bay so he'd have a place to stay whenever he came here instead of staying in our modest hotel. I'm sure this gentleman washes his own bloody socks, he has even used the guest laundry!
-We, at the front desk, have not taken responsibility for what has gone wrong. After explaining to him thousands of times (literally) that front desk is not responsible for functions, the functions co-ordinator is, he shouts over us that we're not taking responsibility. Honestly, how can anyone reason with that? He was warned, continuously, by the front office manager, that he is not to abuse the staff like that. The third time he did it, the manager threatened to physically evict him. The general manager backed him up. He now passes front desk and does not even look at us. Bastard, thinks he can intimidate us.
Example 2.
Three british ladies are travelling together. They have had trouble with other hotels regarding their room arrangements - its all been twin not triple share. We can understand their gripe. Their agent had emailed us letting us know it was triple share, so we accommodated their request, in our best room. After talking down to me (why do I attract the psychos? why not the cute RAAF pilots?) and after I explained that the sofa beds were very comfortable (they are, I've tried them) they walked off. Five minutes later one of the ladies (I must single her out, the other two weren't too bad) was back complaining that the room was only made up for two people, and that we should've known better. We went and got towels, etc (she wanted three, not two towels like normal individuals want), and put them in her room. Two minutes later she was complaining that the sofa beds were wrinkled. She wanted a new room. Oh. My. God. They were fresh sheets, they were wrinkled because hey, its hard to keep sheets dead straight when they're folded.
Any suggestions for payback? No food is involved, so I can't spit in their meal.

3 comments:

Missy said...

Man, I feel sorry for you girls (people?) who have to put up with that.

But at least you get to dress up pretty to go to work! ;)

carlabalala said...

Yes, many have asked about the fashion brilliance of our uniform, and is exclusively for employees. Lucky us *rolls eyes*

Anonymous said...

tell the prick where to get off...or give me his room number and ill pay him a visit...people like this make me sick! ;-0~~ Viva le Front desk Clerks!!