Why new years qualifies as a crime against humanity
Well...humanity meaning ME.
(WARNING: This cut leads to an extremely long winded description of everything that went down on New Year's Eve. I don't blame you if you just skim it or don't read it at all. BUT! I must say that it's quite exciting and definitely worth glancing at)
Anyway, I'm sure you're all wondering why I suddenly had this change of heart regarding our beloved-by-most festival of the annum, a.k.a. boozapalooza.
Well, working at a hotel on New Year's eve, the night shift no less, is a life changing experience. Here's how mine went...
I got to work at 11pm. As expected, it's busy but all the arrivals are done and everything seems to be under control. Midnight rolls around and myself and several other staff members staying later than usual to help with the new years rush have our own little countdown in the back with champeign and! It was a good little time. Little did we know, the world was on the brink of utter chaos...
Around 1:30 or so, it's still busy and it's hard for me to get all my work done (as the night auditor there are a lot of things I have to do like reports and stuff). Then something happens. I drunken friend of a guest decides to kick the glass door to the west tower and cracks the whole thing! So he's dragged inside by Dave the security guy (who was standing like RIGHT there when he kicked it). Now we have to get him to pay for it! But he's being an ass and talking about calling his lawyer and refusing to show ID. Eventually we got a credit card of him to charge the damage to but of course it's pretty much maxed out. So he had to bum $400 cash of his freinds to pay for the window. Although I didn't really have to deal with this for the most part it did slow me down in my nightly duties.
it's a little after 3am, and aside from me being behind things seem relatively sane now...THEN...THE FIRE ALARM GOES OFF!! This bell is ringing which wakes up everbody in the hotel and the phones go crazy!! Three lines ringing non-stop for about ten minutes straight. The managers are running around, I have NO clue what the hell is happening, I'm telling everybody that there's no reason to panic and the alarm is being investigated and they'll be notified if there is any danger. A few staff members sleeping at the hotel that night wake up and come to the desk (thank GOD!) and help me answer phones and questions.
Suddenly water starts soaking the carpet behind from under the back office door. Brock is like "WTF?" so I go to check it out. Into the office I go. the whole carpet back there is sopping wet, I go through the next door into the back hallway. The whole hall is filled with water about a quarter inch deep. Water is pouring down the stairs like a water fall so I walk up the stairs a bit so see if I can figure out what's going on but the firemen are on the next flight of stairs so I just go back to the desk and leave them to there work. My first thought here of course is that the sprinklers have gone off so there must be a fire!
A few minutes later it's announced that it was a false alarm *whew*. It turns out that somebody went into the first floor stairwell and opened the fire house water pipe...smart move ASSHOLE!! The fire alarm of course automatically goes off when the valve is opened so it had us all thinking there was a fire. The water got into the elevators too and screwed them up so they weren't working for a while. If you watch the security tapes there are two guys on the parking level that wanted to use the elevator but as soon as the doors start to open they run away and water pours out and covers the whole hallway floor in about ten seconds!
Most of the guests are pretty understanding and just go back to there rooms. But there's a few groups of people that are being complete idiots and refusing to return to there rooms because they have to take the stairs! I'd understand if they were elderly or pregnant or had very small children or something but these guys were young partiers who were either just too drunk, fat, lazy, stupid, or all of the above. They're getting all up in our faces and we're telling them there's nothing we can do, they want to be compensated but we can't do anything because a) they prepaid through expedia so the money is out of our hands and b) they're being dicks and we don't compensate dicks. So then they just go sit in the lobby and start talking SUPER loud and swearing all over the place but a hotel lobby is a family friendly environment so Heather went and asked them to calm down which, surprise surprise, hardly makes a difference. Now they're standing right outside the door smoking pot and the smoke is blowing into the hotel and making the whole lobby stink like marijuana. Then they're back inside and being idiots and this guy comes and asks me for water! I say "I'm sorry but we don't sell water at the front desk" And he's like "Fuck! weneed some water" Yeah, because your mouth is dry from smoking up and that's YOUR problem. He must have asked me TWENTY TIMES (no exageration) for water. No matter how many times I said "It's NOT POSSIBLE FOR ME TO GET YOU WATER!!" He'd ask again. Now I'm just pissed because he's waisting my time and I'm already WAY behind schedule and he's being rude.
Anyway, after I finally shut him up. This other guy calls me from his room and he's pissed that he had to take the stairs and he wants to be compensated, but like I said we don't compensate dicks. Plus there was nothing we could about the elevator shutting down for his protection! So he's tell me he's going to come to the front desk and "talk some shit" And I have taken so much shit tonight already I'm just like "Bring it!" although I didn't actually say that...Anyway, he tells me a few more times that he's going to talk some shit like it's gonna scare me or something but I really don't give a rats ass so I'm just like "Alright, I'll see you in a few minutes" So he comes down and announces that he is there to "Talk some shit" And I just said "okay." He didn't really say much though because it was pretty obvious that I didn't give a fuck about his sittuation (he's another young, physically able dick who's just trying to get a few freebies while he can) and that I'm not going to help him.
Meanwhile the behaviour of the pot smoking group is not improving at all so after a few more warnings we've had it up to here so we call te cops and kick them out of the hotel. They all end up cuffed and searched in the front courtyard (Yes!!).
Basically that's what happend. It put me way behind and I was at the hotel until 10:30 (I've been there for just shy of 12 hours now) finishing everything up. In addition to all that there was a few problems with the audit (that were entirely NOT my fault, by the way) which also made things really hard.
Anway, it was the worst night in the history of my employed life but it's a great story so I hope you enjoyed it, although it was entirely too long...