Work Is HeLL
So, just have to talk about my awful day at work today. I'm unofficially bumped up to Assistant Manager at the hotel I'm at (which means I do more work, take more grief, but still get paid the same) and today I was just supposed to be in for about 7 hours and leave. Well, it started out fine, even went for an extended lunch break with my sister. However, when I got back, things slowly started to go to hell.
First off, when housekeeping left, they didn't make the extra rollaway beds. So, I had to do that because we were going to sell out, which meant we would need them. Now, for whatever reason, we had pretty much no extra laundry ANYWHERE. I had to scour all 4 floors and still didn't have enough blankets for them all.
When I finished, I had about an hour left and chose to go fold towels (especially because we didn't have any for the pool). As I was about to restock the pool and clock out, the Front Desk worker came back and said someone wanted their sheets changed on their beds. So, I had to go upstairs, strip their beds, dig around in the various laundry rooms to find enough sheets, blankets, etc. to make their beds.
I finished after about a half hour, went to the pool to drop off the towels, and got ready to clock out again. Here came the Front Desk person. AC wasn't working in some room. So, I had to go upstairs to that room, take a look at the AC, and tidy up the room.
Okay, this time I actually manage to clock out. I head out of the back room and there are like 15 people in the lobby. So, I start helping people. I get down to one of the last few. She says she has 2 reservations under a name we don't have in the system. I ask her how to spell it a couple of times, but no name. The Front Desk person says these rooms have been checked in and changed to different names. I ask if about the two names. One is another family traveling with them. Turns out she has a hyphenated last name and the second one belongs to her. I ask to see her ID to verify. The first name doesn't match, but the AAA card she has matches the name on file. I ask her why that is. Well, the AAA card belongs to her sister who is staying in the room with them, but they're paying for the room. Okay. I swipe her CC for the room, change the name to hers, and give her keys. She goes up and comes back down, saying there is someone in her room.
I ask, "Isn't it your sister? You said she was staying in the room with you."
"No, we're supposed to have 3 reservations!"
2 or 3...someone doesn't know how to count. I tell her we don't have a 3rd reservation. She swears up and down there's supposed to be another reservation. I tell her that the sister needs to come down to help sort this out. Meanwhile, she needs a 3rd room. I have no more doubles, only singles, except for our only suite. I tell her about both and she says she was told she couldn't book the suite. (Even though the Front Desk person came back to ask me if she could book it, and I said yes, and this woman apparently decided not to take it because she never called back to make the 3rd reservation!!) I tell her we only book it from the desk as an upgrade because it is our only room. She says she'll take that room and she doesn't need the double then (because it has a pull out couch, making 3 beds in the room). I transfer the room and give her new keys and tell her to have her sister bring me the keys for the double. She leaves.
One minute (no lie) later she comes back, with her sister, and says they want to keep both rooms. Her sister doesn't want to move. Okay. So, she leaves for the suite. Now I have to amend the first reservation for the sister, re-transfer it back, and re-swipe her CC for the room. Then, I have to make a new reservation for the suite and put the woman's CC on that room. Well, I didn't have to authorize her CC the first time because there was already authorization on the sister's CC. So, when I went to authorize her CC for the new reservation, her CC was denied. So, I had to call up to the suite, multiple times, to get a hold of her, so she could bring me a different CC. Luckily, that one worked and it was the end of that.
Now, the sister said that when she came in she made her own reservation. But, that doesn't make sense. The Front Desk worker said the sister told her there was a room for her under the name the reservations were originally made in. Plus, why would the Front Desk worker randomly pulled up that reservation and give it to someone else whose name is completely different than the name on file.
If it seemed like it was just an honest mistake, I would have understood it. But she lied to me about how many reservations she was supposed to have, never explain about the other people in her party she was holding rooms for (she kept saying she had 2 rooms under such and such name), lied about her sister staying in the same room with them, tried to lie about there being "someone" in her room already (she did not say it was her sister she found in the room, I brought that up), lied about not being offered the suite, and gave me an invalid form of payment AFTER I told her I needed to authorize her CC for the amount of the stay.
If it had been just one lie, I'd have thought she got her wires crossed, or maybe we at the hotel made a mistake (it happens), but after all that. No, just no. She's looking for a discount, or a free room. And I HATE when people try to get something for nothing like that. I know they're going to complain later. On top of it all, this makes me look bad in front of my manager. I already had someone lie about me being rude and nasty to them last week because I wouldn't give them a discount for a coupon they didn't give me, for a hotel that wasn't even ours. They won't give you the discount at the grocery store if you don't have the coupon, you think a hotel is any different!!
After all that I had to go back and run my time card again because I had been there for another half hour that I was damn well getting paid for. So, all and all, that made for about a 10 hour day. And I'm going in late tomorrow because if I go into overtime, they're gonna write my ass up, and that ain't happening!
Hope your day was much better!