Obviously, being a front desk clerk, this intrigued me. I googled the article when I got home and found it, and was definitely not too pleased with what I read.First of all, I want to say that my job, although I mock it, and laugh at it, it can be stressful. Guests can be needy and complain about anything and everything. We get yelled at, we get things thrown at us, people swear and always think they know how to do our jobs better than us.

Every hotel is different and has different rules and standards. We don’t ever try to trick you, everything is listed on our websites and if there are questions, you are always free to call and ask. What upsets me, is that when guests get “blindsided” or don’t agree with some additional fees, they claim they called the hotel or whatever and spoke to someone who told them different. We all know how to do our jobs, and lying to you about something, only creates issues, we don’t find amusement from it.

We can never call the guest a liar, but they will call us one until they turn blue in the face. Front desk hears EVERYTHING, all the complaints, and we are required to be in contact with every guest in house, because really, they can’t check in without speaking to us. If a guest wants to complain about housekeeping, or engineering or etc (Sometimes the complaints are legit, sometimes not, some are our fault, others are unavoidable. If you’ve read my blog before you’ve undoubtably read some of the complaints and issues I have handled. Like my “About Me” states, every guest and every complaint is always unique), they call the Front Desk to complain, because really, in the end, FD is the one that compensate them.

There are days that I want to scream, cry, yell, laugh, and run away. But I keep myself composed. All jobs have their downside, and I chose to be in the hospitality industry. I didn’t go in blind, and expected this, because, with the negative guests, you also get the pleasant guests too. What’s more, is even if I encounter an angry guest, if I am able to turn their day around, that makes me proud of myself, I don’t go to work to just to check guests in and out.

Most hotels also have a survey that gets emailed to some guests after they depart. This survey is used to rank the hotels to see whose best vs. the worse and in addition to see how the hotel is doing as well. See where we need to improve and see where we are thriving. And, although it never names the FD clerk who checked you in, you rank them individually as well, and one question is generally to rank the helpfulness and friendliness of them. Getting bad scores gets us in trouble, obviously, so those of us who value are jobs and care, swallow our pride while we get berated.

Now, onto the article.

When I first read the title, I assumed this was going to be an article defending front desk clerks, that was until I read this:
Here are five ways hotel employees exact their revenge on difficult guests, and what you can do to avoid it
ummm .. I will be the first to shout loud and clear that some guests are bitches. But letting them get to me now makes my day ruined, and I can almost guarantee they don’t think about me once they leave the FD. Also, me “exacting revenge” fucks me over in the end. The guest will generally complain, and I like/need my job, in addition, I haven’t “exacted revenge” since HS, I grew up thanks.

According to the article the 5 ways we “exact our revenge” is:
1. Make you wait (i.e. I waste my work time and have to deal with this guest longer. Generally, I try to get to the rude people away from me asap, call me crazy)
2. Freeze your credit card (Because apparently I control banks now .. well, thats not really what this point states, I will elaborate more on the stupidity of this point later)
3. Assign you the least desirable room (unfortunately, someone does have to occupy these rooms, I try to use them as last available option. Also, if I give someone said room, they are back down to the FD in record speed or on the phone with guest services trying to change rooms. This just makes me have to deal with difficult guests longer and makes my day harder)
4. Find an extracurricular activity to torture you (I’m sorry, I missed the memory where being a front desk clerk requires me to also be a sodomist) and
5. Make you pay, literally (yes, because I can just make up things to charge you for .. I can’t charge you for something that you did not use, and everything always has a price, that’s just common sense. Just because at check out you didn’t state you drank the $3 bottle water in the room does not mean that we don’t keep track of it and won’t charge you once its recorded)

Make you wait
I hate making guests wait for their rooms, sometimes it is unavoidable. What baffles me is when guests who request early check in generally request late check out as well. Late check outs make early check ins hard, but yet they don’t seem to grasp this. Sometimes housekeeping gets backed up and or is understaffed or get thrown off by certain rooms (this meaning, a room was trashed, something was broken or stolen, and a few weeks ago a guest called after the departed to warn housekeeping to wear gloves because he had scabies .. ya).  Also, guests find it hard to believe that hotels sell out. If our check out time is noon and you come at 10am to check in, well, I can’t kick a guest out for a room they paid to stay in for 2 more hours and your check in time is in 5 hours. But please, if you are negotiator, by all means, go haggle for your room.
“‘For guests who are rude, drunk or just obnoxious, a clerk may well make them wait,’ … How long they spend in “time out” depends on the seriousness of their crime”
I am not a babysitter, and drunks harass me. I have one daughter and don’t go to work to put guests in “time out”. That’s just abusing my authority.
If it makes any difference, staying calm will get you into your room faster.
ummm .. being nice to me isn’t going to make housekeeping go any faster. They aren’t my puppets and can only go so fast.

Freeze your Credit Card
EVERYONE PLEASE TAKE HEAD TO THIS: ALL hotels upon swiping your credit card authorize room and tax for the duration of the stay plus the hotels individual security deposit requirement per day. If room and tax is prepaid, then it is just the security hold, but it is required because if anything is broken or damaged, we need a way to be reimbursed. We don’t think you are going to go intentionally f* up the room, but accidents happen, and people do try to leave without paying room service or whatever. But it would be stereotyping if we only required a credit card from certain guests not all. The policy has to stay intact for every guest. This is why we recommend credit cards. With debit cards, it will look like we already took the money out and that’s not the case, but guests are unable to use that money. Credit cards, as long as your limit hasn’t been reached, it wont interfere with any other purchases.
“If the guest were particularly annoying, the clerk could place a huge hold on the card, rendering it unusable for any other purchases”
Upon check in the computer authorizes the minimum amount required to check in, unfortunately, there is no way around that. Without the computer’s minimum, we can’t check in the guest. If a guest has gone over the limit per day, then the FD has to manually reauthorize cards. Occasionally mistakes happen and periods are placed in the incorrect spot, but I could only imagine how that conversation with my manager would go down if I authorized $9000 instead of $90.
“Even calling the merchant provider to release the hold did not fix the problem, because the reversal takes two to five days to work its way through the various provider networks,”
This is a false statement. Upon clicking the check out button, any amount that was authorized and not used from the guests credit/debit card is IMMEDIATELY released from our system because we no longer have a need to hold it. The guest’s bank then takes 2 to 5 business days to recognize the hold being released to release it back to the guest. I have PERSONALLY called merchants, several times, to release holds, and this puts the money back in the guest’s bank asap. A FD clerk is required to speak to the bank because we have information that the guest does not have. I have never had an issue with a merchant not being able to release a hold immediately.

Assign you the Least Desirable Room
This made me mad
“Ian Spector was sent down a long hall to one of the worst rooms in the house when he checked in at an upscale hotel in San Diego recently. ‘I couldn’t help but think that because I was under 30, the check-in staff figured they could put me in the crappy room,’ says Spector, a Web developer who was in town for a technology conference. ‘The in-room bathroom was really cramped and awkward.’ Stories like this are the stuff of travel legends: The hotel employees take a look at you and decide you’re in the wrong place, or that they don’t like you “
Unfortunately, not all of the rooms are the best. At my hotel in particular, aside from the 6 suites, all rooms look EXACTLY the same. Its varying factors are locations and views. We sometimes don’t have any other options, and we have to assign those rooms to someone. To accuse us of stereotyping is out of line.

Find an Extracurricular way to torture you
That just makes it sound like I am going to tie them up and beat them with a whip. I work front desk at a hotel, not a dominatrix at the Power Exchange.
I then was besieged by hundreds of obscene phone calls at my home and office over the next month,” says Chapman, who runs a marketing company in Chicago. The phone calls were traced back to the hotel
That’s special. And there are crazies. People with no lives might actually do that. But that’s a rarity, and never have I ever heard of it happening. Why do I want to go out of my way to annoy a guest who pissed me off? Again, I am better than that and have a life I like to live when not at work. But you can get that from any company, especially telemarketers.

And finally
Make you pay – Literally
There are no hidden charges. Everything that is an additional fee, the fee is stated. Otherwise, we can’t charge you. Pretty simple.
“Hotel employees can wreak all kinds of havoc on your guest folio, adding late charges that don’t show up on your bill until after you’ve checked out, or putting in little extras that you assumed were included in the price of your room … ‘This includes long-distance calls, the breakfast bar, drinks and food.’ Other tricks include manipulating your confirmed room rate or adding unexpected extras, like charges for Internet, the minibar or pay-per-view movies. Rarely are they so overt, though. Usually, it’s something smaller that you discover a few days after you’ve left, like a minor late charge or breakfast.”
First of all, how would you be unaware if there was a price for breakfast. You sign a receipt. Secondly, when using internet, generally you asked to pick your connection speed and the faster the speed the higher the number is next to it .. the number being the price you are agreeing to pay. Next, long-distance phone calls?! Really you expect us to pay for that? Especially considering we receive ZERO commission from phone revenue. The rates come straight from our provider and the fees go straight to them. Also, drinks and food? These are extra charges that you didn’t think you paid for? Do you go to the grocery store, grab the bread, and go to your car? No you go pay first, as do we, please pay us back. Pay-per-view movies too?! Do you get free movies at your house, via your provider, the movie theatre, Blockbuster, etc .. no? me neither. Yes, in order to watch a movie you have to pay a fee just like everywhere else you go. Lastly, we manipulate your room rate? Why, why would I do that? You have a email confirmation of your reservation when it is made. If I change the rate, you have proof of the discrepancy. Last note, just because when you check out, the bill you have doesn’t have breakfast on it, does not mean that we purposely charge you after. We are not physcic, nor do we follow you around. Again, we are not your babysitter, you should be able to recall if you ate breakfast so you should be able to realize that doing so will result you in having a different bill.

This article basically made me, and I say me because the article is about Front Desk clerks and I am a Front Desk clerk, so basically it is an attack at me, that I am a vindictive, spiteful, manipulative, cold hearted, uncaring bitch who is out to make everyone’s stay as difficult as possible because I find some kind of joy out of it.

News flash, that’s not the case. All hotels, just like all businesses, have the exceptions with employees who are out of line and when instances like some stated occur, they get fired.

Guess what, my hotel has been on a pay freeze. December will mark my two years there and I have yet to receive a raise. We recently remodeled and in addition to that it costs A LOT of money to run a hotel. My hotel is currently in debt, largely due to the name change and economy and remodel, and in order to cut costs employees are on pay freezes. It sucks. Only way to get out of it is if we make more money. Being rude and driving guests away is not going to bring them back nor recommend our hotel.

I get berated, harassed, threatened, the works by guests, but my job requires me to smile and work through it, and I do not retaliate because I am better than that. Yes I complain and rant, but I don’t even call them out by name to respect their privacy.

I take my job seriously and want to grow in it and have it be my career.

For the record, I have never been “hugged” by a hotel guest, nor do I need to be. I don’t need incentive other than myself and my ambition to do the job I was hired to do and to go above and beyond expectations.

With father’s day coming up I wanted to share his father day post. . If you tweet you can also follow him @MattSchmoldt.

Day 1:

Description: Old, Asian, Wearing a skirt,  rude, claims to be a massage therapist
10:45pm: Comes into hotel looking for free parking
10:55pm: Starts yelling at FD because guest is not in room (claims person is occupying the 8th floor)
11:00pm: It is discovered that that room is not occupied nor is the person she is inquiring about a guest of this hotel nor is that name anywhere in the system
11:05pm: Leaves swearing

Day 2:

Description: Young, Filipino, wearing a black dress, red heels, and a red jacket
1:30am: Parks in front of the hotel, comes inside, and inquires about hourly parking
1:35am: Parks, comes inside and inquires about elevators to 8th floor
2:25am: Leaves disheveled and happy looking

.. I could be a detective

.. People watching is fun .. I <3 my job sometimes

We gave out WAY too many rooms to the airport to give to passengers if their flights were cancelled .. and the airport took advantage. A flight got rerouted because a man died on the airplane (RIP). I had to start sending people back because we ran out of rooms and they went over what we gave them.

It wasn’t helpful that my hotel didn’t have enough rooms cleaned or planned in advance for this BS. Then a flight crew came in for 3 rooms. They arrived at 1am and the fax for the rooms for them came in at 9pm. They were never made. Awesome. My security guard and co worker started cleaning some dirty rooms. Thank god for them.

I actually had to put people into our Parlor rooms. Parlor rooms are basically twice the size of regular guest rooms. They have a connecting room to a regular guest room, so it can or cannot be sold as a suite. It has a mini kitchen complete with fridge and microwave, bathroom, couch, TV, dining room table, it’s really nice .. just no bed and the couch is not a pull out sofa. I had to use 3 out of 4 the parlor rooms and had housekeeping put rollaway beds in them . One of them was given to one of the crew members and 2 of them were given to 2 of the distress guests that saw a man die.

People were crying. It was BAD. I felt awful.

But .. when I’m stressed and about to scream I think to myself someone is always having a worse day than me, and at least I am not the one who died tonight.

Well there’s another airport parking lot located across the street. We are not affiliated with it.So apparently about a week ago at this parking lot there was a regular pick up truck parked there. 

Well, a few days after it had first parked there it spontaneously combusted.

There was no bomb to it, no lighter fluids or matches or anything. No other cars affected.

True story. This cop told me about it. Crazy stuff.

There’s this lady, iono it might be a man, that has called the hotel a few times. She continuously is complaining about the parking lot we own, but wont elaborate unless she is talking to a manager.

Okay cool.

We transfer her to our supervisors who are currently the acting managers on duty. She still wont talk to them, because they are not a manager. At one point in time we were instructed to transfer her to the reservations line for the parking lot. Ya, that’s helpful.

Okay.

She continues and continues to call. Hoping I guess for something different to happen and obviously, I mean I’m not going to grow a manager.

So my MOD calls the police. This isn’t a movie. What are they going to do? She’s a persistent annoying caller, so what, you are the same thing minus the caller part, I’m not calling the police on you tho, but if this is a new trend we are starting .. cool.

A police officer actually came to the hotel. It was awesome. My coworker asks him “Are you going to save us from the big bad phone caller lady” and he replies with “No, I can’t, I can only protect you from real people” .. Win.

My MOD then comes out all smiling and thinking he did something good. The police officer then verbally spanks him. He said “This is a real person who is calling and may have a real complaint. It is your job to help her. Even today in the amount of time she has been calling, it isn’t even considered harrassment. You need to contact the phone company.”

It was so great. I just wanted to share.

Its a HILARIOUS sight about stupid customers. Everyone can post to it if you have your own story. You can also follow them on twitter @notalwaysright

and this is my personal favorite stupid customer