Backed by the chief

It all started one night. We have the possibility of booking hotel rooms for friends and family at a ridiculously low rate. It's a cool feature, as it means you can do something nice for people visiting you from far away, or for friends or family travelling, equally far away. A cheap hotel, money-wise, means a lot when you're adding expenses. Anyway, sometimes you have people visiting you, and having them stay with us here, or at one of our sister hotels in town, is a cool thing. Of course, the downside is, you need to trust that your friends can handle the privilege of staying cheaply.

I say privilege like it's a big thing. It's not BIG big. But whatever your friends do at the hotel WILL reflect on you, seeing as you're responsible for them staying here. With that in mind, I'm pretty careful about who I promise my help to, because I don't want a case of somebody fucking up, and me having to take the fall. So yeah, it's a privilege.

One guy around here uses the friends and family deal sometimes. He has family from another country, and they travel here. Of course, he books the room, and they come to stay. Now, they don't pay a lot, which means that they will get the service that any guest gets, but that pretty much sums up their rights as guests. They are entitled to the room, and everything it comes with, but they are not entitled to special treatment, and if they act up, the hotel's fuse is a lot shorter than with regular guests. That's a condition of that price.

So he had booked a room for these two people. They came down from Finland. They would be arriving late, as in 2am or so. The evening shifters were looking at the reservation when I came into work, and the dude who booked it, was telling me they'd be here. The reservation wasn't guaranteed for late arrival, which, in normal cases, means we delete it at 4pm. The evening shifters wanted to delete it now, because we get in trouble if we check in a non-guaranteed guest with no means of payment blah blah. It's technical. Anywho, they cancelled the reservation. Now we had plenty of rooms, so it wouldn't be a problem when they showed up. I told the guy I'd just reinstate the reservation. No problem.

But it wasn't that simple. What he had failed to tell me, or indeed put down in the reservation, was the fact that they were bringing a child with them. When their reservation was cancelled, the room that was dedicated to their reservation, was released into the pool of empty rooms, meaning it was up for grabs for any other reservation that would check in. And it was used, for another guy. I checked somebody into the room, having no idea that the room was specifically needed for these guests, and that there was an extra bed in the room. The guest that was checked in never mentioned any extra bed, so I wasn't aware at any point.

Then these people arrived. The lady came in, and I checked her into another room. She was friendly, and I helped her with information and car parking etc. etc. Nothing wrong so far. She goes out to her car, and they drive off, in search of the parking, which they find. I go into the back, to do some work in the system or whatever I was doing. Next thing I know, this guy is in the doorway to the backoffice, hissing at me "There is NO extra bed". I'm a question mark. Firstly, who the hell is this guy? And why is he angry?

I follow him outside, and start looking up his reservation. He is angry as hell. I tell him that the reservation doesn't mention anything about a reservation. Of course it does! he exclaims. No.. no it doesn't. Their friend hadn't mentioned anything about it. Yes he has, of course he has. What was wrong with us? You know, I'm a pretty patient dude, and while I'm not the most talkative person, I am very friendly and helpful, as long as the person to whom I'm speaking, is also friendly and curteous. If they are unreasonable, then I'm not willing to go that extra mile for them. I may work in the service business, but I don't just roll over on my back, and wave the white flag at the first sign of trouble. If people want to argue, I can argue. And they WILL lose, seeing as I'm pretty much the one making the decision.

But I try to help him. I say we do have other rooms, but getting them ready will take some time, since we'd have to get an extra bed going. This doesn't seem to go down well. "What kind of hotel is this? What kind of service are you giving me? This isn't good service. This is shit" the guy says. I tell him to calm down. It's not my fault that his friend didn't prepare things properly. He continues with his raving, and I realize there's no point in reasoning with this guy. He's to worked up. I try to tell him we can do the other room up, but, as I said, it'd take some time. Still mad, he goes on about the service and how crap the place is. Finally, I say "Fine. Suit yourself." and I go to the back again, and sit down.

I can see him through the blinds. He's standing around in the lobby, fuming. Mildly confused, I guess. He doesn't quite know what to do. I've no idea what's going through his head at this point. My colleague is mildly baffled as well. He asks me what's going on. I explain the situation in brief terms. It's basically a showdown between me and him. And I can't be arsed going out there to help the guy, when he just wants to hurl insults at me. After 5 minutes of him just standing around, my colleague engages him in conversation. The guy wants a pillow and a blanket at least. That's agreed. I don't hear anything else about it.

I tell the morning shift about the incident, in case the dude comes down screaming later on. Then I go home to sleep, unaffected by the whole situation. Afterall, he was probably just tired. Not excusing his behavior, but I couldn't care less, to be honest. The next morning, I am told that the wife of my co-worker, who had booked the room, had called to complain about me. Called my boss. I was like what the fuck. Seriously?

But she had. Not that it scares me a whole lot, since I had already informed my team of the incident, they knew what was up. But she had called my boss to inform her that her night staff was "very rude". She used to work at the hotel as well, some years back. My boss, bless her tiny asian socks, told her to chill the fuck out. They stayed at an extremely low rate, and since the reservation wasn't even guaranteed, and wasn't adequate to their needs, she didn't have a leg to stand on in this case. "Well it's not about the money", the wife stumbled. "It's about your night team being rude".

"Yeah well I haven't gotten any other complaints about them, so I doubt that very much, thank you" was the response. I gloated, when I talked to her about it. I'm not really a vindictive kind of guy. And I rarely gloat. But when I'm wronged for just doing my job, and somebody starts tooting their horns a little too loudly, then yeah.. I'll gloat the hell out of the situation. She had my back unconditionally, and that really meant a lot. My boss, that is. She asked me if she should speak to the dude here who booked the room originally. I said no. I mean, I don't want to upset the situation more than necessary. Afterall, I had a few words with him myself. And this shit reflects poorly on him as it is. Everybody knows about the situation, and how his friends, staying here for pebbles, made a scene and caused some fuss. And even had the god damn nerve to complain about it afterwards.

Some people...