Complaints

Our guests really enjoy complaining--especially about the front desk staff. I mean those sumbitches just thrive on reporting our various offenses to management and corporate headquarters alike. For your reading pleasure, I have thoughtfully compiled a top five list of common grievances:
1. We sit in chairs. No, really. Sitting...in...chairs. I know, I know. The iron maiden is too good for zoo-residing sloths such as ourselves. Allegedly, sitting during any part of your eight-hour or more, no-break-except-for-maybe-your-back shift means you look idle and not at the ready. But guess what--last time I checked, I didn't need to be standing to be within reach of the special button under the counter that launches the f**king laser light show, confetti parade, and petting zoo whenever you walk through the door, you ignorant little twerps. The people who bitch about this probably never had to work a day in their lives.
2. We watch TV when there is nothing else to do. GASP. Can you imagine the acid reflux a customer must endure when they've majestically swept through our door--fully expecting the cherubs from on high to come down to the lobby, robe them, lotion their feet, and chariot them up to their room--but instead the first thing they see is the GB half-heartedly channel-surfing because they are one of three total guests checking in that evening? I am surprised the complaint papers filed on the subject aren't splattered with the telltale stains that only vomit can leave behind.
3. We are rude. Okay, I’ll give you this one. We are without question human (unlike our previously oft-mentioned boss) and sometimes customers annoy us. I honestly do not enjoy things such as:
A) Customers roughly stuffing cookies into their mouths and talking to me at the same time (thus exposing me to that dreaded trilogy of visually stunning half-chewed food, bile-smelling spittle, and the snorting that all too often accompanies such feral feasting)
B) Customers who are so helplessly retarded they've gone and locked themselves out of their room without any clothes on
C) Customers asking me for detailed out-of-state directions and when I can't help them they act like I should just take this uniform off right now because I am the worst representative of this or any hotel they can think of ("How is it she doesn't know how to get from our house in Michigan to the IKEA in Des Moines, Iowa without taking I-85? Unbelievable.")
D) Customers who call and ask for the hospital rate and I tell them in order to get it you have to have some sort of paperwork because let's face it, anyone can call and say they're visiting the hospital but they might not be, so you have to prove it, and they flip out and rant for a considerable period of time about how you're a liar before finally just hanging up on you and then calling back ten minutes later sweet as pie to see if you've changed your mind about needing that paperwork yet
E) Customers who want to pay their bill in cash but when they learn that requires a thirty dollar deposit they respond reasonably and like adults by completely losing their s**t and running down the list of reasons why your hotel stinks and so do you
F) Customers who interrupt my blogging because their room key doesn't work, or some such nonsense
I'm sorry, but that stuff just sets me off.
4. We don't listen attentively enough when they try to tell us stories about how they can't go to the bathroom unless there is a significantly wide area around the toilet because a gentleman who should really be keeping this gem of a tale to himself wants us to know he has to squat in a certain way in order to use the facilities or he can't use them at all and so on. This actually happened. The "gentleman" (who was elderly and probably senile, I'll admit) reported to management that we did not appear to be listening closely enough to True Tales of Tragedy on the Toilet, Volume 1 and furthermore he was not impressed with our all-too-obvious lack of compassion. Well, I have to concede we probably did not listen as diligently as we could have, although to be fair I don't know anyone who would actually want to be treated to the diarrhea diaries of old Joe--except for maybe other old Joes. I'm still young, so let's hope I have a few more years left on me before I too am forced to hunch like Quasimodo over the commode in order to relieve myself. And let us pray when that time comes I won't be heartlessly shunned by strangers who couldn’t care less about my poop. Moving on now.
5. We won't give them what they want, when they want and how they want it. This could be anything from extra towels to plunging a toilet (which you clogged, might I point out, all by yourself on your last visit to brown town) to a new desk chair to a new room to a comped room. Comped rooms are quite the popular request around here. I especially enjoy when people come down to the lobby wearing the gravest of expressions (as if to say, “How could you even give us these keys? Are you not aware that room 306 is an unkempt mausoleum consisting entirely of homeless people’s remains?"), look me right in the eye with absolutely no shame whatsoever because they weren’t raised right, and say: "The blanket on the bed has a hole in it the size of a particle of dust. This is unacceptable. We want a free room."
My response to the aforementioned bitchery? I think people simply expect too much. They want rock-bottom prices and Ritz Carlton-style accommodations and service. When reality sets in and they realize they're not getting what they didn't pay for, disappointment turns them into colicky, mommyless diaper babies. Which, actually, would explain all the talk about poop.