Day 12

Day 12: Mirror Mirror

            Guests like to ask the front desk staff for ludicrous requests and bits of information. Examples include, exchange rates for Finland, requests to cut their hair, and how to pack a bow and arrow set for flights. My coworker and I developed two different approaches to dealing with ridiculous guests. My approach is to slow my speech, appear doe eyed, and act stupid. I figure that the guest already thinks that I am young and stupid, so I play up this fact.

            My coworker developed the perfect mechanism to cope with guests. She mimics them. She adopts their speech patterns and cadence. If they are loud and boisterous, then she is loud and boisterous. If they are overly sweet and condescending, then she is overly sweet and condescending. The results are amazing. Once the guests hear themselves reflected in her speech, they change into a normal speaking voice. 

            Often I wonder if the guests know that they sound ridiculous. She proves that even the guests don’t like to spoken to in the way that they speak to us.

Below is an example of a conversation between a front desk staff and a guest.


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Hope that this aids your survival.

            Good luck. Godspeed.

Day 11

Click on the video and then read post.

Day 11: Patience is the Lost Virtue.

            There are times when the front desk staff will feel self-conscious. The guest will trick you into thinking that you are slow or unreasonable.

            When the guests check into the hotel, they immediately expect a long an arduous process, yet unless the guest is interrupting our flow my coworker and I rarely provide an inefficient check in experience. We have achieved thousands of efficient check-ins, yet the guests perceive it as our first time. We do not waste time. We anticipate your questions and needs.  The average check- in takes us about 40 seconds. If the guest is as attentive as they expect the staff to be, the check-in should have no problems.

            Inevitably a guest will stand at the desk and throw their credit card at the front desk person, and then tap their fingers on the marble counter as though we are taking too long and wasting their time. The staff must not feel self-conscious. Any purchase at a fast food establishment will take longer than our check-in. In fact, our check-in process lasts as long as the video above. 

Day 10

Day 10: Sometimes Hyde keeps Jekyll under control.

           

            We have already discussed how quickly a guest can turn on the staff, but the in between phase can be quite rewarding. One of the pleasures of working in a business hotel is that here are plenty of regulars. The staff gets to know the guests and their families quite well and vice versa. We ask about their sons’ baseball games and in turn they ask about our university exams.

            Some are even nice enough to bring back snacks for the staff on their way back from dinner. There are even those singular situations where a friendly guest will bring a more substantial gift for the staff, usually in the form of chocolate. Yesterday was one of those occasions.

            A very nice man who stays at our hotel 3 days a week for the last several years presented that staff with a nice card and baked confections. Imagine delicious donut holes injected with custard and covered in chocolate. The staff was astounded. Not only is this guest always friendly and never complains, he brings us thank you gifts.

            Of course, we must always still vigilant of the tipping point where he might forget that we are human and explode all over us. Until that time comes, life is good.

Hope that this aids your survival.

Good luck. Godspeed.

Day 9

Day 9: Motivation for the least.

In these tough economical times most luxuries and incentives have been stripped from the staff. The hotel owners often state that they would like the staff to “sell out”, but there is the opposite of an incentive to do so. Why would the staff sell every last room when we don’t have maintenance on call and trouble seems to run rampant?

Often people will come in without a reservation and try to negotiate the price with the front desk staff. They are under the impression that the staff has any desire to sell every last room. We barely have any desire to sell a single room. When the staff encounters a person who has no reservation and tries to bargain, we only see another guest who is going to cause us problems. Their $180 is not worth it. The staff does not even see any benefit in this transaction. It is just putting more money into the pocket of the individuals who took away any incentive.

It should be noted that this sentiment is only reserved for those who are confused about our motivation. We still want to do our job. It the guest who are confused as to what our job entails. We have no qualms about selling you a room, and will not deny you a room. However, if you allow your ego to drive the conversation, the staff has no motivation to stoke your ego. That is all.

Hope that this aids your survival.

Good luck. Godspeed.

Day 8

Day 8: Rude on the Cellular Level

            There are times when the staff will wonder, “what did your mother teach you?” The guests can be so rude it begs the question if they consider the staff human. One example of this rude streak in guests concerns their cell phone etiquette.

           

            Guests have a tendency to walk up to front desk with either a Bluetooth headset or cell phone pressed against their ear. If they decide to continue their call uninterrupted and signal the staff to wait, because they’re on the phone, they will most likely proceed to stand at the front desk and continue their conversation at the front desk. They will stand there, talking in the staff’s faces about whatever they deem important. We do not care to hear your conversation. Move away from the desk. In almost every other situation the person who is subjected to your phone call can move away from you, but we are trapped behind the desk. You can move.

           

They also will try to juggle both the phone conversation and their interaction with the staff. Since the staff cannot hear the other side of the conversation, we inevitably interrupt each other and the guests don’t really listen to the staff. Do they understand that in doing so, the guests are demeaning the staff? These same guests will come down later with many questions because they were not paying attention to the staff. It will cause the staff to want to rip the phone out of their hands and call their mother and question her as to why he raised such a rude person. The guests are communicating that the staff are not really the same level of human that they are, and then they wonder why the staff just treats them like just a room number.

            As the staff, we must understand that the guests have probably dealt with a high volume of service industry soldiers and their experiences will vary. The guests have probably encountered a number of rude associates (frankly, I have worked with some), but this is one instance where the excuse of past occurrences doesn’t really apply.  

            

Day 7

Day 7: Buyer Beware

            In the hospitality industry, we know that the guests expect us to know and do everything for them. We know that once they are on the road, the lose all abilities to help themselves and rely heavily on the staff. The staff cannot perform magic. There are just some things that we cannot do.  There are services that the hotel provides that the hotel does not provide. We are the middle- man. We handle the transactions and the guest, but do not perform the service. An example of such an instance is dry cleaning. Since the hotel does not have dry cleaning facilities on property, and guest demand was so high, the hotel decided to connect the two together. The transaction traditionally works as such: the guest hands us their dry cleaning on their way to work, we hand it to the driver from the cleaners, they bring it back once finished with a receipt, we charge the guest the amount on the receipt, and then turn around and give that amount to the cleaners.

           

            The other day there was a deviation from the standard transaction. Every once in a while a guest will grumble about the prices of the dry cleaning services, but since we do not set theses prices there is nothing that the staff can do. The other day, a man sent out a large round table cloth to be dry cleaned. On the pricing list there is no category for such a request, but the guest needed it done. When the item returned, the guest was furious at the bill. To dry clean his large, round table cloth the cleaners had charged him $100. It should be noted that the guest did not call the cleaners to get an estimate as is logical. He placed the order under the assumption that the cost would fall in a range that he found acceptable. We did not charge him. The cleaners charged him.

           

            The guest’s reaction was as follows: first he screamed at the front desk staff, then explained that he did not blame the hotel staff on the second day, then blame the hotel staff on the third day. On the fourth he was just curt with the staff. Management decided to pay the entire cost and file it under guest service recovery. Guest service recovery is also known throughout the hospitality industry as “get this guest out of my fucking face before I slap him, just compensate him because the emotional anguish that he is causing me is greater than the dollar amount.”

            If you are a fellow guest service soldier, remember the power of the guest service recovery, but do not over estimate it. It will not fully get rid of the guest, only placate them. You must wait until they go back home, and even then they still might hassle you over the phone. Sometimes there really is no other way except patience.

Hope that this aids your survival.

Good luck. Godspeed.

Day 6

Day 6: System Failure.

            Technology is a wonderful thing. The staff knows how helpful it can be, but every once in a while it decides to malfunction. Computers will malfunction and systems will fail, at the worst time. When all of the computers are down is precisely the moment guest burst through the doors in throngs, each with an emergency that needs to be handled right away.

            The most important things to do is breathe, call tech support, and apologize. Remember I is never your fault, even the guest will make it seem that it is. The system will return to normal, but the guests never will. In every situation where the staff has no control, the guest will place the entire blame on the staff.

Hope that this aids your survival.

Good luck. Godspeed. 

Day 5

Day 5: Beware of Jekyll and Hyde.

            We’ve all heard the stories or seen the TV shows. People have these wonderful pets that they love very much, they even become part of the family. Then all of a sudden the pet turns on it’s owners and the boa constrictor named Hector eats the family’s youngest son. The family forgot that the animal is an animal and has natural urges and tendencies. That is exactly what happened yesterday. A guest turned on the staff.           

           

            When one works in a hotel where there is a high percentage of repeat guest and regulars, there is the chance to arrive at familiar grounds with a guest.  The staff knows the life story of these guests, inquires and cares about their children, and even sends them Christmas cards. The guests in turn learn about the staff and inquire about their children and, for example, how their test went last week. The dividing wall between guest and staff becomes thinner throughout the years of familiarity. This can become dangerous. The staff must always remember that they are not of us. There will come a time where the guest will have a bad day and take it out on the staff and reveal how they truly feel about the staff.

Yesterday, the phrase, “I pay for your salary”, was uttered in anger by a guest.  They will eventually reveal how little they think of you and your whole relationship, that took years to develop, will be tainted. I’m sorry. It feels horrible. One must put on a smile and move on as though nothing has happened even though you feel as though you just lost a friend. That is the nature of our industry. Smile through everything and remember that they are not one of us.

Hope that this aids your survival.

Good luck. Godspeed.

            

Day 4

Day 4: The Art of Not Reading

            It is alarming how many questions the guests ask. Yes, the staff is equipped to answer most questions, yet there are times when one must ask if the guest leaves their brain at the office.

            In this log we have already discussed the inability of most guests to take directions. This inability appears different once the guest is attempting to navigate the hotel property. Before we discuss the phobia of reading, we must first explain the layout of the hotel. It is an L-shaped hotel with only three floors. The lobby of the hotel is at one end of the L-shaped hotel. One can walk the length of an entire floor of the hotel in less than three minutes.

            Common questions that the staff will hear are as follows:

“Is it in this building?”

“Do I have to through the outside to get there?”

“Which way do I go?”

            Most of the questions could be answered if the guests simply looked at the building upon driving into the parking lot. Perhaps, they were too concerned with winning the perfect parking spot to look at the building, so we will excuse this lack of awareness. There is a frightening trend that only seems to worsen as the staff attempts to alleviate the problem. Guests have simply stopped reading signs.

            There are information books in each of the rooms with information on the locations of the gym, ice machines, vending machines, and business center. Perhaps the guests are too involved in their phone calls (another topic for another day) to look around their rooms for information or they might think that the book is a menu for room service. There is also a map on the inside of their bedroom door with the entire hotel layout. Again, we can assume that is another thing that can be easily overlooked. There are also large signs with words and arrows along the halls directing the guests. Perhaps our carpet is too fascinating to look away.

            Inevitably, the guest will come down to the front desk, annoyed, and ask the staff to the whereabouts of the ice machines. Inevitably the guest will say that they didn’t know what to dial in order to call the front desk, even though the fact they should have dialed zero is in bold print on the face of their phone. Inevitably, the guest asking for directions will be standing directly next to a large sign and map.

            Do not expect the guests to read. Just answer their questions.

Hope that this aids your survival.

Good luck. Godspeed.            

Day 3

Day 3: An Ode to Michael Jackson’s Son, Blanket.

The following post is a digression, but it is far too ridiculous to resist sharing it with my fellow service industry soldiers.

I truly wish that I was falsifying or exaggerating this situation. Not because I wish that it did not occur, but it creates unease for what this situation means for society.

A man called the front desk at approximately 9pm. He stated that he had been quite cold the previous night. He then asked if he could get a blankie to keep him warm. No, that was not a misprint. He asked for a blankie. A full-grown man asked for a blankie.

Again, I wish that I were exaggerating in my recount of this situation, but the next interaction with this guest left me concerned. While I handed him the blanket he asked me how to use it. He asked me how to use the blanket. This was not a NASA created heating device. It was a standard blanket.  I explained that just had to open the blanket and spread it over his bed and then slip under the covers.

This interaction concerned me because this guest works for one of the top telecommunication companies in the country; otherwise, I would have found this interaction comical. What is the world coming to if we need to provide manuals for blankets?

Hope that this aids your survival or at least entertains you during your ordeals.

Good luck. Godspeed. 

Day 2

Day 2

Lessons in communication:

            When one gives directions to an incoming guest, the staff must remember that the guest only listens to the dialogue in his own head. He has already created this conversation in his own head and only needs your voice to act as white noise. He may not even let you speak. He may even tell you how to arrive at your hotel. Be prepared to receive at least two more phone calls from this guest when he has inevitably gotten lost. After the third time, the guest usually abandons their own dialogue and listens to the staff. He has been broken. Be prepared for him to come in agitated citing “the person that he spoke to gave him bad directions”. Proceed to check in. Do not engage in explanations. They will not soothe the dialogue in his head. And whatever you do, do not utter the phrase “just go out the way you came in” when giving future directions. This guest has already reimagined the entire landscape of your entire to resemble an ever-changing Labyrinth. Show him on a map or give him an address to punch into his GPS, because they are far more dependable than humans who live in the area.

            Hope that this aids your survival.

Good luck. Godspeed.

Day 1

Day 1

Cookie monsters:

            It is surprising how well camouflaged these cookie monsters are. They present themselves to the business world as controlled adult men and women in suits, poised to revolutionize the business world with their brilliant ideas, yet underneath lies a treacherous creature, waiting to burst from beneath the double breasted blazer. It is the cookie monster. Everyday they leave for work in an orderly fashion, but return disheveled, his every hope and dream pinned on the fresh baked cookies. The staff must bake fresh cookies everyday in order to appease these hungry monsters. If, perhaps, theses monsters arrive at the front desk and there are no cookies to ease their craving hearts, either because it not a scheduled cookie baking day or their fellow cookie monsters have already eaten the entire stock of baked goods, the cookie monsters will explode.

Under their well-dressed disguises lies one of three types of cookie monsters. The first is the petulant child. He may discuss mergers and profit margins in some of the most well known business during the day, but at night he screams in disbelief. His face falls and he blames the staff for every horrible situation that has befallen this child in a suit. He first questions the staff as to the absence of cookies, and then proceeds to whine. In order to survive this monster one must remember that every child needs some discipline in his life.

The second is the banshee. This monster speaks at normal volumes throughout the day, but once the promise of cookies is interrupted this monster’s voice have been registered to reach inhuman octaves. Do not be alarmed. This cookie monster will screech and cause the staff to question whether they just killed the monster’s child unknowingly, but the best approach to handle a banshee is to stay quiet. Do not engage. Just shrug and apologize. The burst of loud screams of agony will dissipate as quickly as they erupted.

The third is the joker. This cookie monster is almost always flanked by fellow cookie monsters of his kind, or at the very least, imagines that he is flanked. He at all times acts as though he has an audience. He will make the staff feel uncomfortable for not supplying his stupid grin with cookies. He will accuse the staff, jokingly of course, of hiding the cookies or worse eating all of the cookies themselves. Every joke will be designed to make the staff seem incompetent. The only way to survive this cookie monster is patience. He does not know how to stop himself and sees every item as material for comedy show of one. The staff must wait until he leaves.

Hope that this aids your survival.

Good luck. Godspeed. 

Musing of a Muse

Kiehl’s Creamy eye treatment with Avocado.

Hello Hydration!

Everyone knows how much I like eye creams, especially any that promise to solve all of my puffy eye problems, so you can imagine how excited I was to try Kiehl’s Creamy Eye Treatment with Avocado.

According to Kieh’s:

This creamy preparation with Avocado Oil, gently moisturizes the delicate eye area. Our unique, concentrated texture does not migrate into your eyes. Ophthalmologist-Tested. Dermatologist-Tested.

The Good…

Don’t let the avocado colored eye cream fool you; you won’t be stuck with green Shrek eyes all day after application. As far as the promise of hydration goes, this treatment delivered. It is the most hydrating eye treatment that I have ever tried (and I’ve tried many).

The Bad…

With the intense hydration comes intense slippage. So, if you like a product that you can just slap on quickly and then put your makeup over, this product is not for you. The eye treatment does not dry enough for concealer and eyeshadow application for at least twenty minutes, impractical for most people. My advice is to use it as a night treatment, before bed, and maybe on days off when you give your skin a break from makeup (do those days really exist?)

All Laquered Up.

Illamasqua has just announced their Spring Collection. The new collection brings a surprise for Illamasqua nail varnish addicts, the redistribution of their cult varnish, Scarab. Illamasqua describes Scarab as a deep metallic red while fans describe it as ruby slippers meet beetle sheen.  Scarab is a very opaque polish. Just one coat and you can’t even see my smile line. Cult polish collectors know that Illamasqua is well known for its quality and streak free formula. The color is reminiscent of OPI’s Thanks So Muchness polish form the Alice in Wonderland Collection but with a silver undertone. Although British readers will have no problem finding this varnish in their local Selfridge store, American readers can only pick up a bottle from Sephora’s website.

Are you going to pick a bottle?

Blog reviews

http://samwisethemanwise.blogspot.com/

            When I first read the title of the blog, I thought that the blog was The Lord of the Rings themed. Upon reading the title, samwise wiseness, I believed that it was referring to Samwise Gamgee. The author wrote letters to his baby, which made the tone of the blog personal. Due to it’s personal nature, reading the blog can feel voyeuristic and uncomfortable. Since the blog is addressed to his baby, one can feel strange interacting with the author.

http://thingspeoplehatebutshouldnot.blogspot.com/

            The blog is informal and draws its inspiration from pop culture. The tone is informal as is the subject matter. The entries could be improved if they were expanded and if readers were able to interact with the author more. It was humorous, but not enough to allow me to follow this blog.

http://www.musingsofamuse.com/

One of the greatest aspects of this blog is the frequency with which it is updated. Everyday the host, known as the Muse, posts several product announcements and reviews, save for a week or two vacation. The products featured span several price points and hundreds of brands. Unlike other beauty blogs, the Muse, posts breaking news about product releases from many brands.  Makeup enthusiasts can always find something new on this blog as she highlights lesser-known and foreign brands as well. Readers are also encouraged to submit their own reviews of products and the comment section of posts is usually vibrant with questions and discussions between the Muse and readers. Although the blog could be enhanced with a forum, readers traditionally visit Makeupalley.com for forum discussions. The language used on the blog is very descriptive, using terms that are common in the beauty blogging community. Although this language can be difficult for newcomers to understand, the host and other readers quickly translate any questions posted.

http://www.alllacqueredup.com/

            This is also a beauty blog, but more specialized. It focuses solely on nail polish and nail trends. Since it is a specialized blog, it provides a far more extensive and informative view of nail polishes. It covers a wide variety of brands and trends as well as provides information on new collections and product releases. The author clearly shows both a passion and extensive knowledge on the topic through her reviews and descriptions. As in many beauty blogs, there a specific language that is used on the site that may be difficult for newcomers to understand. The blog is not frequently updated and maintained and any questions posed to the author go unanswered for several weeks.