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| When your travel agent hates you ... |
I am the Night Auditor at a medium-size hotel in a medium-size city. Naturally, on my annual tax return I list my occupation as Professional Writer. It’s somehow comforting to picture soulless bureaucrats in the Regional Tax Office reading that and then imagining poets with windswept hair swept by the wind into a Yorkshire pub, lit by the moon of a ghostly galleon a Bronte sister clinging to each arm. The soulless bureaucrats will then picture their own lives as devoid of romance for they themselves are timid as neurotic mice. They will then proceed to slam shut their tin desk drawers for the last time and hurl themselves out to the street - preferably via the sixth floor window. Well, preferable to me anyway.
The combination of Hotel Clerk and Professional Writer really is the best of both worlds. I know that the mortgage will be paid. I know that I will have a good two hours between 2-4AM where I can write without having to take the dog out for a widdle. I get to claim things like PPV movies and new games for the kids at Christmas as ‘work-related research expenses.’ Plus - bonus! - I get to strip mine the Hotel experience and turn it into wordsmithed gold. Please send your used jewellery and watches to ...
... but I digress
Truthfully, I feel sorry for travelers. I’ve been one and I serve many. I know what it’s like when the wireless internet boots you out; at places where you have to pay for it, that experience can take you straight from a tea-sipping Bill Bixby to a raging Lou Ferrigno in seconds. Seconds that you’re paying for.
Either the worst or best thing that ever happened to me as a hotel guest was a few years back in Hamilton, Ontario. I’d been in hospital for a quadruple bypass and my darling bride to be and me checked into a grand old downtown hotel the night before flying back home. The only reason I don’t mention the name of the hotel is that the following could happen to any of us.
We check into the room - all cornice and mouldings and we drew back the cover on the bed ... to find a saucy little pair of black lace panties curled across the blanket like a relaxed kitten. I’m not sure that much laughter is exactly recommended for recuperating patients, but I’m still here so the risk was evidently minimal. And it was nice to see that the housekeeping staff was offered recreational benefits by management.
In the morning, we returned the panties to the front desk clerk - of course it was a young woman - would you have expected anything else? The first thing I said, as the panties were laid (bad choice of words) across the plexiglass counter was, ‘These aren’t ours.’
People will tip the damnedest things you know.
And by the way, just after writing the above I took a walk around the hotel. One section smelt very much of Novice Hooker No. 5 cologne. I take that back. Definitely perfume and not cologne for the oil is still clinging like Glad Wrap to my nostrils. This is not a good thing.
As the point to this article is to advice, assist and coach the readers for whom ‘hotel travel’ is frequently misheard as ‘penitentiary time’ we might as lead with that.
Tip Number One: If you smell like a hooker, don’t blame us if we look at you like you’re a hooker.
I mean, it’s not like we desk clerks haven’t seen one or fifty in our time. And that was just Tuesday night in room 202. This in turn leads to a certain hotel truth:
We don’t care if you bring in a hooker. Honest. We’d rather have you sexed up and sighing than tanked up and screaming.
Seriously. I was a hearty drinker of laughing beverages until I had to start explaining to drunks just why it was that I was going to kick their sorry ass out into the street, you can deal with me or deal with the cops, it’s your choice sunshine. No fun there. Plus it interrupst my writing time.
So, I respectfully request your assistance in my writing career.
Tip Number Two: For God’s sake complain!
If you’re placed in a room next to Bubba, Dave and their good buddy Jack Daniels please let the desk know so we can get to them before Dave starts to demonstrate his old high school hurdling technique over the office chair (and into the flat screen). Actually, wait a moment. I need to add a sub-clause to this tip.
Tip Number Two A): Complain RIGHT AWAY!
There is nothing more frustrating than checking out a guest in the morning, asking ‘How was your stay?’ and the hearing a list of complaints that would do Martin Luther proud. This may come as a shock, but while I may moonlight (literally) at a hotel, The Amazing Kreskin does not. We can’t fix what we aren’t told.
Which is not to say that we can always fix what we are told. You would be amazed at the number of guests who will hand a desk clerk a brand new laptop right out of the wrapper and ask one us to configure it to the internet. Well, there goes the next hour of my life in futile pursuit of something which may bear no fruit for either of us. Which is another hotel truth:
The hotel desk clerk is neither your neighbourhood bartender, your free psychologist, nor your personal life coach.
Ask me for a tip on a restaurant, directions to the nearest Tim Horton’s Doughnut Shop, or what time the Wal-Mart opens and I’m there for you. Do not expect me to assist with the activities mentioned earlier, as two guests did a while ago.
Two brothers were staying at the hotel where I work. They were, shall we say, of a foreign extraction. You may now think of your favourite racial stereotype. Well, the boys come smartly up to the desk, shoulder to shoulder like Chang and Eng Bunker and ask me, in these words, ‘Please, can you assist us in finding your local prostitutes?’
good times.
I was never so thankful that the yellow page in the desk phone book that listed Escort Agencies had been torn out.
You know what they say, Here today, gone Gomorrah.
The last tip I have goes straight to your wallet, where the Good Things live.
Tip Number Three: Ask
Our hotel chain offers a 10% discount to Auto Club members - CAA, AAA and their off-shoots. There’s even a sign on the door advertising this. Yet I know that many a hotel guest has driven off after having paid Rack rate. It’s easy to tell. The AAA bumper sticker over the left taillight is a pretty good clue.
For years, I got anywhere from a 5% to 10% discount when checking in to hotels by just asking for the ‘Liberal Party of Canada discount.’ I was never turned down, ever, neither in Canada nor the United States. And it’s not like it was a lie. I did have a $10 membership card in my wallet as documentary back-up, which I was never asked to produce. That $10 probably saved me around $500 in a two year period.
I’ll post more of these as I think of them. In the meantime, feel free to post your own tips in the comments section below.
Be seeing you.
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