A Generation, lost.

I want to first say that I feel lucky to be a child of the 80's.  As long as I can remember, my family has always taken my brother and I on family trips.  Whenever I saw my dad with his book of maps, I just knew he was planning something fun.  My dad believed in taking the "Scenic route" to every location he was planning, just so we wouldn't have to stare at nothing but the highways as we were traveling.  We never flew on an airplane anywhere either.  In fact, my first airplane ride was my Senior trip to Florida when I was 18 years old.  Before that trip I've been to about 38-40 US states just from driving with the family.   


Back then, GPS devices or smart phones weren't around to use so it was all about the good ole' fashion paper map.  I remember watching my dad highlight different routes he planned on using and circling towns we planned on staying over night in.   I learned a lot from watching my father plan our trips. Thanks to him, I can easily read a map and navigate myself to wherever I have to go. 


Kind of makes you wonder if this new generation of children could do the same.  Say there actually was an "apocalypse" and all the electricity was out and all of the cell phone towers were dead, could this generation actually read a map? Do they even teach that in school? I have no idea actually.  In this age, we often depend on our smart phones and GPS devices too much to get us to where we have to go.  If your phone's battery all of a sudden died while you were traveling somewhere, could you find your way to your destination without it?  I know I could.  Don't get me wrong, I love using a certain app on my phone that makes my traveling easier.  All I can say is that I know I will be prepared if any apocalyptic event shall occur.  Anyway that's all I have to say about that, leave a comment with your thoughts on the subject :)

Don't believe everything you read!

If you are in any type of customer service position I'm sure you can truly relate to this post.  As a Hotel desk clerk, I encounter all different types of personalities that walk through the front door.  First off, I work for a basic yet popular chained hotel, we are not the Marriott or Hilton but we are well known.  Most people that travel to New Jersey know that hotel rooms are generally expensive compared to hotels in other states especially because of how close we are to major cities like Philadelphia, NYC and Atlantic City.   As for the hotel I work for we have all different types of people that stay here, most people like it because it's either close to their job that they are traveling for or because we are in a quiet location. 

Recently there was some sort of sports tournament going on in the area and most of the teams and their parents stayed at our hotel.  As soon as they walked in and came to the front desk I had a certain idea in mind that this isn't the normal type of hotel they would stay at.  Of course I was right.  I want to add that our hotel doesn't have room service, our restaurant closed down years ago.   We also don't have a laundry service but we have washers and dryers.  We don't have 24 hour maintenance or maid service either.  Most of these guests came from very nice towns in Northern New Jersey.  They had that "I'm better than you" attitude the moment they walked in.  As a smaller hotel, we do try to accommodate the best we can, and keep a positive attitude.

After a long weekend of dealing with these rude people I had a feeling that we will be reading some complaints.  I don't want to sound conceited but it's very rare for myself to receive any complaints, if anything I get a lot of compliments.  As everyone knows, you just can't please everyone.  I want to share with you an online complaint that was made about me and our hotel and sadly I can't defend myself to these people so I want to do it online.  I want to express how important it is to not believe all negative reviews you may read about any place or any particular thing you are looking up! The following is the complaint:

"My room was not cleaned the one morning I took a shower & put my do not disturb sign up for 15 minutes. When I went to the front desk to inquire why my room had not been cleaned, the lady with the unnaturally bright red hair gave me huge attitude when I expressed my displeasure with the rule that the cleaning ladies just move on if the do not disturb sign is up and don't ever check back later. And later she made a comment to my 15 year old son who had, outside of our room, jumped up and touched the ceiling as 15 year old boys will do.He walked by the desk and she asked him,"Is there anything wrong with the ceiling in your hallway?" He said "What?" She said "Is there anything wrong with the ceiling, you know we have cameras all over and I'm watching you!" Even he said,"maybe they should spend less on cameras and more on quality help." Pretty bad if a 15 year old can pick up on it. Your place was dingy, dirty, dusty, it was like the corners and edges of the rooms hadn't been vaccuumed in years. And plain old rude!! We will never go there again and neither will anyone on our team."

You may say well there are two sides to every story but I'm a very honest person and would like to explain how this entire complaint was a complete lie.  First off, if there is a DND sign on the door the housekeepers will not go in, I checked with the executive housekeeper and she said that this guest's DND sign was up ALL MORNING.  Next point, yes I have red hair it's not natural, who gives a damn, I love it.  She came to the front desk and gave ME an attitude about not having her room cleaned, I said sorry right away and offered fresh towels and linens which we kept at the front desk incase of issues like this one.  She shook her head, turned around and said "I'm never staying here again."  About 2 hours later I glanced at the security cameras and noticed this boy kept pushing up one of our ceiling tiles up and down, so when he came down I asked him if everything was okay with the tile incase I had to have it replaced due to a leak or something else that might of happend.  He looked at me and said "No sorry" and that was it! I never said anything along the lines of "I'm watching you or watever that lady said" Plus she wasn't even around when I spoke with the boy.  His father was the only one down there and said with an attitude "He won't do it again ok?!" I said "I'm sorry sir I was just wondering incase I had to call maintenance".  He shook his head just like his wife did and kept muttering something along the lines of "This place is a dump"  I want you all to know, that our hotel may not be a Ritz Carlton but we are very clean, have many regular business guests that stay here and have an extremely friendly staff as you may read on our other reviews. 

I also want to point out that this woman, asked why we don't offer strawberries and champagne to the parents, and I said well we only serve breakfast in the mornings we don't have any sort of room service and of course I got an attitude from her because of that too.  So please before you look down on a hotel or restaurant that you may be planning to visit cause of bad reviews, give it a try.  There is a bar/grill place that had a couple bad reviews and I was skeptical of going but I'm glad I did, the food was awesome, the bartendar was extremely nice and I had absolutely no complaints.  Anyway I wanted to express my thoughts on this review because it made me so angry to think this woman could just lie like that.  I hope whoever encounters her next doesn't have to go through with what I did.  I'm sorry this post was rather lengthy but I needed to get this all out!

Telemarketers and Karma

I don't know what is worse, dealing with telemarketers at home or at work.  Most of the time you don't know where they are calling from or what their real names are.   At work it's usually the same old question "Who's in charge of blah blah blah?" or "What is your General Manager's name?".  I usually just answer these questions with "I'm sorry I cannot give out that information but I will be happy to take a message and have someone return your call".  Usually they reply with "Oh that's okay I will call back later" or they just hang up.

Well today was altogether different.  A young man called and said "Hi is your GM available?" I said "May I ask who's calling?" and he flat out told me his real name or what sounded like a real name and then said what company he is from.  I then smiled and put him on hold for a second and picked the phone up and said "I'm sorry he's not available at the moment."  So then he says "Well what is his name and does he take care of your printing products?".  I said in a pleasant tone, "I'm sorry I cannot give out that information, but...".  The moron cut me off and said "Wow bitch like it's a real top secret". then hung up on me. 

I was furious, I know he was doing his job but that was uncalled for.  So I looked up his so called company name and found out it was real and called them up and asked if (insert name the guy gave me) worked there and they said "Yes he does, but I'm just an operator let me transfer you to his manager".  Well I know most of these managers don't really care they just want to make a sale but the lady I spoke with was really nice as I explained the situation and how rude her employee was.  She said that they do not tolerate that behavior and was really sorry.   Whether anything is actually done about this, it felt good knowing that he was caught being a dick and I found him.  I would of loved to see the look on his face though when his manager said something to him.   Anyway back to work, today is my Friday and I got a lot of stuff to get done!  Until next time....tootles.

This and that.

My intention was to try and write everyday but "ain't nobody got time for that".  I've had a lot going on lately and I want to proudly report that my headaches have becoming less and less frequent.  I still take the meds that the doctor prescribed from the hospital because they really do help and actually keep me alert.   I know the headaches were caused by stress and everyone said to me that my stress would lessen up once a certain situation was out of my life.  So everyone was right I guess.    Don't get me wrong, I still have stress from work like most people, that will never change! 

So recently, the husband and I have been redecorating the house and things are coming along nicely.  Everything takes time but we have the habit of starting a project and then forgetting about it and starting another one and so on and so forth.  We turned one of our spare bedrooms into a media room with our computers and tv, and soon to be a futon that we have to bring up from the basement.  (It's a nice one don't worry).    Still have to paint the room we are going with a mocha kind of look, coffee colored walls with a dark trim.  I think it will turn out nice once it's all done!  

I've also been getting out more too, spending time with new friends and I must say it's great to be able to have a normal adult conversation every now and then with people who get me and understand what's going on in my life.  I'm grateful for that.  I'm hoping things slow down at work too need a break from the craziness!   Well I'm just gonna keep this short and just wanted to give an update on what's going on in my life.  Until next time... 

What's with the weather?

I'm not much of a coffee drinker, but every now and then I'll have a cup of coffee using my wonderful Keurig coffee maker.  I have a few select types of coffee I use, today I chose mudslide.  My husband decided to go with Kahlua flavor.  Anyway it's August and in New Jersey that usually means it's hot as hell out.  For the past couple of weeks the weather went from hot and disgustingly humid to cool and rainy with spurts of sun and heat.  I must say it's doing a real number on my allergies.  I've been waking up feeling like I have a cold but I know for a fact it's not a cold.

Today my husband and I decided to do some heavy duty cleaning around the house and some of the dust that's been accumulating in areas that don't get cleaned every day decided to float around and disturb my nasal passage.   I've been sneezing and my nose keeps running.  It's driving me crazy!  Well at least the house is clean, especially since we are having some friends over tonight.  We also decided to make a 'to do' list to complete some of the major projects we want to get done around the house but just haven't had either the time or motivation to do. 

The first thing we want to do is to complete the kitchen and laundry room floors by placing linoleum down.  It's cheaper and doesn't take long to do.  The walls and ceiling need to be repainted also which will come afterwards.   Like I said before I'm not much of a coffee drinker but today was a coffee kind of day.  It helped keep me going and it helped the thought process of setting our goals in motion.  Plus, it's rainy and yucky out and I wasn't planning on going anywhere today.  I think tonight is a pizza ordering kind of night.  I'm sure our friends wouldn't mind it either :)  Well until next time......tootles.

Gossip in the Work Place

Before I get into what the title says, how about a little background story?  I work the reception desk at a popular chain hotel.  I'm always surrounded by people whether it be my fellow co-workers or guests that are staying here.  There are always different conversations going on.  Some I can hear loud and clear while others are whispered softly.   Now, the conversations between guests are usually the same thing you hear over and over.  That is, going over directions to their next stop or discussing the upcoming business meeting, or perhaps discussing the party that was just out of this world the night before.   As far as conversations between co-workers that's a different story.  Most of the time I don't want to hear half the things I hear, I don't want to get involved unless I have to.  

When I come into work I start my daily morning routine just like most people do.  Everyone has some sort of routine that they do like clockwork.  About 30 minutes after I arrive, the housekeepers start coming in and some of the maintenance workers.  I get along well with everyone for the most part, however there are a few people who I avoid on purpose because I sometimes get this sudden urge to throw them through a wall for either being too annoying and stupid or for just getting on my nerves at the moment.   Now I must say some people do watch what they say to me because my husband is one of the managers here and they don't want to get in trouble I guess. 

Have you ever heard a story from someone but then heard the same story in a different version from someone else? Yeah that's how it is here.  If you tell a secret to one person, I guarantee you will hear the same secret with a few details tweaked from another person.  For example, recently someone got fired here at work and I must of heard 7 different reasons why this person got fired from different people.  Sadly they all come to me for confirmation because after all, my husband is the one who does the firing basically.  Anyway, I'm usually surrounded by gossip and there's always that one person that likes to start shit.  Whether it's intentional or not, they always have to know what's going on and who said what, etc. 

As I stated before I try not to get involved but during a recent conversation between 2 other coworkers I had to step in.   Two people were talking about another coworker behind her back.  It REALLY bothered me because I consider this other person a friend.   This friend of mine is always doing stuff for other people and putting up with a bunch of bullshit on the weekends.   So when I heard these two GROWN people gossiping about my friend, I told them to back off and say what you have to say to her face and not to let me hear this crap again. 

 Anyone else out there deal with a lot of gossip at work? Feel free to comment and tell your story.  I have many more stories regarding the workplace but that's for another day :)

First Blog!

So here I am starting a new blog.  I use to write all the time years ago and wish that I could find my old blog, but I think the website was removed.  Oh well, that was the old me anyway.  Back then I didn't have the responsibilities or worries that I have now.  I think the biggest worry was making sure I had plans for the weekends and that I had the money to do what I wanted.   10 years later, I am married, work full time and yes I work on the weekends.  No kids yet though, that will come soon enough.  Right now I'm just focusing on "me" and my goals.  

I will mostly use this site for a tool to let out some stress or "vent" if you will.  Stress is something I deal with on a permanent basis. In fact, I was recently hospitalized from severe headaches due to stress.  I know what most of you are thinking.  Why not try and get rid of the stress in my life? Well I'm working on it, trust me.  Due to recent events, my blood pressure has been through the roof.  Things are starting to calm down though, and I will perhaps get into more details on another post.  For now, going to try and relax and get through this work day!