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 :)
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
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!
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!
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