A Little Local Drama

I worked at a fancy historic hotel, and we only took reservations from local residents under specific circumstances like if they were part of a reservation block or if they called ahead and discussed their stay with a manager. (We’d had a LOT of issues with locals booking rooms for parties, etc., and leaving them trashed.) If you lived locally and stayed there, it was a special occasion, not a place you went because your power was out or whatever.

If someone had stayed with us before, our reservation system would automatically fill in the blanks when they swiped their credit card. I had a woman who was part of an event group come up to pay for her room. She swiped her card, and details popped up.

Me: “Oh, welcome back, ma’am! Looks like your card is already in our system… under [Male Name]?”

Woman: “Right, that’s my husband. He’s already in your system?”

Me: “Yes. For your convenience, we store some basic information about our guests. That way, we don’t have to fill out the whole form every time.”

Woman: “But… we live here down the street. Why would he have stayed here?”

Uh-oh… There’s a woman’s name on this file, too. If it was her, she’d already know.

Me: “Uh… well… that I don’t know, ma’am. I’m really not allowed to release any other information about his file since you aren’t on it.”

Woman: “Uh-huh. Just him?”

I froze solid and stammered for a moment, trying to find the corporate-approved words for “No, but I didn’t say that.”

Woman: “Well. That’s interesting.”

And a very angry-not-at-me woman finished checking in.

I wanted to tell her outright so badly, but I also didn’t need to get fired. I wonder how it went.