Rescue Us All From Jerks Like These

I’ve worked in hospitality for nearly a year after leaving teaching, and while I can say it’s calmer here, it’s only because teaching these days is so crazy. I work at a smaller boutique hotel, so while we have some entitled guests, mostly it stays quiet during the week, with only problem customers on the weekend… usually.

It’s the weekend.

We’ve had an older disabled guest staying with us for the past week, and while there have been accessibility issues, we’ve done our best to help him! He’s nice but just needs more help than he has available. On the second day of his stay, he fell, but two folks on staff helped him: my manager and the male head house staff member.

I am disabled myself and unable to lift anything over twenty pounds. My bosses know this and had no issue with it at all, as I work at the front desk, and the most I help with that involves lifting is luggage.

Today, the older gentleman fell again right before I arrived. The lady working night audit called Fire and Rescue as she knew that, even together, we couldn’t lift him, nor did we want to risk trying in case he was really injured this time. Rescue responded pretty quickly and helped him, the gentleman thanked us, and once his son arrived for him later to take him back to the airport, he was totally checked out.

However, two separate guests on the same floor as him were extremely put out that they were awoken by Rescue. Even when we explained the situation as much as we could, both rooms were still flipping out. One even asked for a full refund for a three-day stay due to inconvenience in the morning before checkout.

My manager and I told them they were welcome to call their online travel agencies, but we would under no circumstances be issuing refunds since Rescue didn’t even have sirens on. I walked the Rescue workers up, too, and they were at a normal volume, not overly loud, etc.

One woman even stated that we should have left the older gentleman there and had Rescue in at a more “reasonable hour” than seven am.

I just can’t imagine being that heartless and callous about an old guy who needs help.