I work in a hotel, and the last week has been crazy. By Monday, I was so burned out. There were storms all over the place in my state, and most towns had no power for four days. My hotel had power, which meant everyone was flocking there. We sold out three days in a row, and this is at the tail end of our slow season.
On Saturday night, we were sold out, the phone was ringing all night, and it was just me at the desk. Somehow, I handled it all myself.
Sunday, oof. Power companies sent out a notice that power likely wouldn’t be restored until Tuesday night, so everyone who was riding it out at home freaked out and started buying rooms. Housekeepers were already working overtime to get all the rooms clean because this was such an unexpected influx of guests. The rooms were going so fast that third-party sites couldn’t keep up with our actual inventory.
The phone would not stop ringing. I have three “hold” buttons; I can put three people on hold at a time. And the phone kept ringing. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it was ringing every minute. And when I put people on hold, some were impatient b*****ds and kept hanging up and calling again as if they were going to get someone else. Nope, just the same agent that’s exponentially more pissed off that you keep calling instead of waiting on the line. And people weren’t exactly nice about it, either; people kept yelling at me. I was at the end of my rope.
And then, I got a call from a travel agency.
Agent #1: “How many rooms do you have left?”
Me: “Er… twelve doubles and nine suites?”
Agent #1: “I’ll take them.”
Me: “All of them?!”
Agent #1: “Yes. I need to make twenty-one reservations.”
F***, f***, f***. I was working alone. People were coming in. Third parties were selling rooms. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. And I needed to make TWENTY-ONE RESERVATIONS?!
I called my manager.
Me: “We just sold out again, and I need someone here.”
No questions asked. She said she’d be there in ten minutes.
I started making the reservations as fast as I could. Our system allows you to book a maximum of nine rooms at a time. I managed to make nineteen before the system told me that there weren’t any rooms left in the inventory. S***. And third parties had oversold us, meaning we had negative two rooms.
My manager came in, and I explained the situation. We started trying to figure out who to walk (find accommodations for them elsewhere) and how to make another two rooms available.
We called [Agent #1] back and asked if some rollaway beds would suffice. She got pissed.
Agent #1: “It’s not okay! Under no circumstances are you going to put rollaways in those rooms. [Electric Company] isn’t happy with you guys.”
The rooms were for workers coming from (mostly) Florida and Georgia to help get the power back up again. And this was Pennsylvania, so it was quite a drive for them.
Two people said they were leaving and tossed their keys on the desk, which was perfect. My manager ran upstairs to clean the rooms, and we were an even zero for inventory. Great. I was praying for someone to cancel.
Lo and behold, a guy called.
Guest: “I have a reservation for tonight and tomorrow night, but I won’t be there tomorrow night. I’ll still probably come tonight since I know it’s past the cancellation policy and I don’t want to be charged for being a no-show.”
Me: “Dude, I’m gonna be honest with you. We desperately need rooms right now, so I will waive the fee completely if you wanna cancel for tonight.”
He did, and I put that room out of inventory until I could make another [Electric Company] reservation so it didn’t get sold.
We ended up having to walk one person who had a third-party reservation. We paid for his room at another hotel, and he was understanding about it.
So, we had twenty-one rooms for the workers. We just checked them all in and made keys for everyone before they actually arrived so we wouldn’t have to mess around when they finally came in. They were super nice, thankfully.
Eleven guys didn’t show up, but [Agent #1] didn’t want us to cancel them — because she was getting a commission, of course.
The next day, another agent called and said she needed rooms for [Electric Company].
Me: “I have eleven rooms left for [Electric Company], already in our system and already paid for.”
Agent #2: “Okay, but I want to pay for them.”
Me: “Ma’am, they’re already paid for. Eleven rooms. They show up, they get a room.”
She really wanted commission for literally nothing. Who gets news of eleven open rooms that are paid for and says, “But I wanted to pay.”?
Agent #2: “Fine. All I care about is that the rooms are there.”
Uh-huh.
Luckily, all the workers were super kind and gracious about us trying to get things straightened out — unlike [Agent #1] and [Electric Company]’s hospitality department, who were foaming at the mouth about how we handled getting twenty-one last-minute reservations.
We did the best we could. We even kicked a guy out for y’all. Come on.
Some people.
