Their Vision Is Based On Movement!

I swear, guests think that hotel rooms are scavenger hunts for free stuff. They find the smallest thing wrong and expect a complimentary night.

I had a guest come up to me to check out, and she reported that the bathroom fan in her room wasn’t working.

I thought, “Big whoop. My apartment’s bathroom fan doesn’t work, either, and you don’t see me complaining.”

What I said out loud was:

Me: “I’m sorry about that, ma’am. I’ll make sure maintenance takes care of it.”

And I grabbed the maintenance log to add it in. She stood there expectantly.

Me: “Is there anything else, ma’am?”

She looked at me like I’d asked her a very embarrassing and rude question.

Guest: *Sheepishly* “What about… compensation?”

Me: *Genuinely dumbfounded* “Compensation?”

Guest: *Eagerly* “For my issues.”

I was floored. This lady was asking for a discount over her bathroom fan not working.

But standard hotel policy is that if a guest has an issue with their room, our first course of action is to ask if they want a room transfer. Now, we didn’t have any rooms the night before, but I bluffed.

Me: “Why didn’t you come down and tell us about it? We could have given you a room transfer.”

That was not strictly true, but I had a cash reservation I could have cancelled in an emergency.

She puckered her lips and continued staring at me.

Not sure what else to do, I kind of just stared off into space and pretended I didn’t see her anymore. Like, I didn’t want to argue with her, but she refused to leave.

She finally did go after she realized I was either ignoring her or having a stroke.

I’ve never intentionally frozen like that in front of a guest. My instinct is to be accommodating, but I wasn’t going to give her any kind of discount or refund, and she clearly wanted to engage me purely to that effect.

In the past, I wouldn’t have thought twice about a ten percent discount to get her out of my face, but the owner has been really hard on us lately about getting our numbers up. And the new manager even put up a sign saying, “Team No Refunds”. So, this lady was up the creek either way.