This is Lisa, your guest Blogger for the evening. Robert\’s in the 7 pm and I decided to bust out right after the break. I tell him to win the tournament and that I\’m headed to the room. Here\’s what happened.
I get to the room, door won\’t open. No lights on lock at all. The battery is clearly dead. I call the front desk on my cell phone as I just need them to send someone up to the room to let me in, no need to wait in the line for that. They don\’t answer. Plan B. I approach the lady in the elevator vestibule on my floor and ask her if she\’s security. She says no, she\’s \”safety personnel\”. I forget my door lock for a minute and ask her what she does.
She is currently sitting on a chair.
She says when she\’s not sitting she normally patrols the floors. Oh. Huh. Well, can you call Security for me on your radio as my door won\’t open. She tries the door for me. Still won\’t open. Then she calls security. Tells me they\’ll be up in a few minutes. Says she doesn\’t think I should wait too long before calling again, as they can often take a while. I sit down on the floor waiting for them. Security shows up, checks my ID. Of course, my surname isn\’t the same as Robert\’s, and even though I checked us into the room, it\’s still in his name. I show him a Diamond Total Rewards card with Robert\’s name on it, and that\’s good enough.
He checks the key. Oh wow, no lights, battery is dead. He calls Facilities (used to be called maintenance) and says, \”I\’ve got a Diamond guest with a dead battery on her key pad, DIAMOND GUEST!\”
Then tells me that it will be 5-7 minutes until they get here. I sit back down. Within two minutes, at the most, Facilities shows up, and uses a \”snake\” of some sort to get under my door and unlock the door from the inside. I jokingly say to him \”that must be why the gasket on the door isn\’t secured anymore\”, meaning, someone\’s done this before to this door. He doesn\’t laugh. Then I say \”You must be the guy to call if I like my keys in my car.\” Crickets.
Anyway, he gets the door opened and I discover that while we\’ve been out of the room for the past ten hours or so, housekeeping hasn\’t even dropped by. Not even a cursory towel change. Sigh. When I realize I have to call housekeeping, I ask the Facilities gentleman if he can also fix my desk phone, as it\’s not working, or if he can only fix what he\’s assigned to fix. Yes, that\’s the rule. Oh. So I shouldn\’t mention the blood spatter on the side of my sofa or the blood spatter on the ceiling above the sofa? Who fixes that?
I eventually get housekeeping to answer the phone. They agree to get someone up here to clean the room. When she shows up, she just unlocks the door, doesn\’t even knock or announce herself. Nice.
Oh wait, do you think that the room wasn\’t cleaned today because they couldn\’t get in? Maybe they could have called Facilities themselves and I wouldn\’t have even known about the dead batteries? That\’s not exactly preventative maintenance, but it is anticipating guest needs. It\’s a pretty good bet that we would need to get into our room tonight.
I know this sounds like I\’m just complaining, and I\’m not. I\’m really just highlighting some small service issues that one shouldn\’t have to encounter. I have worked in the hotel industry, so I am a bit pickier about guest service than the normal poker player, but we all deserve a clean room that we can get into, right?
Oh, and one more thing. It would be GREAT if there was a \”remote front desk\” down by the Amazon room. Just to be handle a few things… reprogramming room keys when you\’ve extended your stay would be one of them!
Ed. Note: You can read more of Lisa Stein at The Green Diet Blog.
