My God some people are dumb! Like, seriously. There are that many people I know or I have met that have just made me cringe for the future of the human race. It's very frustrating coming face to face with one such person. Talking to them over the phone is even worse.
At work I had a call a few months ago from a woman who wanted to make a booking to stay for a few people she worked with. I explained everything to her; process, room types, the restaurant, etc... and she asked me to repeat myself, 4 times. I was very irritated but I hid that behind politeness. I've never shown a customer my real feelings. No matter how irritated, how angry I am with someone, no matter how tired I am, I am always polite and upbeat. Anyway, this woman wanted to know things like, if the group was to take a bus, can we arrange for the group to meet in the lobby and a whole lot of other crap like that. She drove me crazy. She ended up actually coming in to see me. It was a shake you head and roll your eyes moment.
What started this tirade was an incident at work in the past week. Hayley. This past week or so she has done nothing right. She keeps screwing up and now I know for sure that I am not the only one that is sure her days are numbered. The biggest screw up this week was one that I was confronted with directly.
On Monday night I was happily working when the bell that signaled some one was waiting at reception rang. I dutifully made my way to reception and an oldish gentleman was standing patiently waiting. 'How ya going?' I greeted cheerily. 'Can I help you?'
'Yes, I have a booking here, Dobos is the name.' He seemed nice enough.
I checked the bookings and there were only two people left to check in. Neither of them were the gentleman standing before me. Bugger. 'I don't seem to have your booking here. Are you sure it's here you booked at?'
'I didn't make the booking. Leonie did. I'm with the APM. Australian Paper.'
'Yes, we do have a few APM people staying here,' I nodded. I got him to spell his name so I could search for it but I got confused and he had to repeat it more than once. I tried to let him down lightly. 'I don't seem to have your booking I'm afraid. How long ago was the booking made?' He didn't know. I told him the names of the other people to check in but he didn't recognise them. At that point both of my bosses walked in.
'Is there a problem?' I briefly gave them a rundown. My boss (female) took over. She tried to sort out what happened by asking they guy a series of questions. I could see he was getting irritated; not at her, but in general. His booking should have been there. My boss, seeing the irritation, took it personally and began to get testy.
'Look,' she sort of snapped. 'This is not our fault, I want you to understand that-'
'I'm not blaming you,' the guy tried to defend himself. And it went on like that for a few minutes.
A few frantic calls were made and we finally found someone who was able to tell us that one of the guys who was supposed to be coming wasn't coming til morning. We gave this guy his room. So at least he had a place to stay. It was either that or drive back to Melbourne and we didn't want him to do that. His company (AP) had a huge conference on the next day (they'd booked out all the conference rooms). After he'd gone to his room, my boss turned to me and said, 'go through every email we received from them. I want to know if he did actually have a booking.'
I jumped right on it. Within a minute I found the email I was looking for. There was an email from the woman from AP with 4 names on it, all asking for accommodation. All clearly printed, the dates equally clearly on it. I told my boss.
'Right. Print it off and put it only Hayley's desk. I'll deal with this tomorrow.' She turned to her husband. 'I'm sick of these fucking mistakes.'
That was last I heard of that conversation.
Tim was questioned later on about it. He knew nothing. The whole conference, accommodation included, had been handled by Hayley. It was her screw up. My bosses were not happy. It was a fairly big screw up since these people are one of our biggest clients. I shudder to think of the fallout the next morning once Hayley got to work. Kinda funny though. Tim and I had a good laugh over it. Her days are definitely numbered. She can't keep making stupid mistakes hoping no one will notice.
That's enough about work. Talking about that moron actually makes me want to scream in frustration.
I saw an old friend today, someone I haven't seen in a while. He works in Coles and I got to talk to him for a bit while mum went through the checkout. It was really good to catch up with him. Made me feel nostalgic for the "old days" when I was in high school and all my friends were still my friends and normal. He said we should get together sometime, all of our group, like we used to be and we should. It's been a while.
The Melbourne show's coming up. I'm going, as I do every year. Looks good this year, although, going by what the showguide says, it's going to be a bit more expensive than usual. The price we pay for fun. It's a day away from home, work and the Latrobe Valley. I'm going.
No comments:
Post a Comment