Saturday, November 5, 2011

The top 5 ways to get fired as a Guest Service Agent


Buying guests drugs when they ask for them.

In the deep underworld of great service I always just assumed that drugs were something a hotel covertly acquired for high paying guests. Now bear with me, after the lengths I have seen the hotels go to, to keep guests happy, it is an easy assumption to make. Hence the most awkward conversation I have had with management so far. I spent the next few hours wracked with guilt that it might have been a secret shopper and my first review would contain the sentence, "Agent attempted to solicit cocaine but was unsuccessful." I later witnessed the guest drunkenly stroking the potted plant in the lobby and breathed a sigh of relief.  I won't go into further details except to say that hotels do not and cannot offer you drugs at the front desk.
Like this, only I am wearing a suit.

Walking in on a guest without knocking.

This seems extremely obvious and I can see you have raised one eyebrow in a condescending  manner but I digress. Part of my day is checking room discrepancies where the front desks status of the room differs from that of housekeeping. This means that you have to physically walk to each room and check if there is anybody currently occupying it. You alway start off with three good knocks and a pause but after 26 floors and forty rooms it is more of a slight tap and enter. If you add the fact that the last 13 rooms have all been empty and it feels like you are on a roll, you begin to take chances and just enter the room. This is how all the front office horror stories happen, from naked guests, love making guests, masturbating guests to guests drunkenly sobbing over their fast food. My only experience  so far went something like this. I opened the door and the room was pitch dark, I walked in and announced "guest service agent" in a hushed but confident shout. A woman rolled over in the bed and hissed "Shut up, I know its you and shower, you are drunk"   I left without saying a word and realized later that she had thought I was her husband.

"I am so sorry mam, I am just checking if you are enjoying your stay"

Giving a guest an upgrade because they are sexy.

I have indicated before that the person at the front desk has the power to give you an upgrade based on a whole vat full of trivial reasons. However those reasons have to align with a sales or business orientation of some magnitude when you later explain it to management. Especially if they now have to downgrade a VIP guest because all the suites have now been sold. Being the full blooded male that I am, I have had the opportunity and desire to upgrade a guest based solely on the stir that occurred inside of me while they were patiently waiting for their room keys. I have not done this however because my current management are actually quite equipped to do their jobs. The "I gave them an upgrade because it was their dog's birthday " will fall flat if my manager meets the guest at a later stage and they happen to still be so darn good looking.
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Not checking if a visitor is on the reservation.

Guests are frequently upset by the hotels policy that, unless you are on the reservation, you may not get keys to a room and I can understand why. Most of the time a guest will just have forgotten to include his wife, or friends, name on the reservation. Sometimes the guest is unreachable and the wife or friend have no option but to sit in the lobby and wait. Waiting makes people angry. This rule is not for most people.

Stalkers or crazy ex-husbands don't come with a easily recognizable flag attached to their heads that makes filtering them out from the general population easy. They look just like you and me and to stop them from getting access to you and murdering you, we refuse to give them keys. One of my managers told me a story of when he was just starting out and still naive enough to be believe that all people sharing a last name are in a happy committed relationship. He gave, a warm friendly woman, a key to her husbands room. Little did he know that the gentleman was having an affair. The husband later sued the hotel for a breach of service, privacy is something most hotels promise, and won.

Occupied check-in. 

Every professional has a career ending mistake summed up in a phrase that is always at the back of your mind. For chefs it is "salmonella poisoning" and coincidentally for police officers and porn stars it is "accidental discharge." In the hotel world it is simply an "occupied check in." An occupied check in occurs when you check in two sets of guests into the same room. Everything that can happen to a Guest Service Agent when they walk in to a room unannounced, can now happen to a paying conservative family of four. You try explaining to the Jones's why they walked in on the Smiths on their wedding night. No amount of free breakfasts or pictures of puppies is going to remove the images they just witnessed from their minds. My biggest fear is I orchestrate an occupied check in to guests in one of the multi-roomed suites because not only are they the highest paying guests but with multiple rooms they could share the same suite for hours before realizing they are not alone.  

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