Twunch

Holiday Greetings From Under The Bus

Our General Manager's name is John.   He's a success story.   The hotel business in New York City is full of success stories of young men and women who came to New York with only a twenty dollar bill and their panties full of moxie and moved up to scale the heights of hospitality.  Such is our owner who arrived from a tiny eastern European country with nothing and now owns four hotels in manhattan and others in further regions of the globe. Such is our General Manager who started at this hotel ten years ago wearing a french maid outfit and cleaning the rooms. 
People don't have mottos any more.  Instead they have well worn expressions which are sort of indicative of personality.  Our general manager likes to refer to "throwing someone under the bus."  This is the practice of directly contradicting or blaming a co-worker in front of the guest and thereby sacrificing the colleague to avoid losing face.  If you google "Throw under the bus" thousands of links will come up.  It is a common saying.  I'd never heard it or used it but it's a common saying according to google. 

This evening my hotel has no towels.  If someone asks for a towel, we literally have to steal them from other rooms.  We have one bellman.  The other called in sick.  We have two people behind the desk.   The third called in a personal day.  One is on break.  I am the other.  The bellman is also on break.  It is 9:45 at night.  The machine that makes room keys, that codes the room keys, now wheezes before it squeezes out a single semi-coded key and then dies. 
Tonight, we are a hotel with a staff of three.  And no towels.  That can't make keys.  My job?  Smiling with guests as we wait for the key machine to revive enough to regurgitate another coded key (average time at desk to wait for keys? 6 minutes.) 

I do not hate my job.  I work at a wonderful hotel.  I feel like so many people must- I cannot help but wonder how we got here?  I can proudly say that no one has been thrown under the bus.  Except the room key machine which has little to recommend it.  Hopefully tomorrow it will find it's way to the landfill and be replaced by a new and happy machine.  Tomorrow co-workers will come on in and be astounded by all the problems from the night before.  They will question our competence.  Our sanity.  Our commitment to quality.  And I must let them know, goddammit.  We tried.  We tried to pretend that things were fine in the hotel.  That the war was going well.  That we could see a light at the end of the tunnel.  But the fact of the matter is... our hotel has no towels.

Don't Bereave the Hype

Dear Mr. D. P.:

This morning at four thirty you called my hotel regarding an envelope you had left for a colleague.  You explained that you had left the envelope at our hotel to be picked up by your associate and had left precise instructions as to the envelopes importance.  You were assured by the man behind the desk that you needn't fear and that your envelope would be safe here until your friend picked it up.

Your friend came by at 10:30pm and called you saying we had lost the envelope.  So you called me.  "This is big!" you said over and over again- impressing upon me both the weighty importance of the envelope and the appertaining wrath that should appropriate troop with its loss.   You frightened me.  I woke my boss.  At home.  He said he'd never seen it.  I waited for the morning shift- they couldn't understand it's disappearance.  You called back and spoke to Mr. Blake.  He busted out words like "contrite" and "beside myself" at your envelope's disappearance. 
The envelope, it turned out, contained tickets to the Breeder's Cup- saved especially for two people flying in from teh West Coast to see a horse they owned.  Your ass, it seemed, was grass- and the hotel was to be held responsible. 
I thougth about this all day.  Saddened at your plight.  Shocked by the oversight.

I came into work to inquire about the conclusion.

The tickets were located.  In the possession of your idiotic friend.  Who had received the tickets only one moment after his initial phone call that they were missing.  He did not call you to correct his initial phone call.  That makes him an asssssssshole.  You, victim of his assholism, paid it forward directly onto me, Mr. Blake, and my sleeping manager.   That makes you an asshole as well.

I can only hope you were as vehement in your apologies to the employees whom your assholism incommoded as you were in your self-righteous wrath.

Fucking horse people.

Yours,

Ken