Friday, September 18, 2009

Bad Service

We are at an airport hotel here in Philadelphia. I won't mention the name cuz I don't wanna start anything, however...
First of all... exhibit A. This little fella was slowly crawling across the lobby at 7:30 am this morning and was kind enough to pose for a quick iPhone picture.

The Philadelphia Airport Hotel... nice....

I don't think I have any more to say about that....

The load in went smooth... it took us about 3 hours to get our power distro hooked up... the engineer left in the middle of the fiasco to go to a pre-con meeting....so, we ended up setting up and wiring everything with out power... this is a little unsettling... it makes the setup go faster, cuz you aren't checking everything as you go along. It also means that once everything is wired, if something doesn't work, you are going to have a hard time finding the problem.

So, we finally got power and fortunately most everything was in working order.. we had to troubleshoot some microphones that weren't working. That's when IT guy came in. He was just about useless... we told him we needed two phone lines and two internet lines. He left and you could immediately tell that he was just not good at hospitality, or service. He dropped cables on the stage and left.. we called him back and told him where we needed the phone lines run to. he was not very cooperative. Then later I checked the phone lines, and only one was working. We called him back again, he mumbled something or other.
Then we asked about the internet lines, he asked us if we had run his cables. We told him that we expected him to run the cables. Then he asked if we wanted him to show us were the hotel's router was in case there was any issues.
That was the final straw. I told him "Absolutely not" I told him that we were not interested in being involved in fixing the hotel's internet service. I then asked him for his cell phone number in case there was an issue. He basically refused to give it to me and told me that he would only be around for a couple of hours in the morning, because, "I don't normally work on Saturday" Then he told us that if we had a problem, the banquet captain would be taking care of it. I asked him for the banquet captains number and he held up his phone and said here it is.
At this point, I almost lost it. I told him, that from a service perspective, the least he could do was to right the number down and deliver it to us. He looked at me like I was asking for the crown jewels and then walked away.

We got in touch with the conference service manager, and told her that we expected him to be on property during the meeting tomorrow, however, it is apparent that we might as well have Mickey Mouse fly up from Orlando and run around in his costume. That might be a better solution to our problem.
They best part of this whole sorted mess, is that jocko's tie is a computer geek tie. It is a Nintendo style key pad printed on the tie complete with buttons and a little track pad.

If I was the GM of this hotel, I would just tell that guy to leave, don't bother changing your tie. It is a clear sign that you don't fit into the world of service and hospitality and you should apply for a job at game stop, because your value won't be lost on 15 year old skater boys.

classic-games-necktie-tetris-pong-asteroids-spaceinvaders

1 comment:

Michael S. said...

As predicted, another day of "gettin worked" in corporate theatre! Brilliantly portrayed!