<kaylasdad99 checks Cat Whisperer’s location tag, notes that she does not compete for his lottery jackpots>
Okay, go ahead. Put in a good word for my numbers to be drawn tomorrow evening, while you’re at it, okay? I’ve got plans for that money…
That would blow the minds of all the woo-haters here if we actually won if I did that, wouldn’t it?
Man, Saturday night was so crazy at work that it took 36 hours for me to recover enough to mini-rant!
First, I arrive at work to find out that the property had been locked down while local police chased and arrested three kids who had bad plans for one of our guests. I don’t know exactly what those plans were, but the “kids” (okay, all 20-ish, but when you’re my age…) were caught with at least one handgun and a sawed-off shotgun. :eek::eek::eek: Needless to say, my co-worker was a nervous wreck!
So, things seemed to calm down, I checked in guests and gave directions and set wake up calls - the usual Saturday night - until…
Holy guacamole, the shit has hit the fan!
No fewer than a dozen police cars from three agencies (our town, the next town east, and the sheriff’s department, with maybe a state patrol or two thrown in for good measure - it was dark and foggy, hard to tell) come screaming toward the hotel. Several go down the street beside me, a couple come onto my property, others are parked in front, on the main highway, and cops are swarming across the ditch with flashlights in one hand and guns in the other! (Honestly, at that point, I called my husband - who was working in the next county - and said “Honey, find out what’s going on. I know it’s big 'cause the fat cops are sprinting!”)
Turns out, a dude hit a police car in the city east of us, refused to stop, and led a merry little high speed chase through 2 towns (about 6 miles) through some of the thickest fog I’ve ever seen. They caught the guy when he (literallly) ditched the car in front of the hotel and took off on foot… Tasers were used, but no one was seriously hurt. All because the moron didn’t want a DUI charge.
Coming on the heels of the adventures earlier in the day, and not knowing who in bloody hell the cops were chasing until later, it took hours for me to quit shaking - There I was stuck in the office, with the baby, not knowing what was going on.
Aaaaugh!
(By the way - If you’re reading this Quasi? This is not the sort of crap that goes on at our hotel… or even in our little town - so no worries! 
)
If there’s a silver lining, though, I know that my fellow overnight-shifters have my back. Auditors from two hotels and the night shift guy from the c-store across the street lit up my switchboard within seconds of all the excitement, to make sure I was okay. 
Back off missy dreaming about winning that lottery is the only thing thats keeping me sane this week.
Coworker, I am perfectly happy to check various people’s schedules for you so that you can decide on meeting times with a client. However, next time, maybe you could figure out exactly how many meetings you want, on what topics, around what general days and times, before you pull me into a conference call. That way, I don’t have to sit on the phone for an *hour *listening to you all hem and haw and chat and laugh in order to perform *90 seconds *of work.
Yup! does a little happy dance of unbridled glee
By the way, she’s a positively hateful bitch who has been told how much her chewing bothers everybody, and in response she simply sniffs “I don’t care”, so I don’t have the slightest twinge of guilt enjoying her busted teeth. Even schadenfreudier!
That’s a big ol’ pile of awesome right there, singular1. I’m having fun imagining her dentist/oral surgeon giving her a long lecture on the same topic.
Hey, you know what’s awesome? When you wait 'til 4 p.m. on the last business day of the month to ask questions about billing numbers people used for their timescards. Especially when *my *part of the company is actually required to submit our time for the month on the second-last day of the month.
What is the difference between a pet and non-pet room?
Three things (at least at our property):
Our pet rooms are flagged for extra cleaning each day. The carpets are spot-cleaned or steam-cleaned if necessary, and vacuumed twice, and the room is aired out thoroughly. If there is any remaining odor from pets, the ionizer may be used in the room (that takes about an hour, and the room can’t be entered during that portion of the cleaning.)
The rooms are located at the back of the property, for two reasons - so that fewer people are driving or walking past the rooms, reducing anxiety for pets in an unfamiliar environment; and giving easy access to a nice grassy area for “critter comfort.”
And - maybe most importantly - isolating potential allergens into a certain set of rooms. Even with the most thorough cleaning, daily housekeeping can’t ensure that all allergens are removed from a room. If our guests smuggle pets into non-pet-friendly rooms, there’s always the possibility that the next guest will have an allergic reaction to the dog/cat/guinea pig/whatever…
Our pet-friendly rooms cost guests an extra $10.00 per day (or an extra $25, if the guest is staying by the week) and really only covers the extra costs associated with cleaning those rooms - no extra profit. If someone smuggles the pet in, we have to take the non-pet room off market long enough for very thorough cleaning - just as we would if someone smoked in a non-smoking room.
Another consideration for pet owners is that our housekeeping and maintenance staff know which rooms should or shouldn’t have pets. They are more cautious when opening up a pet room, since some owners don’t quite remember to crate their animals when they leave rooms - no one wants to be attacked by a startled animal, nor to have someone’s beloved pet escape.
Me to The Gatekeepers: requesting permission to take the “Times” part out of the “work done today” part of The Program, since it is not needed.
Gatekeeper: what? Why is Time in that part of The Program? Times should not be entered! Does HR know about this? And yeah, go ahead and change it.
Me: OK, I’ll change it. Times are not going to be entered and yes HR knows about it.
Gatekeeper, to HR with me on copy: This can’t be! It doesn’t make sense! They have “Times” on the “work done today” part! Do you know about this?
HR: Yes, it’s OK.
Gatekeeper: No, no, it can’t be! summons HR and me to a meeting
I’m thinking we should make him, first, pay for the coffee and second, go see the company docs for a lie-down and possible stress-related sick leave…
Nava, I’m trying to make sense out of your post, but I honestly have no idea what’s going on.
Does “a lie down” = “a nap” perhaps? And if so, can I sign up for one please?
Yes, and no. Respectively. 
Your pet fees sound totally reasonable, Lacunae Matata. Ten bucks? Sign me and my cat up! I’ve heard about much higher fees and that’s when the hotel knows about the animals.
People get so offended when I have to tell them we don’t take dogs. “I’m afraid we don’t take pets. No, not even a little one. I’m sorry. I love dogs, but it’s not up to me!” “He’s a little dog!” “I’m sorry, but we don’t take any at all. I’m sure your dog is great, though.” (While I am actually a lot more sure that their little dog is the sort who will yap and pee on everything, which is the last thing I’d want in a hotel room. Please note that little dogs who act like that, I blame the owners, for not treating their dogs like actual dogs, not so much the dogs themselves.)
A lie down might include a nap. Really, I’ve always used it to mean exactly what it says, lying down as opposed to sitting or standing. Getting the feet higher than the heart and a cool washcloth on the forehead might be included, too. Lie downs are indicated if you have a migraine, or think that you might need to strangle someone if you don’t get one.
A bottle of warm milk or cold beer is optional.
Ugh. This was not a fun morning. I’m a pretty junior engineer in my company. Recently the MF’ing COO of the company has been after me to do some testing. I tried to push back – I’ve been on a completely unrelated project for some time now – but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Finally I told him that I’d either run the tests myself or find somebody to do them. Big mistake, because I knew that I wouldn’t have the time to run the tests, and when I asked the people who are running the project to find somebody to do the testing I got basically no response. It all came to a head today when I had to push back a lot harder on the COO. I got a good chewing out for not telling him that I didn’t have time to do the tests earlier. It’s a legitimate complaint, but I feel like I got a bit bullied into accepting the work in the first place and that when I tried to say that I didn’t have time and that it wasn’t my project that he just wasn’t listening to me. However, I definitely screwed up in two ways:
-
I should have kept my manager in the loop from the start. He could have headed off the problem if he knew that the COO was making demands on my time and directed the COO to get the data through the proper channels
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I should have copied the COO when I asked the project managers to find somebody to do the work. It would have been a lot harder for them to say no or ignore the email when the COO was in the loop, and it would have gotten a dialogue going between the COO and the people who he really should have been talking with in the first place.
Fuck the COO for being a dick, and good on you for realizing how to deal with this if (when) it ever happens again.
Oh, no. Not this again. We have to have another BS “come to Jesus” meeting. I hate these.
Apparently my co-worker, busybody, and her employee, minion, tattled on me because of a comment I made. Said comment was almost verbatim, “Hey, I wanted to get a refresher on our call center process, so I sat in on some calls. While I was there, the department manager said that she’d be interested in having us implement an easy fix so we get 100% of their business instead of just 50%. I know you guys have complained about our list being incomplete; this would solve the problem. Would you like to do that?”
The comment was apparently interpreted as, “You guys are idiots and don’t know what you’re doing. We’re implementing this fix and eliminating all your other referrals and lines of communication. I’m also going to restructure the department. Bwahahahahah!”
I’m so pissed I can hardly see straight. First, this is the third time in the past 6 weeks I’ve been thrown under the bus for something competely unfounded. Second, I have absolutely no authority to restructure the department in any way. Third, it irritates the hell out of me when my comments are completely misrepresented and taken out of context.
Good lord, I’m glad that this isn’t the norm! I’d never pay extra for a pet room simply because there is no reason why that room would need extra cleaning any more than a room that had, say, toddlers or college students in it. As for the allergy thing, do you also try to make sure that there is no mold, mildew, pollen, etc at all in your rooms?
Fortunately for me, since I stay in a motel room about 3 days a month, there are plenty of places that don’t charge me extra for daring to travel with dogs. Not that anyone would be able to tell there had been a couple of dogs in my room after I left.