Its War!

You Forgot To Put In The Crystals: Last night around 5 pm, I started getting phone calls from guests saying that their internet wasn't working. So I jabbed with the technical support help desk for about a half hour, and they said everything seemed to be in order from our end.

Unfortunately the guests were still having problems. I gave them the number I call and most of them were actually able to get fixed and work. But some of them didn't. When they didn't, they came down to the business center to use the internet down here that is hardwired into the wall.

And...that wasn't working either. I called up the company who runs the computer and they said we have some sort of virus blocking the internet from coming in to the hotel. Great! So today they were supposed to call back to get all these things fixed, and apparently the technical support still hasn't fixed these problems.

Its a great day to be a front desk agent...but even better knowing you have the next two days off. Yay!

V Is For Vonnegut: Tomorrow morning I'm having a overdue visit from Mike Sebald, one of my buddies from Sears. I really miss having him around. When I mentioned all those "good guys" in my blog a week ago, he was one of them. I haven't seen him since I had lunch with him and Chris Brown about two months ago. We are all busy people, I guess.

I've Got People: Came into work tonight and the boss tells me that he received the order for new name tags (since I lost mine a few weeks ago) and forgot to order mine. He then asked, "Who do you know at the engraving company?" I was pretty much clueless unless he gets them from the Trophy Shop Engravers in Edinboro.

"Someone wrote 'Hi Tony' on the box."

AH HA! I let him know that its most likely my mom...she's a sorter at UPS and did that when I worked at Sears. Always got teased for it, but its nice to know she's watching out for me. :)

And Finally, ITS WAR: A month or so ago, one of the front desk people left here and went to the new Hilton Garden Inn on upper Peach Street. When he left, I told him that I was in the running for Assistant General Manager and that I wanted to see if he'd let them know that since they're a Hilton property, like ours, that we could make amends and share information. He said that he'd see what he could do because he does understand expanding the company base.

Fast forward to this past week...I'd been talking with this front desk girl there who's been giving me the amount of rooms they have left to sell, and I felt okay with that. I'd just look up their rates, is all. Tonight, our former desker answered the phone and flat out refused, even pushed back at me, when I asked him for the number of rooms remaining. I told him that the girl had been giving me this info, and he said "management wouldn't be happy to know that".

Now the story here is that Scott Enterprises owns alot of the properties in that area. Hotels such as the Courtyard by Marriott, the Comfort Inn Peach, the Holiday Inn Express, the Residence Inn by Marriott, and now the Hilton Garden Inn. They also own the Applebees, Steak and Shake, Boston Pizza, Bob Evans, and the Splash Lagoon waterpark.

Great, right? WRONG. Why can't they understand that we are trying to build the company's name? You're never going to be anything but a property management company. People don't go to your properties because you're owned by Scott Enterprises....they go because they like the Marriott's no smoking policy...they like the prices that Comfort Inn has...they go because they're attached to Splash Lagoon.

Whats with the strongarming? Why push everyone away? I need to understand this badly, because it now makes me pissed off at that desker who is "following orders" ... they make the same amount of money I do. Its not as if they're all making twenty bucks an hour waiting tables.

Why does this crap go on?