What’s better than sports kids?
It’s been a minute since I’ve posted here, but this week has been so crazy. We had not 1, not 2, but THREE CHILDREN’S SPORTS TEAMS. At the same time. In the same tournament. This is a longer one, so buckle up…
We’re at about half our normal capacity room wise due to some AC issues (that have been a problem since last fall), but the owner decides to let us overbook anyway. We just have to give major discounts to the people in rooms without AC. In the middle of summer. In the Southern United States. During one of the worst heat and humidity waves of the year. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
A little backstory-We were pretty backed up in laundry and a couple of our housekeepers were on vacation so I was in laundry this weekend. I’ve done it before, normally pretty relaxing as you don’t have guests coming inside the hotel laundry room. I was at the hotel for all this, thankfully not front desk for most of it or else I would’ve snapped.
Night 1: the parents go through the cabinets in our atrium space. It doubles as breakfast while our restaurant space is being renovated. We have alcohol in some of them (for really nice events/to give as an apology), but keep zip ties around the handles to keep people out. The parents cut the zip ties, drink more than half of our wine (like at least 10 bottles), and put some of the opened wine bottles back in the cabinets. We went from 2 storage cabinets of wine to 3/4s of a cabinet. 203
My manager had me bring what was left to the back and let any staff who are old enough take what they wanted. That same night, some of them set up a barbershop and cut each other’s hair.
Night 2: we discover (due to angry complaints) that the pool service we hire hasn’t been doing their full job. The pool turned a bright green from a combination of wrong chemicals, pee, and whatever else. My coworker closed the pool while our manager angry-dialed the pool company. When one of the teams got back from their game, the parents raised hell because the pool was closed. No, we are not letting anyone in that nasty bacteria pit. Clearly that makes us evil. We got a bunch of noise complaints that night, which the parents did nothing about.
We also had to turn people away due to overbooking. Some arrivals got the rooms with no AC, which we explained to them before charging the card, but complained anyway.
Night 3: I was working 2nd shift. One team loses and comes back grumbling about how unfair their loss is. Some check out that night, thankfully. The others let their kids run wild, until 9 pm when I kicked the kids out of the atrium bc they couldn’t be quiet. The kids gave me crap for it, but a couple of their friends saw my “I’m-not-taking-any-bs-tonight” face and dragged them out. Word spread quickly amongst the children, and order was restored.
Normally I like kids, but if I ever see any kids sports groups again, it’ll be too soon. Thankfully one team is now gone and the other 2 leave tomorrow morning. Peace will soon be with us (I hope) 13