Oh For Crying Out Loud!!

When you deal with people all day, it is normal to want to kill them. 

Now everybody just calm down!  Don's start spreading it on Facebook that Shawnacee has finally gone off her meds and lost her marbles. I did not mean that in the literal sense of course, I simply meant that at some point you are going to want to wrap your hands around their scrawny little necks and squeeze ever so tightly, or, perhaps place your hand over their whining mouths and clamp down.........hard.

This is what it feels like to be me.  Eight hours a day, five days a week, I deal with people who have paid good money to stay at our hotel and they are not about to let ANYONE forget it!  More than once I have wanted to grab some hoity toity lady by her Louis Vuitton purse strap, stare straight into her surgically lifted eyes and yell, "Lady!  This is Napa for crying out loud, not the Hamptons!  Just a few miles away there are homeless people and stray cats, get over yourself!"  But of course I don't, because then I would lose my job and be out on the street myself, so, I swallow, ask the dear Lord to help me to be nice and send up some chocolate covered strawberries to "Miss Priss."

We come into contact with all kinds here at our prestigious hotel.

Currently, we have a large group of "top secret guests" staying with us of whom I am not allowed to speak.  I have stood in the Manager's office, pen trembling in my hand as sweat beaded upon my upper lip, waiting to sign "the hallowed document."  Written in this document are my promises as an employee to not maul, molest, or otherwise force myself in an unseemly manner upon said "secret guests."  We, as employees have been stripped of our rights to talk on our cellphones, or to have access to the breezeways and certain entrances of our hotel.  All because some famous people are here.........Are you kidding me??  "I'm famous!  Yes!  I am famous for many things.  For instance, I am famous for burning the french bread, spending too much money, sticking my foot in my mouth, these blogs!  That's right!  I'm a famous blogger!  You sure don't see them parting the waters for my arrival, no sirree.  But then again, that's because I don't make the big bucks, just small ones.

Occasionally I will come across the "I'll lie to get what I want" guest.  This is a guest that has "been to every ________ Hotel on the planet and has never stayed in one where they charge for wifi in the room, yada yada yada." even though that is the policy in all ________ hotels everywhere.  Or, I LOVE this one, "They are personal friends of Mr. ________ and one time had dinner with him and HE said that they could cancel their reservations one hour before they are scheduled to arrive without paying the cancellation fee.  In this instance I wanted to inform the guest that Judas had supper with God Almighty and THAT didn't turn out well for HIM either.

But my alltime favorite was the lady who visited who had to have been dispatched by Satan himself to wreak havoc on my nerves and to leave carnage in her wake.  She had a daughter who was allergic to EVERYTHING, so they could not be near the garden, but it was too hot in the room and she couldn't open the windows because the foliage would send the daughter into a wheezing fit.  And of course the room was not cleaned properly, so we sent the housekeepers to clean it again, and then it was just way too clean and smelled too strong of the room deodorizer the housekeepers spray, sooooooooooo she asked if we had a machine that would remove the stinky air from the room.  WHAT???? 

"Oh yes!"  She proclaimed "All hotels have them and if they don't, they should!!"  From there she went on to tell me that this was the absolute WORST hotel she had ever stayed in and that basically, we were a bunch of morons.  I bit my tongue of course, but would have preferred to bite HER tongue out and send her babygirl a bouquet of ragweed.  AND to add insult to injury I discovered that there actually ARE machines that remove bad odors from a room!!  Well glory be!!  If I had know that I would have secured one long ago for when my son lived at home.


When this irate guest finally left, we all breathed a sigh  and wept upon one onother's shoulders in relief, then, I promptly did a little Holy Ghost jig right there in the office.  She had stayed one week too long as far as I was concerned.  I was ever so happy and very anxious to Google that amazing stinky air remover thingamajig..........and no, it's not for my son.