I Like Big Boats and I Cannot Lie - podcast episode cover

I Like Big Boats and I Cannot Lie

Jul 07, 202346 minSeason 2Ep. 10
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Episode description

Welcome to another exciting episode of Tales from the Service Industry! This week, your hosts Bill, Liz, and Ms. B. are back and set course for a few cringe-worthy listener submissions, share their own jaw-dropping stories, and float some truly terrible boat puns with a twist on the a-hole of the week. Join us as we navigate through the wild and unpredictable world of the service industry, uncovering the hidden gems and outrageous encounters that make this industry so unique. From mind boggling customer interactions to encounters with entitled patrons, we've got it all.So, grab your life jacket, tune in, and climb aboard for a laughter-filled adventure on the high seas of the service industry. TFTSI is setting sail, and you won't want to miss a single wave! #tftsi #talesfromtheserviceindustry #frontdeskagent #frontdesk #hotel #hotels #service #serviceindustry

Transcript

The Full Monty

Miss B. Yeah. Not to put you on the spot, but you want to kick us off. Hey everybody. Welcome back to Tales from the Service Industry. I'm one of your favorite co-hosts, Miss B. And I'm here tonight with Bill. What's up, Bill? And our resident deviant, Miss Liz. Hi, team. We're so excited to have you all back. And boy, do we have a fun episode for you. So tonight's going to be a little bit different. Ooh, spicy. I like it.

So instead of just sharing our own stories, we have a few listener submissions to share. Yay. Now some of these are real short. They're just kind of snippets, but I think they are really, really good insight into some of the absurdity that we deal with. Okay. I'm excited. Yeah. So I am going to start off with one of the submissions. The person that submitted it didn't say whether they wanted to be mentioned by name or not. So we'll just refer to this person as TD.

Okay. TD. All right. So TD shared a little story about a tweaker on wheels. Oh, God. Okay. So TD says, I show up for work one morning at about a quarter to eight. I walk towards the punch clock and I see a wheelchair with an orange flag on it in the parking lot. Okay. It was probably stolen from the medical complex just up the street. Oh, definitely. In the wheelchair is a tweaker playing with his junk. No. Wait, through his pants? Through his pants. Oh, no. Nothing better to do at 7 45 a.m.

Oh, gross. I mean, at least he's still in his pants on, I guess. That's a hell of a way to start your day. Yeah. And then, you know, true to form for all of us in the industry having to call the cops and slow response times. TD mentioned that they called the cops and it took them about 30 minutes for them to show up to simply trespass it. Of course. That's how it is. And then you have to sit there dealing with the man playing with his wiener. Well, he had a fun 30 minutes.

Oh, my God. Waiting for the cops to get him. Oh, my God. Oh, man. TD, my heart goes out to you. I've definitely had to deal with a lot of shit like that. Have you really? Oh, for sure. People just messing with themselves in public areas. Yeah. And it's like it's always awkward. You just have to be like, hey. Like, what do you say? Hey, sir, can you stop touching your junk? No. Say, hey, you need to leave. You basically just yell at him and tell him to leave.

Make him feel as uncomfortable as possible. Yeah. So maybe they start getting like gun shy and be like, OK, I'll leave. But they don't. Oh, yeah. And so like literally right outside of our hotel, we're in a downtown metropolitan area. There was a homeless individual. It was maybe a block from us walking the lunch, but it was right across the street. There was a homeless individual with his pants down and he was faced towards the wall. So you couldn't see him, but you saw the whole back of him.

Everyone just tries to walk by quickly, put their head down. Even if you don't like, hey, stop it. Was he urinating or was he just chilling? We tried not to look. You know, you see the butt and then you try to quickly look away like, no, no, I see nothing. I do nothing. But like the last time something like this happened, I was at a park with my daughter and my husband yelled at the man whose pants was around his ankle. Oh, come on. And he turned around to yell back at us.

Full frontal. Yeah. Full Montage. Hide my daughter's eyes, but literally turned back to yell at us like we were the crazy ones. And I'm like, babe, don't argue with him. He's not in his right mind. And he goes, why are you yelling at me? Yeah. Did you tell him that you always knew he was crazy, but now you could see he's nuts? Oh, sorry. That's amazing. Oh, TD. Sorry. You got to go through that. Send us more. I love it. Yeah. So TD did. Oh, I'm so excited. Oh, we have a follow up. We do.

This one TD shared that a woman had a dog living in her room for about a year.

Little Dogs are D!cks

Oh, I'm sorry. What? You're living in the hotel room and your dog for a year. Yeah. So a woman had a dog in her room for about a year. One day, housekeeping comes by and the dog wasn't in his crate. The dog was so territorial over that room at that point that he attacked the housekeeper. Oh, no. Oh, apparently the situation was so emotional that the GM quit a few days later. What? No way. I bet that guest was a nightmare. I can only imagine. I mean, we've all had those nightmare guests.

I know that you have. I have. Where we've had guests that had to be evicted, like legally evicted. Right. For lack of payment. I had one that was so bad. Holy smokes. When we evicted them, we found that the room that they were in was infested with bed bugs. That's disgusting. Every mattress was trashed. The carpet was in poor shape. Yeah. The eviction ended up costing us like $4,000 to get them out. Oh, yeah. It's not cheap. No, it's not cheap. They had lived in the hotel for so long.

I mean, we ended up writing off like $25,000 in money that was owed plus the eviction plus plus plus. All the furniture and everything you have to replace. Yeah. Everything had to be replaced. Dude. But with that dog, like people don't understand. They think we're into a dog-friendly hotel. Well, even when you're not, you have people like this who's maybe dogs aren't as friendly. I've had housekeepers nearly get attacked by dogs because people won't put the DMD sign on the door.

And then housekeeping goes to perform stay over service like normal. And then, you know, they knock three times. Nobody says anything. They enter. And I had one lady that was nearly attacked by a German shepherd, like a really big German shepherd and just lunged at her. And she was crying so hard and hysterical. Luckily, she didn't get bit like southern housekeeper, but we had to send her home. She was terrified. It's not always the big dogs. The little ones can be just as ferocious and nippy.

Fully aware. The only dog I've ever gotten bitten by was a little dog. Yeah, me too. When I worked at a pet store. Fun fact, it was a dog be there back in the day. Oh, my gosh. I know little dogs are dicks. There are a lot of little dogs that are dicks. Well, we had a toy poodle that lived to be, oh, man, 17 years old. And that dog bit me like every day. Green and I was very young and teased a dog and I probably deserved it.

But that dog drew blood. My little dog now is down angel baby. She would never hurt a fly. Yeah. See, now I have a little dog that's like that. But when I did do my brief stint as a dog groomer, I was always scared of the pit bulls because, you know, you're kind of taught to think those are like the evil dogs. They're like sweeties. Every pit bull I've been was a sweetheart. It was the little two wawa's and the little yappy ones that were so quick.

And I got bit in the hand so many times. And the big dogs just kind of like, dude, everyone. Yeah. I think for scratch me right here. Yeah. Oh, right. Right there. That feels good. But the little ones were like, don't mess with me. I'm little. I think it's a defense mechanism, though, because they are so small. I just soaping you up. Leave me alone. Come on. I'm just trying to get you clean. Dang. Oh, man. Good times.

But OK. How does one live in a hotel room for a year that has been on my mind since you said that extended stay property? Yeah. So I mean, there was it like pandemic time?

Help I Can't Provide

He didn't say, but there's a lot of people that are out there that will jump to the conclusion of, you know, terrible hotels, what have you. There's a lot of very good quality hotels that have extended stay, like where you live there effectively for a long period of time. I don't want to name names, but there's quite a few of them where we live. Oh, there's a million. And they're in all the brands. All the major brands hotels have a version of that.

I've worked at one of the extended stays for a different company than we work for now. They have one of those brands. And you think, oh, it's just like the grossy, homeless people, all that, that stay in extended stays. No. I had a lot of families.

I had this couple had two young kids that they were renovating their house. And so they chose to stay at a place that provided them with free breakfast in a safe room and housekeeping for the year that they were having their house renovated and stuff kept happening and dates getting extended.

So they were there for us for I think like a year and a half and they were nothing but a dream that entire year and a half when they were leaving, everyone was crying and threw them like a little going away party. So like not everyone's a nightmare who stays for a long time.

The hotel that I'm at now, I've got a, well, it's a couple of guests that has been at that hotel since before I got there. And that was September. Wow. And kind of similar thing. It was related to their home, but it's not that they were renovating is that they sold their house.

And they're just kind of in between. They're trying to figure out what they want to do, where they want to go. And they've got the money and they just decided, you know, we're going to just stay in a hotel. And they make up my bed, you know, yeah, same sort of scenario. They eat every day. It's included with their room rate.

We're central to basically their lives. It just works for them. And they're, they're trying to figure out where they want to be and whether they even want to stay in the state or in the county or what have you. Well, that's why they're extended stay properties.

There are a lot of people like that who, you know, aren't horrible humans, but then there are some that are. Well, yeah, there are like the reasons that those people are there varied as well. Yeah. You know, like we've talked about before, but you know, that video that I posted to tick tock.

Yeah, that was a unique situation. That was a guest that was unfortunately dealing with addiction, alcohol and ended up trashing the room in a matter of days. The comments that were logged on that video crazy. You know, what was interesting is that they ran the gamut from incredibly compassionate to absolute vitriol and everything in between. You know, it was everything from, oh my God, I can't, I can't imagine what that person was going through to empathetic.

I love that there were a lot of empathetic comments. There were a lot of comments that were very identifying as to what that person was going through and what the commenter had gone through. There were at least three or four people that made the comment of that is in some way, shape or form.

Alcoholism, addiction, end stage X, whatever, and offered the fact that they had gone through those things. You know, so you had all those very compassionate comments and relatable comments all the way to the opposite side of the spectrum that were saying things like that's what your tax dollars pay for when they house homeless.

Or that's what immigrants do. I mean, just terrible comments and everything in between. All those comments insinuating that person must have been homosexual because of the type of beer they consumed. Loved that. Yeah, I wasn't even going to get into that piece. But yeah, the number of comments. Sorry, I read the comments. That was like a lot of them. I was like, what? Guys, you didn't see all the other cuts of beer?

No, basically every type of beer. Yeah, every type of light beer. I'm sorry. He had like three major brands that were. I saw three. I'm a beer snob, so I wasn't thinking that. I was like, oh, God. But I guess if you're drinking that much. Poor guy though. I know. I go back to that. I'm like, poor guy to be in that hole of a sip. Did his card go through? Yeah. I got full. Well, I say that I got full payment. We actually got within about 100 bucks of what the actual costs were. Not bad. Yeah, I was. I was.

You can eat 100 bucks. Yeah. Was it a charge back or did it all stick? Charge went through. Nothing was disputed. Yeah. You realize that's a unicorn moment in itself. Absolutely. But I was faced with a couple of options at that point. So option number one was I had a conversation with the guy and we worked it out directly. He settled the charges. Wow. Did he take option one? Well, yeah. And just as a reminder, option one is always your best option. Option one, option A. But. Take it. Always take the first one. Yeah. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I

was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I've been in the role for a while and I was having a hard time. But I will say I actually kind of have wrestled with that decision ever since. That occurred. And that was this. So yes, option one, we got paid, which is fine. But I do question. And actually one of the commenters that made a comment on the post I sent a direct message to saying something to the effect of, you know, at the time I'd never dealt with a situation quite like this and didn't know exactly how to handle it. Yeah. So I went the route.

out of compassion. I was able to have a conversation with the guy, I got the damage payment done. Everything was settled, I sent him on his way. But in hindsight, looking at it, and having had the conversation with that guest, he had no support network, family had disowned him. He was on his own. So do you think you should have given him like some sort of resource to get help? Well, or press charges to make him face his actions? That was where I kind of in retrospect was like, did I do

the right thing? Like get in front of a judge that is going to order you to get help. Right. And my fear was this guy is clearly at the bottom of the barrel. Okay, he's dug his hole deep. If I called the police and the police got involved, they would have most likely deemed him unable to care for himself. I think so. Yeah. Which then would have thrown him on a cycle. Having him put into custody in a cycle situation would that have made things worse for him, considering that

it would be against his will? He didn't want I mean, I shouldn't say he didn't want help. But his actions showed that he wasn't willing to go get help. So forcing him into that situation would that have made everything worse? Or would that have been help that he desperately needed? I don't think you'll ever get that answer. No, and to this day, I still don't know if it was the right decision or not. But you would be relying on the fact that the police would indeed do that. And in my

experience, they don't. They show up and they basically say it's your problem. Like, I think it would have been an uphill battle. I don't even know if they would have put him on a hold. Or like just put him in the drunk tank. Do you know how many times I've called trying to get guests on hold and they don't because the police don't want to deal with it. They don't want to deal with the paperwork. They don't want to call the pet

teams. Like I do happen to know a psychologist, I called them during one of these episodes where someone was obviously a danger to themselves and couldn't care for themselves. And the police just released them with all the facts that I gave them. And the psychologist was like, I'm a part of the pet team. If they would have called me, I would have put this people on hold. What's a pet team? Basically like a crisis response

team for like mental health. So it's like a psychologist, therapist, mental health professional kind of thing that supports the PD. So yeah, so basically, in these types of situations, I don't know if it's the same where we're in, but that this particular city and I think in the county, psychiatric emergency team, exactly. So the individual whom I know is a part

of this team. And essentially, they when they work out of this hospital one day a week, they're put on this and they're part of the crisis response team that goes and reports to people who are out in the field that maybe do a danger to themselves or others and they evaluate them in the field and decide whether they are deemed they according to the research department. I love that we are so high budget that we can have our own research. And they just know it's like that. Just call me

back in. They provide additional resources and specific geographical regions like they just if you call them, they'll give you additional resources to try and help you. That is if you don't meet the criteria for a hold. Correct. And then if you meet the criteria for a hold, you go to a hospital and then you obviously get medical treatment and then can be given resources

as well. But sorry, all of this to say to what you were saying is I have been in not that similar situation, but where I've had to call the cops because I do not feel like someone is able to care for themselves. And they completely let me down. It has been very rare that they took that on and weren't just like, no, you got to deal with it and just kick them out. So I think you covering CYOB covering your own butt and getting the funds

for all that damage to take care of that was important. And at least that's what I would have done. It was the right decision for the hotel. Yeah, 100%. But my question and the thing that lingers with me was, was that the right decision for that guest? And that's something that I'll never know. I mean, it was all hypothetical. Yeah, but I had never in all my years in the industry, I'd never dealt with that. So I didn't know how to

handle that. Well, keep in mind, you would have put yourself through all the legal shit, you would have lost money on the room, and then taking this person to court and fighting it, they're not going to show up. Most likely your hospitality management company you work for isn't want to go to court and spend all the money they're going to settle. And so you're going to just lose a shit ton of money, you're going to lose money on litigation, lawyers and all the damage on the rooms. So we

recouped all the damages. Yeah. So honestly, your best decision was to do that and go the other route. In my opinion, I mean, for the company you work for for the company for my own job, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, life. As being a human, it makes me question whether or not that was the right choice. You know, but I mean, what's what's the adage, you can lead a horse to water,

GTFO

right? So if he didn't want to get help, then they're not going to get help. That's the second time I've heard that phrase today. Today. Today. See, usually I like to I like to I like to mess with my metaphors. So I usually will say you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it read Shakespeare. That's funny. I think in my meeting, they finished it like, but you can't make it drink water. That's what the legit I like his version better. Okay. Two to one, I guess. Oh, my

gosh, that was quite a tangent. Didi story. Yeah, it was. It was. Oh, we love you. Didi. Thank you. Two things. Thank you for the submission. Thank you for listening. Yes, we we love it. If you are listening to this and you've got stories, please send them our way because it's so fun to hear about some of the stuff that you guys are going to deal with might not have been fun for you, but it's fun for us to listen to. It's cathartic.

And that goes back to the heart of why we started this. It was all this was our informal Tuesday night wine therapy session. I love it so much. Thanks, Didi. We appreciate it. Well, it was kind of nice that it's like two lines versus our 10 minute stories. At least we have to be diatribe, but that's the fun of it, though. It is. Do you have any more fun ones for us? There were a few other submissions. I'll hold on to those. Okay. So make sure to listen to future episodes to

hear those. We got to sprinkle them around. They're flavor. I like it and I like the flavor. Oh my god. Well, Miss B, do you have any stories for us this week? Unfortunately, I do. So I guess since we're kind of on the theme-ish of discussing, you know, people that may disrupt our normal flow of work, that may, yeah, homeless situations. That was a long road to get there. I know. I was trying to tie it in, but basically, yeah, I had a homeless issue this week

and by homeless issue, I have many, but I thought one was particularly. Homeless or issues? That's funny. No, but both of those items are constant daily problems in my line of work and in the city I reside, but I feel like all metropolitan cities right now are having that issue, but it's really bad where we're at.

Fun fact, I went to like a council meeting recently where a group of business owners were like meeting and going over with like the police department, different things, and I think they had like a whole agenda planned, but the meeting got completely steered towards the homeless issue and all the business owners were talking about how everything's affecting them and their businesses and it was interesting to hear it's like, oh, we're

not alone. Like the stuff they're talking about. I'm like, yeah, we have that problem every day. So this particular incident, I was training on night audit this last week. That sounds absolutely miserable. Horrible. I've trained on night audit at every single property I've worked because when you're running the front office, you have to know how to do that. Yeah, very true. You know, if something happens, if there's call-ups, you have to know how to do it.

You're the one responsible to fill the shift. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. If everybody else fails, that's me in there. Yeah. So I know how to do night audit at other properties, but I had to learn how to do it at this one specifically and so I'm working overnight and I'm training with our night auditor and I just want to paint a picture for you guys for what this guy looks like. Okay. Your actual night auditor? Yes. So the actual one that does the job, the expert, he has to be at least six, five.

Like he's tall. He's freaking tall. I'm, I don't want to say I'm short. I think I'm average. No, Miss B, you're pretty short. Okay. Okay. No, no, no. I apologize. You are on the shorter side of average. Bill, would you, would you agree with that? I would. I would concur. So I'm a, I'm a little, I guess shorter than average, but he's a tall guy and he's not only tall, he's like built sideways too. He would be taller than average and wider than average. Yeah, but he's not like

chubby or anything. He's just like built. He's built like a grizzly bear. Like, like a linebacker football player? Yeah. All right. Big dude. And I've told him, I was like, if I'm going to do overnight with anyone, I'm glad it's you because no one's going to mess with you. And it's, it's to see the two of us next to each other. It's just funny because it's such a contrast. Do you look like you fell out of his pocket? I do. I'm not going to lie.

He's the funniest, sweetest guy and he's a hoot to train with. And so this one day we kept trying to do the night out in the back and like people just kept coming up to the desk. It was an active night. And I told him like, you do what you're doing. I'll go up and take care of this guy. So this guy comes up and I'm like, Hey, how can I help you? And he's like, yeah, can you call Tyler's room for me? Oh yeah. I'm obviously making up this name. Can you call Tyler's

room for me? I'm like, who's that? And he's like, you know, Tyler, I'm like, I'm sorry, I don't, this is a guest. And he's like, yeah, we just walked by here like 30 minutes ago. I'm like, I'm sorry, I don't remember you. I don't remember your friend. Do you have his last name? And he's like, I'm going to need a little more info here. I'm like, do you have his last name? He's like, ah, no, I don't,

I don't remember it. I'm like, okay. Well, um, even if you had that last name, you'd have to give me a room number because I can't confirm or deny whether any individual is staying here. But especially when you only have a first name. Oh, come on. Are you serious? I'm like, I don't know who Tyler is, but he doesn't let it go. He keeps badgering me. Like there's nothing you could do. There's nothing. I'm like, I can't just look up a random dude's first name, my

computer. Like one, I can't, two, I won't. Like, no. Okay. And let's just paint this picture. Even if you did, how many rooms is in your hotel? 200, 300, you know, in that range. What do you think the odds are on multiple Tylers? Probably a lot. Being on the registered guest list for that night at one time. I mean, yeah. And again, this isn't the exact name, but it was an average name. Like I'm sure we had many of them. Okay. But I had to explain to this guy because

he would not listen to me. I said, I'm sorry. I do not have the capabilities to look up somebody by just their first name and that violates guest privacy for me to even tell you how many Tylers are in this hotel. So why don't you go, you go find me a last name and a room number, and then maybe I'll be able to help you. Maybe. Maybe. Okay. Oh, fine. And he eventually takes my answer and he storms away. And I go into the back office and like, this dude was trying to get me to

call the room number of somebody with just the first name. That was weird. Right. So we're working away. Maybe 15 minutes later he comes back. I'm like, is this the same guy? And so I go up there and I was like, how can I help you? He's like, I need you to call room 619. And I'm like, can I get the name on that room? And he's like, it's Tyler. And he said, first of all, first of all, there's no one named Tyler in this room. Second of all. No way. Yeah. I'm like, there's no one

named Tyler. That's his room. I know it. I know it. And he's like, dude, you need to go. You need to go. I don't know what you're on, but you need to go. But yeah, he has all my stuff. And I was like, I don't know what to tell you. I can't help you. He's like, I mean, I just met him tonight, but we were up in his room like an hour ago and I left all my stuff in there. And I said, I'm really sorry about that, but I can't help you. That seems like a you problem and not a me problem.

Yeah. I kept telling him I can't help you. I can't help you. Eventually storms off angry. Okay. Wait, wait, wait. In any moment in the back of your head, do you think, should I get this six five dude to like scare this guy away? Well, after he wasn't scary, he was just annoying. I'm sorry. Even if you're annoying, I don't want to deal with you. Let me continue. So after the second interaction, I was just fricking annoyed and I went back there. I'm like, same dude again. I'm like

this time he had a room number, a random room number. Nonetheless, he's like, that's weird. We're back. They're working on the night. I 15 minutes later, guess who comes up to the desk and I said, no, I'm not doing this again. This is all you. And so he goes up there and he's like, dude, we cannot help you. And he's like, oh, you guys storms away. But instead of going out the front door, it goes to the elevator and he's going to find the room himself. And my night auditor, let's

call him Bob Bob Bob. The night editor, like goes and follows him to the elevator. The guy goes into the elevator and we let the door shut because you need a key to get to the floor. So Bob goes over there. So wait, wait, wait. Imagine going up like however many flights like in this elevator and like, no, it won't go anywhere. It doesn't leave the lobby level. No, cause you have to either touch the key to a sensor or you have to insert it in the slot. So you

just let these doors close and you're just like, bye. Bob follows him. Like seeing it close and then like what? Five seconds later, it just opens? No. I can just imagine. I can just imagine like the guy getting in the elevator, seeing Bob coming towards him and be like, hurry up, hurry up, pushing the button to close the doors and then the doors closed going, yes. And then realizing he can't do nothing. So Bob very slowly followed him to the elevator and was just like,

go for it. And he goes into the elevator door shut and Bob doesn't even go hit the button. He just waits. How long it takes for the guy to push like the open door button. Yeah. Because when you go in there, you can hit any button you want. It's not going anywhere. So basically you're sitting there with the door shut and then you basically have to hit either lobby number one or open the doors for it to open again. I was waiting and then I look, but you can look up and see what

floor it's on. Still on one. It hadn't moved. So my guess is he kept trying buttons and then eventually figured out it won't work and opened it and walked ashamed it back past us. And we didn't say anything. We just watched him walk out the front door. Just that walk of shame. Yes. Have a good evening. Yeah. Right. And so he leaves. Not the end of the story. He leaves, comes back in 15 minutes. Yeah, pretty much. We're back at the night audit. He comes up again.

I'm like, you gotta be forking kidding me. So at this point in time and it's almost been like an hour of wasting our time trying to train on the night audit. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Cool. So he comes up to the desk and I'm like, Bob, it's all you know, poor miss B she's trying to learn night audit. She can't interrupt every 15 minutes. So Bob goes up there and I told him, get him, just get him to leave. And so he tells the guy, he's like, look, we've tried to be

nice, but you don't have a key. You are not registered here. You're not a registered guest. You need to leave. End of story. The guy's like, you can't talk to me like that. You're going to lose so much business. And he's like, you're not a registered guest. You need to leave. I want to speak to your manager. And he goes, okay. And I come up because I'm listening to the whole thing. And so the six, five huge guy looks at him and then kind of backs little slide to the

right. And you like pop up from behind a little girl behind him. And then my hands are on my hips. And I just look at him like you chose the wrong door. And I look at him and I said, now you're pissing me off. I'm no longer entertaining. Whatever conversation this was, you need to leave, but, but leave now, but I need to get my stuff. You have two options. Option one, you leave right now and you don't come back. End of story. Option two, you keep standing here. You keep

bugging me. You keep coming back. I'm going to call the cops. You're not going to get your stuff. You're going to go to jail for trespassing and you're no longer my issue. So which do you want it to be? Because I'm done. And he chose hidden door number three. Right. So why do they always think that there's a third? I don't know. So he leaves. Well, there obviously is because plenty people have taken option number three before, but oftentimes option number

three includes the bonus of police. Yeah. Yeah. This one was weird though. So he leaves and we're like, okay, he's not coming back. So we do the night audit several hours go by and he comes back and I'm like, you gotta be kidding. Oh, so home slice doesn't realize that night audit runs until 7am. I guess that, but he comes back several hours later and I'm like, he comes up to the desk and I just look at him like, are you for real? And he was like, I got a hold of him. I

got a hold of him. He's coming down with my stuff. Great. Go sit outside, wait for him. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That was what you did. So Bob tells the guy, I don't care. You can go wait on the corner. You're not a registered guest. You're not welcome in this lobby, but he's coming down. Don't care. We told you you're not welcome here. Go wait on the corner. Go and made him go stand on the corner. Like he was a kid in time out. You know what I love is like when

people will throw down that, oh, well, this is a public building. Not at 2am. It's so it's a building that's open to the public, but it's still private property. Amen to that. GTFO. Yeah. Yeah. So that guy brought down his dirty ass sneakers and I think like a sweater and then he left and I was like, thank God we're never going to see this guy again. I feel like the story is not over. I'm almost off. Like I'm just waiting for the AM shift to come in. They're going to be

coming through the door any minute. And this guy comes up to the desk and like, what the hell is going on? And he comes up. My eyes are just like, is this a joke? He comes up. He goes, can I check into a room? And I said, no, it's I've stayed up all night. I'm I don't have any more patience for this. There's not a lot of professionalism in my voice right now. I'm like, no. He's like, why? I said one, it's six thirty in the morning check ins at four p.m. to I just kicked you out of

here two, three hours ago. No, it is six in the morning when there's no rooms to know. You can go. And then he left. You know, as absurd as that is, I've been in similar situations. It blows me away that you'll kick people out for partying, for whatever the reason is. And then they just want to pay for a room. And then like, well, I don't have anywhere to go. Can I get a room? No, I go around the corner and find a room like you were finding out directly across the street.

Get out of my face. No, but it's like I just kicked out the registered guest for dealing drugs out of the room. What makes you think I want you? What makes you think that you're the person buying the drugs from that person? You think I'm going to give them a room? Pretty much. Oh, man. But I like I could not believe how many times it came back. I can't. I can't, too. We need to lock our front doors. That's that's it. Yeah, guys, that was that was my fun overnight shift. Oh,

my gosh. Yeah, I'm sorry. Did you learn anything? I did, but it was just constantly interrupted. Was it night audit related is the question? Yeah. One, I'm not doing that. Did you learn how to night audit your property? I will say

He's a Prostitute

that the next night I learned a lot more. OK, that's it. Not as much. Was it also with Bob? Yes. OK, yeah. So you did get a full shift actually training. Yes. With minor interruptions. Yeah, that was better than first night because I asked him, like, is every night like this? It's like this is unusually active. It's like normally people go to bed at like two, but they just stayed all night at this one fucking dude who doesn't sleep at night. Two a.m. You'd be surprised at how

much activity there is. But do you know what? On the night audit shift. Do you know what Bob said that I thought was really interesting? So this guy, I don't remember his name, the, you know, dude that kept coming up. Tyler's friend. Yeah, Tyler's friend. You know, he is skinny, like not. I thought he was a tweaker, like because he kind of like gave me tweaker vibes. But he finally left and I was like, God, who would just befriend this random dude in a bar? I mean, let's go hang out at my

hotel room. And I'm like, they must have been doing drugs. And he's like, nah, probably a prostitute. And I looked it out like, no. And he's like, yeah. And I'm like, but he's this random skinny ass dude. And he's like, yeah. And that like blew my freaking mind. Like, yeah, Miss B, that's a clientele. Did it blew my mind? Like, I'm sorry. When you think of person of the night, I think of the voluptuous woman sitting there by the bar. I think I had a twisted. You think the skinny guy

was the prostitute. Not looking for prostitution. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He said he's no, he's probably a prostitute. I was like, no, probably. That broke my little brain. I didn't see that twist. I can see it. I just assumed they went to the room to do drugs together. He's like, they probably did. There's probably something else after it. Totally tracks. Totally tracks. He left his sneakers. He took his shoes off. What do you think he was doing in that room? I didn't. I just assumed

drugs. I think if you're like doing any sort of bump or anything or blah, blah, blah, you're not taking your shoes off. You're not getting comfortable. They do drugs. I haven't done a lot of drugs in my day, so I don't know that. What do you think, Bill? No, I think you're on the right track. Oh, my God. Well, you and Bob, I guess your minds, because that literally broke me. I was like, no, I did not see that coming. But now that you've been exposed to it, you're going to spot

it. Yeah. That's the thing. So you know what's funny? If the roles been reversed, I guess I might have assumed that. But because I just thought it was two bro's friends who met and I didn't click that. Why do you think the original guy got the hotel room? I don't know. Oh, good. That could have been the whole purpose. The entire evening to have a good time. I'm so naive. Ridiculous. Oh, man. Guys,

Liz Has a Boat Guy

my week was obviously fun. Liz, you got any a-holes of the week for us? Okay, I do. But my multiple a-holes of the week are not people. Oh, I like that. We have teased, you know, a-holes of the week being vendors we might work with. Yeah. It's not that either. Huh. Yeah, you're confused. You can't say it's your dog. I'm very confused. It's not. It's my boat rental fleet. Like the physical boats themselves? Yes, the physical boats. Oh, they must be

real a-holes. So a little backstory. I've been in the position I am in for almost two years now and I have no background, no history on anything. No records of upkeep of the vessels at all, right? You have no background on your boats. Yes. Okay. Oh, I came in like knowing my job description and that was about it. Like, okay, I know what I'm supposed to do. How do I do it? And like where's any documentation, SOPs? It's always great when they tell you what you have to do

and then have no records. Yeah. No. So I think my predecessor wiped everything. Like I have the schedules from the last five years. What is that going to do for me? Right? Nada. So tell you not to rehire Jerry. Yes. So one day one of my associates comes and he's like, I'm really worried about this boat. Like it's hot inside. The seats are hot. The charger is hot. Like we cannot rent this out. And I'm like, what the heck? So the batteries are battery degradation.

They're, it smells like they're burning in the boat. I'm like, okay, well this is an issue. Yeah. Luckily the weekend in question was not super busy so we could take it out of the rental fleet and you know, call our repair guy and we try and you know, diagnose as much as we can over the phone rather than have him like come to property and diagnose it. Cause he's like, well, if I come to property, I'm going to charge you. I'd like to at least know what I'm getting into. Know if I

really need to come there, do a true diagnostic. And the end of the phone call and the FaceTime and the photos and looking at all the sensors and batteries and all of this stuff. He's like, yeah, your batteries probably need to be replaced. So little background. These are, I mean, obviously boat batteries, they run like $200 a piece. Okay. That's not horrible. Can we take a guess how many batteries are in these vessels? Oh, I'm like, that doesn't sound bad. 200 each.

$200 each battery. Oh my God. How many batteries do you think? 30. No. Okay. No. 16. Oh my God. It's still a lot. But I'm like, oh my God. 16 batteries. Like all of them need to be replaced? And they're, well, all of them are swollen. All of them are like super hot to the touch. The seats of the boat, you couldn't even sit. That's how hot like the whole vessel was. Oh my God. It's going to explode. Yeah. So they were like, well, unplug it. Don't rent it out. We'll come as soon as we

can. I'm like, all right, cool. So I take it out the rental fleet, like update my boss. I mean like, Hey, by the way, surprise invoice coming. I mean, it's the start of summer. We need the whole rental fleet. We're going to be busy. So why are you going to wait on doing these repairs? We need to do it now. 200 times 16. 3200 plus labor. I mean, I ballparked a minimum of 4,500. Yeah. So my boss approves that we're going forward with those repairs. We've got it like on the

calendar. Not a week later, the same associate comes up and he goes, yeah, you know, the issue that was with like boat number one. Yeah. I'm having that same problem with boat number two. And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? No. How many boats in the fleet? Five. What's the age of the boats in this fleet? Are they all the same age? No. Um, they range from, so these are the two oldest boats in question. We are actually creating a maintenance program with him because

every time we have a repair like this, it's an O-sh-ment. Yeah. I need you now because I have this boat rented out in four days. Yikes. You know? Yeah. I can move some things around, but if there's a day where I need all five boats at one given time, I'm not going to ruin someone's hotel stay. Yeah. You know, I'm not going to cancel something because I'm trying to avoid the front desk giving compensation. Oh, man. So not even a week later, a second boat with the

same problem. And I'm like, oh my gosh, two out of five boats. That's almost half of my rental fleet. That is an a-hole. Yeah. The boat is an a-hole. Wow. But that is indicative of the age of the vessel. So fun fact, it's actually indicative of the age of the batteries. Right. Well, but you got the boat's five years ago, right? So we got the boats. No, the oldest one is a 2008. Oh. So you can replace the batteries and like kind of keep it trucking. Of course.

The vessel is still good. It's all cosmetic, you know, and electrical fixes. They're not very complex boats. No. If we don't know what kind of boats I'm talking about. Yeah. So I'm like, I call up the repair guy and I'm like, hey, sorry. Oh, you know, that first boat that had that issue? Yeah. Same problem with the second boat. Like do another estimate. And he's like, oh my gosh, okay. And this is literally four days before a holiday weekend. Oh no. And I'm like,

that's your due date. Yeah. This is when your homework is due. And you know, my repair guy is really, really understanding. Hey, I know we have a holiday weekend coming up. I'm sure your rentals are booked up. I'm going to do my best. This guy will come to property at 4 AM to like get work done before rentals go out at 10. Wow. This guy will come to property after 7 PM after rentals are done for the day and be there until like midnight doing repairs.

Wow. That's a good vendor. Good guy. He's amazing, which is why he said, you know, this puts stress on you. You know, every time we have an, oh crap moment of this isn't preventative maintenance. This is maintenance that we need to do to keep your rental business going. Reactive maintenance. I was about to say that reactive. Not that's literally what it is. So yeah, we are drafting a maintenance program because he's like, I want to help you. He said

you might spend more money upfront, but I'm like, I don't care. Not my money. Well, and I kind of told my boss, I propose this maintenance program. And I said, these $5,000 issues will possibly turn into $1,000 issues. And we're, we're getting ahead of the game a little bit. Or he's like, Hey, keep this on your radar. You have four months. Yeah. So you know, plan which month you want it to hit your budget. Right. Ultimately, it's not going to save you any money

as far as the maintenance goes. Cause batteries have a finite number of charges, but what it's going to save you in is the inconvenience, the shuffling, the stress. Yeah. Or even worse. And that is the loss of a vessel due to a battery fire. Cause once batteries catch fire, that thing is going to burn. I mean, not only one vessel, we're talking about a whole marina. Yeah. It could catch fire of not only my rental fleet, but million dollar boats

that sit right next to it. I was going to say when your boats are tied up, they're tied up adjacent. Yes. Yes. Yes. With other vessels that we do not own on the other side of the dock. Oh, it's a no brainer. You have to do that. Right. So these are the safety of guests who are on these boats. Exactly. I wasn't even getting to that yet, but yeah, I mean like bodily injury or loss of life, that'll run you. Yeah. A pretty penny. Just a few, a couple

of commas. Okay. Yeah. A few commas. Oh my God. So yeah, my A holes of the week is my boat rental fleet. Come to find out. So would those be B holes then? I have, yeah, multiple B holes. It was just a very stressful couple of days. And that is why my A holes of the week or B holes of the week are my boats. You gotta love them though. They're super fun. Can you confirm Miss B? Yeah, I love boats. Boats are so fun. Especially when you BYOB on the boat. BYOB on the boat.

Sorry. Bring your own battery? Yeah. You should make that a rule. You might want to start bringing your own battery. You know, your guy got you a good price according to Google. They were like, um, uh, well, no, no, no, he's got a battery like dealer. Well, he's got like a wholesale account with a battery guy. What I'm getting at is that he got you a good deal because according to our alternate research department, 16 pack of boat batteries, 3230 for the 16 of them.

Oh, mine were 2200. And that's on sale. Normal price for this one is 4,100 bucks, but then that doesn't even take into account shipping. And when you're looking at the weight, 62 pounds times 16, that shipping cost would be a thousand pounds of battery. That's not going in the back of your accord. No, well, I'm telling you, this guy's phenomenal. That's a good guy. Hold on to him. He does cosmetic work, electrical work. Oh good. I need some work done. Can I get his number?

I called everyone I could find Google, YELL, everyone. Hey, do you guys, you know, your boat repair, uh, do you do any work on electric boats? No, we don't. And finally he was like, yeah, what did, like, what do you need? And I'm like, oh my God, I just need a repair guy. Like, can you please? So we've built a really good working relationship. Awesome. I've probably paid his mortgage every month when they were doing the battery work. I literally was like, do you guys

want lunch? I will buy you lunch. And they're like, no, I'm like, no, let me buy you lunch. So I'm like, please take a break. Do you need water? What do you need? Well, Liz, thanks for floating that story our way. Yeah, you are so welcome.

Slide Into Our DM's

Oh, I love it. Thanks for floating along with me. This was fun, but I think it's time to drop anchor. I would agree. This is a good place to end the episode. Ms. B, thanks so much for joining us. Great to be here. Thank you. Liz, as always, thank you for being here. Of course. Make sure to follow us on social media. You can follow us on Instagram at tails from the service industry. And on TikTok, let me just give you a little tidbit. Don't type in our whole username. Just use the search box and

type in tails from the service industry and you will find us at t.f.t.s.i. Boom. Boom. Give us a follow. And if you have any fun stories from your hospitality experience, feel free to email them in at tails from the service industry at gmail.com or easier. If you find us on TikTok, just hit the button that says email. Oh my gosh. Nice and easy. You can drop a follow. You can watch some fun videos and you can email us. Yeah. Feel free to slide into our DMS and give us some fun stories.

Not like that, but like give us a story. Stay out of my DMS. Well, thank you guys so much for listening and we will see you in two weeks. Avenue podcast.net.

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