BotH: chapter 4

Chapter 4
The 6-month Curse

It was the policy at The Resort that you couldn't advance into a new position or department unless you had been at your current one for six months.There were two problems with this. First was when help was needed in certain areas immediately- a lot of positions were vacant because of this policy. This was one of those policies that caused The Resort to get in its own way, especially since they always wanted perfection in its staff. The other downside was that this caused a lot of ladder climbing. Usually getting promoted every six months is quite an achievement, but when your resort is suffering because of lack of good employees, they will move up unqualified people into positions that need to be filled. In order to seem like you were qualified (and unfortunately SO many people weren't) you had to seem like you were a perfect employee whenever the bosses were looking. This whole area of ladder-climbing middle-management would throw people under the bus if it meant they looked better for upper management. No one would ever take the blame, learn their lesson, fix the problem, and move on. The buck was passed all the time. You wouldn't expect some of the people who had years of experience to do this, but it happened daily. The other problem was that these middle managers had their heads so far up their superior's butts that they missed chances to really make a difference and a memorable experience for a guest.

Mr. French was a super rich guest (the one so rich that he wasn't on the internet) that stayed with us a couple of times. He was very demanding and very particular about how he wanted his stay to go. Because he flew in from France he had jet lag so he requested to use the spa after hours when no one was there (like 2 am). Initially his butler, Ernest, said no (in a respectful way) because there were liabilities with no one being there. Mr.French complained to the General Manager, who then allowed him to have unrestricted access to the spa. Mr.French, because he is mister rich and powerful, invited a friend in with him and the two of them trashed the spa. The next day when the Spa Manager got there the fighting began. The General Manager denied responsibility and didn't want to be the one to tell Mr. French that he couldn't have unrestricted access anymore, so he handed the issue down to the Front Desk Manager, Carol. She denied responsibility since it was the Spa's problem, not hers, and passed blame and responsibility of breaking the news to the butler. The butler had nothing to do with Mr. French trashing the spa, yet somehow no one would take the blame, fix the problem, and apologize to the Spa staff. And because everyone was afraid of Mr. French they made the butler tell him that his after-hours spa access was revoked.

Carlos was a nice guy, but he was a taker. Some people are givers and some, like him, were takers. He transferred to our hotel when it opened to be the new Private Dining Captain. He had been at his old resort for about a year and was a Captain there as well. His boss, Alex, was the Private Dining Manager and he was absolutely the most amazing person ever. Somehow these two made it work and when Alex transferred to Puerto Rico (about six months after the resort opened--surprise surprise) guess who filled his spot? Yes, Carlos. He went power hungry and it ended up being really hard to work with him. Once he got that Manager position he became a dog-eat-dog kind of guy. The only good thing is that he took responsibility for a lot of things, but he also took ALL the credit for anything good that the department did. And less than six months after he was in the Manager position I saw him applying for new jobs within the company, just at another location. He came in and built everyone up, and then he planned to abandon us. After he became Manager he left to go assist another property with their opening in Puerto Rico (where Alex had gone) and we were afraid that he might never come back (which was a real possibility). He extended his stay about a week extra, too, which sucked. Right at six months he transferred to the restaurant to be their Manager and completely left our department hanging (our department was struggling with getting ready for the busy season). And literally the second he transferred, if anyone needed anything (Private Dining and the restaurant shared a kitchen so we were always around each other) he would tell us he didn't work in PD anymore and to find someone else that could help. He would literally be standing next to us, with the solution, and say no. Then, six months later to no one's surprise, he transferred to Florida for another new position. I got on his LinkedIn profile and he totally lied about his positions and fluffed up his resume to make him seem more magnificent than he was...

I could go on. Perhaps I will another time.