BotH: Chapter 10

Wow, 10 already.

Chapter 10
The Residents, Part deux

I recently wrote about some of our residents, but I did not mention that it was only residents that could stay in a residential suite. Friends and families of an owner could come and stay there also. This is a great benefit to the owner to get more use out of their condo/suite if they aren't there often, but it also caused small amounts of chaos trying live up to their (the friends) expectations.

One morning I was in Private Dining working as an order taker. This means that I sat in a chair taking orders all morning over the phone. Once I got used to the phone etiquette and AAA/Forbes standards, it was a pretty easy job. Now, here is where things get hairy; I got a call around 10:30 am from a man who was staying in a residential suite (that his friend owned, not him) and he wanted chocolate croissants with his breakfast. Usually that would be an easy order to fill, however since it was a particularly busy weekend and breakfast service ended at 10, we were out of chocolate croissants. I offered him regular croissants and he would not have it. I sat there on the phone with him, him yelling at me nearly the entire time, for about fifteen minutes. The outrage. He couldn't believe that we would be out of croissants and it was such a horrible thing, and we were ridiculous and he wanted to speak with the General Manager (he called him by name, apparently they had met...once) and he wanted his food for free and so on. He had a point, I won't deny that, but lets get real. It was after breakfast hours and it was a busy weekend. We actually were able to find some mini chocolate croissants that were left over from a banquet that morning, so we sent those up, but this guy was the worst. The thing is that this seemed to happen a lot. What was listed on the menu was not always available, but you can't change out 200 menus on a daily basis. I would say that about eighty-percent of the time we did not have all of the flavors of yogurt listed on the menu.

There was another family that stayed with us often in the a residential suite. His family was super nice; his wife was a doctor, he had twin girls and one of them was a tennis prodigy, and then they had another little boy (who looked like a girl...he had long hair). They were in town often during the first summer I was there and every time you went to their room they gave you twenty bucks.  I had brought them up some hot chocolate and once I was up there they wanted extra marshmallows, so I ran down and got more. Twenty bucks the first trip and twenty bucks the second trip. I served them so much that I knew where everyone sat at each meal and who ordered what. They also were sick of renting cars so they just willy-nilley went down and bought two Escalades and had them parked in the underground parking at The Resort. No big deal.

Remember Mr. French from chapter 4? He stayed in the residence as well. He would play really weird power games with us...for example one night a server delivered his meal and left the check for Mr. French to sign. We didn't always have them sign it in person/right away if they didn't motion to do so. Later when the server picked up his dishes he noticed that he still hadn't signed the check, but he charged it anyway (that was our policy). Mr. French was in an uproar about it (remember how he's a billionaire?!)  and called the General Manager, Mr. Great, and told him that since he didn't sign the check he would not pay for the meal. Of course, Mr. Great comped the meal that was over $100. And that was $100 just for one person. Another night I delivered drinks to his family as they sat out on the terrace by the fire pit. Our policy, according to AAA/Forbes was to open and present a drink to the guest in front of them. So, I did just that. I think his wife had wine so I gave her the plastic wine glass (so tacky but no glass was allowed outside). Then I walked over to him, opened his Fiji water and set it in front of him with the cup beside it. Picture perfect, I was proud since I was so nervous. Nope. He reprimanded me for not bringing him Evian (which we didn't have) and then said he wouldn't drink the water because some was missing from the bottle. I had literally opened it right in front of him and he would not take it. Then I brought his kids apple cider. The wife asked, "where are the cinnamon sticks?" I understand the thought process there, but we didn't give cinnamon sticks out with apple cider so I didn't bring any and they hadn't requested it prior to my delivery. So, I ran back to the kitchen, got a new water bottle, cinnamon sticks, and was then told to speak to their security guard/man servant. He paid in exact change, no tips. And they had the poor man being bossed around by walkie-talkie while he watched over/chased around their kids. I hope they paid him well...