I am at work right now. It’s a slow night, which is nice since the past two days have involved people yelling at me for things I couldn’t control.

I have been yelled at about when the hotels breakfast started because this woman was told 6. I had to be the one to say, breakfast starts at 7 on weekends (it also says that inside your key packet if you could read, but I only thought that part). “Well, I was told 6.” “We do have our cold food out, pastries, cereal, fruit, yogurt, bagels, toast.” “This just mean we don’t get any breakfast.” (Uh, I just listed a whole bunch of stuff. I highly doubt you are making a whole breakfast of eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy everyday, you probably only eat cereal at home. Again, only thought.) “I’m sorry the hot food is not ready for you.” “This is ridiculous.” …

Another thing people may not know about, hotels oversell themselves betting on the fact some people will not show up. It is an evil practice, it’s kind of like when a airplane oversells a flight. Basically, we bet some people don’t show up so we double book a room. Sometimes our call center goes overboard like it did this weekend and oversold us 10 rooms on a weekend when there wasn’t a room left in the city. That means, 10 people did not have rooms. This is good time to also mention, if you are traveling, do your best to plan on being at the hotel to check in before 8 PM after 3 PM. That way you know rooms are clean and there are still some to sell. If you try showing up before 3 PM, there may not be a clean room for you. I am pretty sure some people think hotels have unlimited amounts of rooms OR they think there are people here cleaning rooms ALL THE TIME. There aren’t. Hotels are like any other business, they employ the least amount of employee’s as they can to make the most profit. That, and I do not work at a luxury hotel. People confuse cheap hotels and luxury hotels. Our hotel is about 100 dollars a night, which is steep but we are in the downtown area of a city. Another thing to consider, the closer you are to the downtown of the city, they higher the rate. Now, a luxury hotel in our location would be around 200-300 dollars a night depending on what time of year you are traveling or if you are receiving any discount packages. Anyway, back to overselling.

We were oversold. They fixed a lot of the problem before I got in to work, which I have to give my props to my coworkers and manager. I was oversold by two, which meant two people who walked in the door I had to say, sorry, I don’t have a room for you tonight, you have to drive about a half an hour west of us. I was extremely lucky though, two rooms open up at a luxury hotel just down the street from us in our same brand. Then, though, he had to sell one, which means, okay, one person I send away, one person I send down the street. Alright, I can handle that. THEN both rooms show up, they are together, have to be in the same hotel. OKAY! So, I tell them the deal with a touch of a lie. I say 2 of our rooms had to be taken out of order due to a bathtub overflowing. Then, I send them down to our Westport location, which is a good hotel. Recently renovated, in a great area, just not downtown. They were a multi-night stay though, so, they would move back the next day to go to an expo downtown and we would comp a night here. Usually by this point the guest is screaming at me going “I BOOKED THESE ROOMS IN ADVANCE AND YOU HAVE TO HAVE A ROOM FOR ME.” Not these guys. These two guys were the coolest, most laid back travelers in the world. Really understanding, super nice, and I absolutely love guests like that. Very cool.

So, they didn’t yell at me. No. Room 204 yelled at me. A LOT. We have this room, room 204, which is by far the shittiest room in the hotel on the weekends because it is directly over the bar which has a very loud karaoke night on the weekends. These guests had to run a marathon the next day, why anyone would assign marathon runners is beyond me, my guess is the day shift does not think ahead to night shift. If I had to use 204, because I would avoid it as much as I could, I would only put sports fans, or concert goers, or Expedia/Travelocity guests in that room because these kind of guests either stay out late or don’t get internal surveys.

204 calls down. Is angry. I don’t really have anywhere to move her to, we are sold out. I could move her to a room reserved for another guest, a double bed suite, I don’t really want to because it is only 12:30 and the reserved room may show up. I do think that would be my only option though. 204 wouldn’t stop asking to talk to a manager. I don’t have a manager at night. She tells me to call him. I try not to, but she is SUPER adamant. I know my manager, we’ll call him Chris, won’t say anything different than I am saying. She has me do it anyway. Chris is pissed I called, I try explaining to him that she won’t take anything besides speaking to him. He tells me options to give them, the same ones, I call back with the same options. AGAIN she says, “LET ME SPEAK TO THE MANAGER!!! THIS IS FUCKING RIDICULOUS” So, I tell Chris what she says, he finally agrees to talk to her except she lets him talk to her calm manager. Chris doesn’t even have to speak to her.

He offers up the suite, which if my suite reservation shows up I would be put in a bad position, but whatever. Get this, she refuses to move! She does not want to move, the only thing she wants is the music to be turned off, which we can not do because the bar is a separate business. Now, I empathize, 204 is a terrible room, she is running a marathon in the morning, I feel bad for her, but she turned unreasonable! She even called the bar and the bar said “We can’t turn the music off.” We comped her night, but I just didn’t understand the not moving to get sleep. We even said, you can leave your stuff in 204 and just sleep in the suite, you don’t even have to officially pack up and move. Nope, she was having none of it. So, on one hand I feel bad for her, on the other, as an experienced traveler I know that you have to be prepared to roll with the punches. In the end, I hated her because she yelled a me so much and I was trying to fix the situation, but, I still felt kind of bad for her….

That was my awesome weekend at work. Makes you want to work in a hotel right? It evens out with being able to do things like type this entire blog while getting paid.

Nutrition, not good. I failed. I was so stressed I went immediately after work to 7-11 to buy hot pockets and candy. I can classify myself as a stress eater for sure. I will be doing a 10 day juice fast starting April 13th though! I expect to lose quite a bit.

I have a ton of errands tomorrow. I have to go pick up birth control, return a dress to Macy’s, and pack for L.A. Packing will be the roughest part of the day. I plan to bring A LOT and have to fit it into 1 carry on roller bag and 1 back pack.

I am excited for California. I’ve only been once and it was not the best trip in the world. I plan on making this trip so super fun.

Here are some pictures I’ve taken recently. A little visual update.

This is me with a thinner face. Can see the weight coming off.

A path I was walking on.

Saw this broken tree on my walk.

Walking by the Art Museum in Forest Park