Treat Your Customers Like Fools - Victimized Again

Blaming your customers for your service problems is one of the worst ways you can treat your customers like fools. A couple weeks ago, my wife and I dropped off our daughter at Old Dominion University to start her freshman fall semester. My Ford Explorer was packed beyond capacity with a few hundred pounds of our daughter’s worldly possessions. By late afternoon on a Thursday, after our daughter was settled in, we checked into a Marriott Springfield Suites hotel on the edge of the campus. After unloading a few hundred pounds of teenager belongings, we were exhausted and ready to check in and have a nice relaxing dinner together celebrating our status as a newly childless couple.


My wife, Laura, is a Marriott Rewards Club member. She had booked our reservation on the Marriott internet site using her rewards club card. When we tried to check in under Stitely, we found out that our reservation wasn’t under that name. Our reservation was under Laura’s last name from her previous marriage. That wasn’t a big deal to us. Her Rewards Club card is under that name. She hasn’t been able to change her last name with the club, because they insist on getting a copy of our marriage license to change her name, and it just isn’t worth that much trouble. Yes, I agree with you. There probably isn’t that much of a black market for stolen Marriott Rewards Club points. They probably don’t need quite that much security on their accounts. I doubt many terrorists have used their Marriott Rewards points to buy improvised explosive devices. In any event, we checked in under the name on the account and proceeded to our room. Laura had stayed at this hotel previously and she like it. Since she is just a little bit snooty about hotels, her liking it was a big deal.

When we reached our room on the second floor, we found that we had two double beds in the room instead of the king sized bed she thought had been booked with her reservation. We could have complained and demanded to move to another room, but we were tired, hungry, and it just wasn’t that big an inconvenience for us. We would have to sleep in one of the small beds together. My wife is a blond, cute, former high school cheerleader. I highly recommend snuggling up with one if you get the chance. Just don’t snuggle up with mine – thank you very much. Get your own. We dropped our one suitcase off in the room. There had been no room in our Explorer for any of our stuff except for one small bag. Then we went off to dinner together. Laura and I learned one thing together during our weekend stay in Norfolk, Virginia. The best place to eat in Norfolk is in nearby Virginia Beach. In other words, the restaurants in Norfolk stink. I got food poisoning from one of the places on the following Saturday at a restaurant down by the waterfront.


At least, we enjoyed the time we spent together at dinner. We returned to our hotel room about 8:30 PM and got ready for bed. Our day had started at 5 AM with a three and a half hour drive from Northern Virginia to Norfolk. Then we delivered our new freshman to her dorm room and unloaded a few hundred pounds of junk over the course of a couple of hours. We were ready for bed right away after returning from dinner. We crawled into bed together, and Laura turned on the television. I was asleep within ten minutes.

About fifteen minutes later, Laura heard someone pound loudly on our door. Laura heard it. I didn’t. I hear nothing out of my left ear as a result of having the measles twice in second grade. I typically sleep with my good right ear buried in my pillow. You can set off a nuclear warhead off next to me when I am asleep that way and you won’t awaken me. This was a great advantage in my college years living in a dormitory. Laura assumed the pounding on the door was a drunk who couldn’t find his room. He was trying to get his buddies to let him in. Yes, Laura is sexist. She assumed it was a drunken guy. That is profiling. Profiling is wrong. You ladies need to learn that. Fortunately he (she) didn’t bang on the door for long and Laura fell asleep as well.


At 9 PM a nuclear device exploded on my side of the bed. I know this because I was awakened. Actually it was the hotel phone. Apparently I can’t sleep through a hotel phone. We didn’t have those in my college dormitory - a fatal flaw in my theory that not being able to hear in one ear is really a blessing. The hotel night manager was calling.

He said, “May I ask your name?”

“I suppose you can,” I replied. Yes, friends, I too thought they had a reservation system that might actually know that already. “Stitely,” I continued. Then I spelled it for him. Admittedly, my last name isn’t easy to spell. He didn’t sound particularly satisfied with my answer, but apologized for the interruption and went away like a good little hotel night manager should after waking up a paying customer. I was upset a little and it took me about twenty seconds to fall back asleep. Ok, I wasn’t that upset. I was already well into writing this chapter and stupidly assumed that karma would protect me from being a customer treated like a fool during that time period. I assumed I had immunity. I was wrong.

About 10 PM, another nuclear device exploded next to my bed. Again, the hotel phone was ringing. I answered. It was the night manager again.


He asked, “Who did you say is in this room?” Yes, he should have asked “whom.” Hotel managers don’t specialize in grammar. I told him again who was in the room.

“Sir, we don’t have you listed as having a reservation with us at this hotel this evening. Do you actually have a reservation with us?” By his tone, this nitwit dweeb, probably an Old Dominion University drop out, was accusing us of sneaking into his very exclusive, high-brow, five star hotel.

“When we checked in this afternoon, your front desk clerk apparently thought we had a reservation.”

“Indeed she did. Sir, what is your name again?”

“Stitely. Don’t you guys have a computer that would tell you that already?”

“Sir, we don’t have a reservation under that name. Are you certain you have a reservation in this hotel?” At this point, I was pretty certain we were on the verge of being tossed out of his rinky-dink, fleabag hotel.


“Didn’t we do this an hour ago? You seemed happy when you woke me up an hour ago.”

“Sir, we have no reservation under S-T-I-T-E-L-Y, Stitely.” I really didn’t like the way he sneered as he pronounced my last name. The stream of profanities I had unleashed before I had answered the phone had awakened Laura. She realized the problem was most likely that the registration was not under Stitely but her last name from her previous marriage. I gave the vermin dweeb the magic name and he sort of apologized for bothering us.

Before we ended our delightful exchange, I asked, “How many more of these calls can we expect tonight???” I was tempted to set the alarm for 11 PM. I would call the dweeb and tell him, “I thought I would call you before you call me again. I so enjoy talking to you and your winning personality.”

After the final witty repartee with the night manager dweeb, Laura realized what had probably happened. Remember that we expected to have a king sized bed when we checked in. Instead we had twin beds. She theorized that we got a room intended for someone else. That person, probably a father with a daughter tried to check in late at 9 PM. He expected a room with twin beds assuming that he wasn’t an incestuous pedophile. We were in that room, and the hotel was full. He was understandably irate. I don’t blame him. The hotel screwed up. If the night manager, college drop out dweeb had enough intelligence to figure this out on his own, he might have been able to correct the situation. However, he decided to blame us instead of admitting his failure. I have been sorely tempted to write another of my patented “Dear Asshole” letters to him. But you guys are keeping me too busy writing this. I also doubt he is capable of reading. The point of this story isn’t just that you shouldn’t awaken me out of a dead sleep. You definitely shouldn’t do that. If you want your small business to survive, you can’t blame your customers for your service failures. Instead of one unhappy customer, the night manager created two – one of whom happened to be writing a book covering just this topic.