It happens everywhere.....

Some things you think only happen in a certain state, city, town, or store. Some you think only happen in a certain country. But as I've found out this weekend, some of the same things happen on both sides of the world. I find it funny how my dear friend Jayne had a horrible experience at a pristene resort, and here I sit, in a 'high end' hotel, getting ready to throw down the gauntlet on the bitch wagon. Seems Jayne and I run in parallel worlds, despite the distance.

The story...

After a horrible work week last week, complete disorganization not only on the part of our bosses, but on the part of our contacts at each site, and adding to that the lack of power at each location, topping it off with our generator in the trailer deciding it needed service so it stopped working in the middle of a 95 degree day. This was on Friday at 10am when it decided to have its temper tantrum. Calling the office, our fleet manager was able to locate a place that works on this type of generator, therefore he scheduled an appointment for us for Monday. No problem, you would think. I mean, Monday is a 'comp. day' for us, which means 3 day weekend, which means we were really trying to plan something. HA. Those plans squashed, we then decide that after such a long week, we'd rather make the 1 1/2 hour drive on Monday, and not on Friday. Ok, no problem, if we had been scheduled to work that day, we would have to get up anyway. However the place servicing the evil generator wants us there as early as possible......they open at 730am. *sigh*

Ok, we think....lets use our Rewards Points and book a really nice room at a really nice hotel. Done. The place we book is new (only a few months old) and in an upscale region of Baton Rouge. We drive to this 'luxury hotel' on Saturday morning, with the promise of an upgraded room and breakfast buffet. We arrive and received the upgrade, and at first were treated like royalty. We were given our room key and proceeded to 'ooohhhh' and 'aaahhh' over the upgrade. Living room with seperated bedroom, awsome bathroom, towels that smell fresh, comfy bed and enough pillows for a sheik. Little did we know what was coming.

We were told "we hardly have any children at all here, so the quiet you are looking for will be no problem". I recalled those words as children ran screaming through the lobby. Ok, I took a deep breath and kept telling myself I was on the 5th floor, and all would be fine. And it was, until Sunday morning, when we opted not to sleep in but instead got up at 800 to run down for the long anticipated breakfast buffet. And what to our wondering eyes did appear????

NOTHING. ZIP. NADA. ZERO!!

There were coffee dispensers, a few small boxes of cereal, and a pitcher of juice. We stood in the lobby in shock, like deer looking at the headlights of an oncoming truck. WTF? Where was the food? Were we early? Late? So we asked the girl behind the bar, who quietly replied "No buffet this morning." WHY????? "not enough people in the hotel, chef's decission". UMMMMM.....WRONG ANSWER. So we promptly went to the front desk, where the girl gave us the same answer. Are you kidding me??? "Yes, but you can order off the menu" we were told. It was then that I noticed that vacant look Jayne had described in her blog about her hotel clerks!! The really sad part was, out of 70 rooms in the hotel, 39 were filled. Thats over half full!! So how could they justify not enough people? Whilst trying to find the answer, we went ahead and ordered off the menu, as we were famished. In that time, we noticed at least a half a dozen people come down only to attain the same look we had...dazed and confused.

Finally, the front clerk came over, after chatting with the chef, and told us he would be right out to talk to us. Great. So after a heated discussion between DH and the chef, and nothing solved, (except some free sausage) we were obviously not happy. However, the front clerk told us to charge it to the room and she would remove the charge. Ok, $20 off....woohoo. We then quietly plodded up to our room. DH was on the phone in no time, calling the complaint department not for this hotel, but for the franchise known as "CHOICE HOTELS" whom we gain our points through. They could have cared less. We got nothing out of that phone call, except..."call back if it gets worse" BAH....whatever.

Moving on....I went yesterday and had my nails done. Nothing new there, every 2 weeks I get the acrylic filled and new polish. This time around, I needed the old ones removed and a new set. I also needed a pedicure. So they set me in the chair, nails soaking and feet getting the workover. After 2 people worked on my feet (so many people were coming in to the salon, they were bouncing around trying to accomodate everyone at one time), and an hour later, I was moved to a manicure station. The nails had not budged, so another person added their take on things. By the time it was all said and done, 4 people had worked on my fingers, and they were sore. I paid and left. When I woke up this morning, after everything had time to 'set up', I noticed that the acrylic was pink, which I specifically said that I DID NOT want. And there were more air bubbles in the polish than I could count. Which puts us back at Sunday....

.....after the breakfast fiasco, we came to our room, got cleaned up, and proceeded to head out for what we thought was a short errand. We were only supposed to drop off our laundry and get my nails fixed. This adventure started at 10am. We didn't get home (hotel) until 5pm!!!! It took another 2 hours to fix my nails (they had to be taken off and redone), not to mention the time spent just trying to find a good salon that waqs open! So much for my weekend of relaxation.....today (Sunday) my plan had been to lounge around in the posh hotel room and be lazy...even get in some time poolside. It never happened, and now I feel this room has gone to waste, and my much needed weekend of relaxing is gone as well. I think I'm just as stressed/pissed now as when I started this adventure. So you see, it happens everywhere.

I can only hope this next week goes better than the last.