February 8, 2008

Busy Week

Posted in work at 11:01 pm by Michael

This was a busy week. I was in Boston for work from Wednesday morning through Friday night (JetBlue rocks again).

I got in to Boston at about 6am on Wednesday after taking the redeye. I had slept pretty well on the flight – way better than usual – but it was still the redeye. I generally like to go to the hotel post the flight, sleep for a couple more hours, and then go into the office. I ended up checking in at about 7am (you can do this if you pay for the night before – good travel tip!). I get to the hotel, and they can’t find my reservation. The woman at the front desk was super nice, very apologetic, and made me a new reservation, and at the previously quoted rate – all good. The downside was that it took another half an hour to check in. She apologized again, and said that there were no rooms with one big bed, just two small ones. I said “No problem, its just me, and I just want to get a couple hours sleep before I go into the office.” She said “No problem, I just found a great room, and its nice and quiet!”

At the same time that I was checking in, they were having lots of problems with virtually all of their systems at the front desk – no printers, computers down,etc.

She tried to make my key – no can do. The key machine is down. No problem, she walked me up to my room, and opened the door with a master key.

Ahh, sleepy time.

It’s now 7:30, and I have my alarm set for 10:30 – three hours of sleep! Woo Hoo!

At about 9, I woke up to the dulcet tones of jackhammering next door. Turns out that they are renovating the hotel room by room – but not floor by floor. I got a room literally surrounded by rooms on all sides that were being renovated – with jackhammers and crowbars.

I called down to the front desk to inquire. Yep, they are renovating. Nope, no way to delay it. Sorry, no floors with no renovation going on. They offered to move me, but I asked if they could say that it wouldn’t be to a place w/renovation. Nope!

Great.

I’ll go for a run. Went down to the gym, ran for 30 mins, felt great, and walked back upstairs to my room. As I’m walking down the hall, I notice that over all the hall smoke detectors, they have put what looks like shower caps and tape. Wouldn’t want those pesky smoke detectors going off if there was a fire and all. I’m no fire protection engineer, but I’m pretty damn sure that its not cool to cover up/disable fire protection systems in an occupied hotel.

Now, I’m really not a complainer. Really. I had kind of had it. I called down to the front desk again and report said clear violation of the fire code:

“Hi, this is Janelle, can I help you?”

“Hi Janelle, this your favorite guest from room 723. I really hate to complain so much, but, um, I was just walking down the hall and noticed that all of the smoke and heat detectors in the hall are covered up by what appears to be shower caps and tape. I’m pretty sure this isn’t ok.”

“Uh huh.”

“Did you happen to see the news last week, where the Monte Carlo hotel in Vegas caught on fire during renovation, and they had to evacuate it?”

“No, I didn’t see that.”

“Janelle, I really don’t want to be served crispy.”

“I can have the director of engineering call you?”

“No, that’s ok. I just think it would be a good idea if maybe we had smoke detectors on this floor, ok? If I’m wrong, and it’s cool, then ok – great. But can ya check?”

“Right away….”

That night, when I came home from a super long day at work, there was a nice fruit and cheese platter, along with a bottle of wine in my room. I got a note from the hotel manager, apologizing for my “troubles” that morning.

I’m not sure what they could have done that would have been better, but I felt at a loss a bit. It didn’t quite make up for it, although I did end up having much of the cheese and fruit for lunch over the next few days.

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