Raddison Blu Hotel managers temper tantrum

 

  My wife and I were travelling on business and had been staying at the Radisson Blu in Letterkenny Ireland for just under two weeks when I caught the flu and became very congested. I'm asthmatic and congestion is a problem.  My wife ran the shower for me to get up a steam, hoping a hot shower and steam would offer some relief.

  The hotel wasn't built with showers, instead a shower head is attached to a metal hose that is attached to the water main. After my wife turned the water on to run; a small rip in the metal shower hose was broke up and unknown to us, water shot out across the floor and into the hall.

 We shut the water off and mopped up the spilled water with towels and called the front desk, told them the problem, asked to have the shower fixed and to have new towels brought up to the room. The clerk said he would and that was the last we heard from him.  

 Three hours later, I phoned the reception again and asked for a repairman and clean towels. The repairman arrived, fixed the shower head and left. Several minutes later a furious hotel manager called. She made three points in rapid succession. She was charging us $200 for the damage done by the faulty hose, there were two persons in a room booked for one and she was charging for the second person with penalties and that her workman had informed her that I was ill with the flu and did I want to see a doctor?

  I was taken aback by the verbal assault and the invasion of privacy and general obnoxiousness of it all. I told her, no, I didn't want to see a doctor.  She said that it was not in the best interest of the other hotel guests to allow a sick person to "Carry on" in the hotel. I told her we were leaving the hotel that day so it wasn't an issue.

  I phoned my wife who was at her consulting site and told her about the manager's abrasive call. She called the manager and tried to explain that the shower hose was broken.

  The manager replied that "You and your husband are telling two different stories so we'll get you both in the same room and get the story straight"

  They agreed to meet at 5:00 that afternoon. I phoned the manager and told her I wanted the broken hose present as well as the workman who fixed the hose.  

  That blew her fuse. She went off on me. She snapped that the workman had taken the hose with him and had left the property for the day and, she informed me, I was not to tell her what to do in her hotel.  I asked her to calm down. She replied in a manner that made me think she was speaking for the benefit of someone else she said "You are raising your voice at me"

 "No one has raised their voice at you" I replied "I have Streep throat, I can barely talk,"
 "In that case" she snapped "You are being aggressive towards me and I feel threatened by your mannerism"

  I told her she was being aggressive I was simply defending myself.  She hissed something and hung up. Several seconds later she called back and told me that check it was past noon and I was to leave the hotel "immediately"  

  I explained that we had arranged for a late checkout and we were leaving the hotel in four hours away, that I had a temperature, the chills and a breathing problem and I needed to rest before a four hour ride to Dublin. Her reply was that I was to vacate the room or that she would arrange with the local authorities to take me out of the room.

So I left.


THE HOTEL MANAGERS RESPONSE TO THIS REVIEW

Dear guest,

Thank you for taking the time to post a review following your recent stay at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Letterkenny.

It is unfortunate that you did not enjoy your stay at the hotel however your above statements are completely inaccurate and different to that of correspondence recently received by the hotel from you. We will not use Trip Advisor as a way of delivering in detail what actually happened during your stay.

Kind regards,

Helena O’Brien
Director of Sales & Marketing
Radisson Blu Hotel, Letterkenny

THE HOTEL MANAGERS RESPONSE AFTER US CORPORATE GOT THE COMPLAINT

Dear Mr Tuohy,

Thank you for your recent correspondence to Carlson Rezidor following your stay at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Letterkenny.

As per our previous correspondence we have apologised at length for any shortcomings in service that you received during your stay with us.

Kind regards,

Helena

Art

Things I’m banishing from my life;

Things I’m banishing from my life; comparing, judgement, anger (really need to work on that one) regrets, worry, blame, guilt and fear…….let me put that another way, Things I’m working on trying to banish from my life. It's not that easy to do.

What forgive and forget also means

At some point, after enough self-induced torment, we need to forgive others. Not because the bastards deserve forgiving, they usually don’t.  But rather we should forgive them for our own good, forgive them because we deserve peace of mind…. And when that’s done, banish them from your thoughts forever.

Lead or follow

I decided long ago that if I was going to lead my own life, to be a leader instead of a follower, I would have to be prepared to be alone. People want people to follow the herd and are suspicious of those who won’t.  The author Max Lucado said it the best “A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd” 

Instincts and Intuition

What the years has taught me is to listen to my instincts and to trust my instincts. Intuition is the ability to know without inference or reason, the word comes from the Greek intueri, which means to look inside. Intuition is the basis for instinct because intuition doesn’t lie.

Alone time

I a lot myself time for being alone because it’s healthy to stop every now and then and define myself so I am not defined by others.  

Uncle Walt to my generation

Two things

Having grown up an orphan, here are two things I’ve learned about love. One is that love is the absence of judgment and the other is that love is something that isn’t found, we don’t stumble upon it accident and… Puff! It grows. We build it. Love is something we build day in and day out.

and I mean it....sort of

Today I had the unfortunate experience of having to spend time with a humorless man who said to me “I mean every word I say” and I lied just to be mischievous and said “Me too” and he believed me and therein lays the problem. People who mean what they say think everyone else does too.  

In the world

I try to be in the world while most writers try to be of the world, so many of them think that stepping back from the world makes them better observers, but does it?

Even if I wanted to step back from the world, to not be present in the world, I couldn’t do it because I am grateful for my life and the more grateful we are the more present in the world we become and the more we take from life.

.................and remember to laugh and be in awe of everything, like this kid

Write

                                                 

I take one day off per week to write and on that day, that's all I do for eight hours. I write short stories, novels, histories and plays. I don't answer the phone, I don't go out, I don't leave my desk. I do that because it's so, so, so easy not to write and writing is what I wan to do and we have to begin doing what we love as soon as possible. We don't live in eternity but our ideas can, what we write can live forever. And if I don't write all I have are ideas about what to write....outlines, concepts, notions...and being a writer isn't about ideas, being a writer is about making ideas happen, it is about bringing the to life.  

I love this photo

Be happy

What I am working on these days to improve myself is to stop talking so much and so often about my problems, the big ones and the tiny ones. I’m not saying that I am going to stop asking about the problems I have, that’s not healthy,  but I have noticed that talking about our problems can become a sort of mental addiction. What I’m trying to do is to talk about the hundreds of joys I have in this life and surprisingly, it’s not easy to do. Whining is easier. Anyway, thinking about the joys of my life…and they ranges from TV commercials that make me laugh to a woman who loves me unquestionably….isn’t a way to get rid of the problems I have it’s just another better way to deal with them because they will always be there.  I’ll always have problem but that doesn’t matter because happiness isn’t the absence of problems, happiness is achieved by our ability to deal with our problems constructively.   Simply put, the way to happiness is happiness. There is no other way.

Friends and aging

I am a man with issues and because of that being my friend is hard work. My friends have to tolerate the little pockets of strangeness within me and deal with the hundreds and hundreds of quirks and oddities that make me who I am.  I’m complicated and the friends I have are few but fiercely loyal to me. Because of that, when they hurt, and friends hurt you, no matter how good your relationship is, and I forgive them for that just as they forgive me my weirdness and irascibility.  I’ve also noted, as I age, that I have so fewer friends because I find more and more of myself with every passing day and the more I find myself, the more people I lose. And that’s okay.

Bullies

I voted this morning. The voting poll is in an elementary school. Taped to the wall were about 100 students papers on how they would handle a bully. Here's some of what I found;

This child has a future writing PR slogans

This child would get involved after the fact

and this child would pull the old bait and switch

It’s a simple thing

It’s a simple thing but I make a conscious effort to smile at the people I love and the other people who are important in my life. I do this because one day I noticed that in the normal course of events I smile politely to people I don’t know. And I thought that if I’m going to show that sort of consideration to total strangers, which is fine, it’s better to first show that kindness and consideration to those I love and hold close.

Age

I am convinced that most people do not grow up…We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias.” Maya Angelou

From the stageplay Cyberdate by John William Tuohy

Grace

I’ve learned this much.  The important moment in life isn’t one thing, it’s a lot of moments rolled together. You need perspective.  You need to become old to truly understand that..  Young people are so frightened of old age. (A smiles comes to her face, she holds up a finger as if to tell someone something funny and important)

 I was napping on the sofa the other day, and my granddaughter was worried that I was dead. (She laughs)   I used to think, when I was younger, that one day I would wake up and I would be in old age.  But there is no old age, or middle age or even youth, there’s just………….You.

Milt

               Still, I’m proud that in dog years, I should be dead

Grace (To the audience)

You see wrinkles on me, I don’t.  I see the place where smiles have been, anger, fear joy, emotions, PASSIONS!  the stuff of life.  I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that!

Milt

 But you do grow old.  There’s little signs along the way that tell you you’re getting old.  Like you and your teeth don’t sleep together anymore, you try to straighten out the wrinkles in your socks and discover you aren’t wearing any.

Grace

              Your idea of a night out is sitting on the patio.

Milt

   Suddenly, the pharmacist has become your best friend.  You finally find something you've been looking for, but can't remember why you wanted it.  Tightening your belt becomes uncomfortable under your armpits.

Grace

You can't finish a conversation, because you don't remember what you were talking about.

Milt

             Your top three favorite pastimes involve sleep.

Grace

                    What were we talking about?

                               Four-second pause

Milt

                                            I forget.

Grace

      The other thing about getting older is, you often repeat things.

Milt

         and your top three favorite pastimes involve sleep.

Grace

    You see, the great secret that some of the aged know, is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years.  Your body changes, but you don't change.  You’re still you.

Milt

                     We’re always the same age…..  inside.

Grace

    I'm not interested in age at all nor am I interested in those poor, lost souls who insist on telling me their age or asking me my age.  You're as old as you feel.  Besides, I’ll be never be old.  Not as long as there is some one always 15 years older than I am..

 Look, you can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old.  In as long as you find company in yourself and your pursuits, you cannot feel old, no matter what your years may be.  We grow old by deserting our ideals.  Years may wrinkle the skin, yes, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.

Milt

This I’ve learned….happiness in life is rarely something you experience, it's something you remember. As for regrets, I have regrets over my failures, but I think we’re all failures, at least the best of us are.  The world is made of people who are always a day and a dollar short.  We just don’t talk about it with each other, that’s all. You grow old when regrets take the place of dreams.  Age wrinkles the body.  Forgetting how to dream wrinkles the soul.  When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single dream I didn’t dream or try to make true or a talent I didn’t try to use.  That way when I can look at the good Lord I can say “So God, my friend! I used everything you gave me. That’s the best I got ”

Lights off slowly and softly to a fade of darkness

What to say and when to say it

When we know what to say we have knowledge, but knowledge is commonplace. Knowing whether or not to say it what we know is pure wisdom and that’s uncommon.