Our insider of the tourism industry Alexander Karasik, which right now modifies his shift behind the persistent reception of one of the Italian family hotels, continues a series of anthropological essays. Over the years of work in the hotel business, Alexander was faced with psyche of all stripes - from pathological sadists to hallucinating neurasthenes, and once the client lured her into the room and turned out to be a real maniac. In this life, it is difficult to surprise people of two types - forensic experts and hotel workers, because They've Seen Some Shit.
“I don’t like food in a restaurant, I don’t like the view from the window, and I don’t really like your sea ...” You can tell a thousand and one story about the various whims of tourists, and also, if you try, you can find at least a hundred solutions to each of their problems, especially since all these gastronomic tantrums and claims to the numbers are usually the same, and very often you can predict what kind of headache a dear guide will deliver and how much a dear guide will deliver and how much a lot It will be possible to console him. But there are situations that you do not know how to approach. You can’t even be sure that you have the right to solve such problems. And also, having lived a certain time under one roof with tourists, you will find out not only their names, surnames and date of birth, but also some very personal secrets.
The pain of the entire hotel is violence. Even if the client tells me that in a number with him, a tourist pounds his wife and asks her to help, but all this does not happen at night, and the noise does not wake the guests, I can’t intervene in any way. When a Polish tourist threw his girlfriend out of the room, she flew through the entire corridor and hit the wall, a maid and a tourist from the next room ran out to the sound and asked if they could help her with something. The tearful Poles abruptly refused to help, called the compassions of “kurvas” and went quietly to knock on her room. Several times, customers asked me to change their number, because they could not bear the cry and loud quarrels behind the wall. Once I myself visited their place: the American family came to us, and from the very first day my husband ordered breakfasts and dinners for his wife in the room, because he was unhealthy, asked the maids not to disturb her, and he left for the whole day at sea with children. Their number was behind the next wall with mine, and I could hear how the husband regularly beat his beloved in the bathroom. My boss, in response to the question of what I can do with this knowledge, said that since other tourists do not complain, we can’t intervene in any way, even if they are at least transposing each other - the main thing is that the hotel property does not spoil. The wife is not a child, it is publicly beaten - not comme il faut, and what happens between them in the same paid room, I should not touch me until it violates the rules of the hotel, and once in our set of rules it is not indicated “not by blowing its neighbor”, which means this is the matter outside my competence.
Some problems cannot be solved if you are not asked for help, and even then it’s not a fact that it will turn out: one of my clients intervened in a quarrel of a married couple on the beach, when she saw that her husband began to dissolve her hands, then she came with the victim and asked to move her to another room. The compassionate tourist helped his wife transport things, and the husband paid an hour later and left the hotel. But after a couple of days he returned. The wife explained his hasty departure with unexpected troubles at work and asked how much she should be paid for the second person in the room. Then the couple kissed for a long time in front of the persistent reception.
Attempts to use violence are periodically subjected to staff. I know a lot of stories about how the guests upset at my colleagues with fists upset by some service, threw objects, and one displeased gentleman somehow even threw an animator that had not been unwanted to him in the pool. I didn’t have the opportunity to survive this, but in my practice there was a case when the client asked to go to his room to explain how the air conditioner turned on, and he attacked and began to tear the working form on me. I got off with a slight fright and did not dare to tell anyone about it - and the client still had to leave the next morning. When I mentioned this post -fact in a conversation with a colleague, he scolded me for silence and said that a tourist wounded by a refusal could then slander me before the authorities, creating large problems for me.
Sexual harassment for hotel employees of any gender is generally not uncomfortable: you will not immediately decide to send your client sharply, and many willingly use this weakness. Especially many stories about this could have been told by the night porter (although some of them, apparently, did not suffer from this at all, but even the other way around). From annoying harsh, girls animators suffer, who, on duty of the service, need to spend part of the working day in a swimsuit, maids, bartenders and everyone who needs to be in constant and polite contact with the client.
Physical harassment can be closed to the authorities and expect that it will take measures, but it is more difficult to complain about moral. Twice in my life the tourist began to follow me: I was waiting for me after work, I found out where I live (if my house is a hotel, then find out where I live - a couple of trifles), stood under the windows, followed me on the heels to the laundry and to the dining room. One of them did not leave me alone even after his departure - he found on social networks, began to write love confessions and promises to return, find me and take me to his Slovakia. The season was already ending, so the client was very quickly on the black list, and I was at home. At the hotel you don’t choose who to divide the roof over your head, the personal space of each is very limited, and vacationers perceive you, not as an ordinary person, but as a character of a certain summer performance, which probably exist only here and now, which means that you can treat it without much pet.
Only a competent specialist can solve some problems of customers. But now the client is facing you, his problem is your problem, and you must solve it. Once, one tourist ran to the reception in hysteria, saying that she saw a rat in her room, and demanded to urgently change her number. I was not seriously scared: rats at the hotel - this is not “you have uncomfortable pillows” and “I don’t like your parquet”, but checking the sanitary and epidemios, a return of money to customers, terrible reviews and other headache. The tourist moved to another number, but after a couple of hours I saw the rat and there. And then in the pool, and in the bar, and in a plate with paste. It turned out that she has a phobia and that rats seem to her everywhere. The next day, we assured her that we had a complete deratization of the hotel at night, the inspector had already arrived in the morning, checked the quality of our work, and not a single rodent was found. This whole scene with explanations looked absolutely grotesque, but the desired effect was achieved - the client calmed down, thanked us and spent the rest of her vacation in complete serene.
Vacationers can suffer from mania of persecution, afraid of ghosts, decor items, hear strange sounds and see hallucinations. It is necessary to be able to provide hospitality not only to the client, but also to his fears, problems, losses and imaginary friends. One tourist, a middle -aged man, came to us with a plush monkey, asked for an additional set of towels, a robe and a plate. The monkey spent the entire vacation in the room, and, according to the maids, the guest changed her every day and changed expensive jewelry on it, ordered food to the room to dine together, and took sunbaths with it on the balcony. At the end of the vacation, the guest sincerely thanked the staff and expressed the hope that he did not bother us very much. Everyone has their own ways to cope with loneliness, and teddy toys give us less trouble than, for example, pets: only during this summer, several single tourists with dogs left us prematurely, because according to the hotel’s rules the entrance to the restaurant to the restaurant, and according to the legislation of the region, can swim in the sea on public beaches only until nine in the morning or after seven in the evening. Not far from us there is a “dog-beach”, a special beach is only for our smaller friends, where dogs can swim when they want, but some owners considered it discrimination and went to rest in another part of Italy, where their animals can take baths where they want and when they want.
People will never stop surprising you. The number of various whims, requests, threats and wishes is inexhaustible, ways to cope with your own fears and loneliness is a great many. This is both beautiful and terrible. On the one hand, my work will never turn into routine, and I never can be bored, every day it presents new surprises. On the other hand, sometimes you think: "I have already seen everything in the world, and nothing can surprise me with." But then it certainly turns out that it can still.
The text of Alexander Poyarkov Rome 