Foreknowledge of things trivial – or, the lamentable desk clerk.
I KNEW THAT MORAL PIPSQUEAK of a desk clerk would forget my wake-up call. Knew it, knew it, knew it. When I told him our room number and said we’d need a wake-up call at 7:00 AM, and he said, “No problem, sir,” but didn’t look me in the eye and didn’t repeat my room number or the requested time, I knew what I had told him would not lodge in his small, distracted brain. Knew he would forget. Knew, knew, knew. And sure enough, there was no wake-up call. If my internal clock hadn’t alerted my unconscious, causing me to have nightmares about adultery, I would not have awoken and we would have missed everything.
Because that bloody teenage desk clerk didn’t give a shit and is going on to bigger and better things someday and this is a nice hotel that subsists on a prep school parent business and wasps don’t complain when fucking desk clerks fuck up their wake-up calls. (Wasps never complain; they just quietly buy your company to destroy it, or, with a mere gesture, make sure your kid never gets into the university she’s qualified to attend. But I digress.)
Might have missed our morning appointment. Might have missed our train. But desk tosser cares fuck-all and will never be called on it. Certainly not by me. I’m not going to be the one guest here in 100 years who complained. (“Did you hear? The man in Room 211 actually lodged a complaint.” “No, really? I thought there was something, well [John Cleese eyebrow gesture] about him.”)
And I knew when he didn’t meet my eye that he was not going to write down anything, not going to take care of it. Knew when he said, “No problem, sir,” like the thing he wasn’t even going to bother to do was a favor to me instead of his job. Knew from his fucking haircut.
But I didn’t want to be the jerk who says, “Would you mind repeating my room number and the time I’ve requested?”
If I’d done it, the fucking prick would have done his job and my phone would have tinkled at 7:00 AM on the fucking dot.
But to do it, I’d have to be a testosterone-fueled middle-aged self-entitled business prick, and I’m not that. Not externally, anyway. I pride myself on being nice. Or stoic. Or self-effacing. Or something. They gave me lollipops for it at the pediatrician’s. What a good little patient, didn’t even cry when the nurse jabbed him over and over again. You could see his little eyes watering but he didn’t say a word and didn’t even complain to his mother. Have a lollipop, you’ve earned it, son.
That’s the deal I’ve made with life. I’m nice. I don’t confront. I don’t demand. I don’t judge, at least not publicly, except right here where I’m publicly judging jurying and executing this poor pimply fuck of a desk clerk. Who, had he raised his eyes, would have seen a harried traveler and his adorable, exhausted daughter. And if he possessed an ounce of desk clerk skill or even a jot of humanity, le clerk manqué would have smiled and exchanged a pleasantry with the little girl—bringing a moment of real human connection to the simple business transaction of setting a wake-up call, which he would have been sure not to fuck up, because you don’t want to disappoint or inconvenience a nice little family like that.
Now I understand how Laurence Sterne wrote Tristram Shandy.
Anyone still here? So the moral, I guess, is two-fold: 1.) Trust your judgement, and if you know the desk clerk isn’t paying attention, exert the necessary moral pressure. 2.) Create a web app that tracks hotel wake-up call failures (or help someone add this feature to a check-in app) because it’s a real problem for business travelers. Who are probably smart enough, unlike me, to travel with clocks.
P.S. The iPad alarm clock app failed also. La de da.
Filed under: glamorous
45 Responses to “Foreknowledge of things trivial – or, the lamentable desk clerk.”
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I’m sorry you had idiots. But, you made me happy to hear that you know adultery is wrong. I’ve had such a battle with bastards this year & that subject. Have Ava ask the desk clerk for the wake up call. :P
Bastards. I’m peeing in the bathtub.
That piece could have been written about the iPad app, and about how Apple screwed up in their testing processes. Then, as an aside, it could have mentioned how even the desk clerk got it wrong.
The irony would be if the desk clerk actually used the same app to try to remember the wake-up call, and that same app screwed up. (Not that I expect that happened in this case. Still.)
I guess for things like alarms I would tend to trust machines over humans, and would feel more let down when the machine screwed up. Which desk clerk in Apple gets the rap for that?
Is it even remotely possible that neither the pimply-faced clerk, nor the iPad app failed? Maybe you were so tired, you slept right through them? I’ve done that before. Actually, I’ve woken up, turned the alarm off, gone back to bed and forgotten all about my self-sabotage. Did your adulterous dream wake you up before the 7 AM for you to be sure?
I always set my own alarm-you did too-there was clearly a higher purpose to not getting up at 7. (key dramatic music)
haha – “Didn’t want to be the jerk”
About the ipad alarm… did you remember to turn it on?
I know I’ve forgotten a time or two.
Sliding the little blue bar, over to ‘on’ usually does the trick. ;)
Gawd I hope the blue beanie mafia doesn’t come after me, for stating the obvious here.
Anyways hope you rested well good sir.
Love these ‘venting’ pieces, as much for the writing as the passion. More, please.
Intellectually: I am the only one responsible for getting what I want out of life.
The rest of my brain: Fucking prick.
I hope at some point the former response becomes the knee-jerk one.
The only jarring note in this symphony.
Nice piece of writing, but makes me want to give you a hard slap.
Asserting oneself kindly to simply check on a wake-up call is not being a dick/pain/anything. There’s being a pain in the ass, and then there’s being a coward. Somewhere in the middle is how to function in the world.
At least make-up for it with cleverness. Would a call from your room have been that hard?
“Hi, this is Jeffrey in room X. I’m exhausted and don’t know if I mentioned the wake-up call for 7AM when I checked in. If you could check for me, I’d appreciate it.”
You have some (circa 1998): Issues.
oh dear, the moral is to set the alarm yourself, don’t rely on others.
I too pride myself on being a nice person. But I wanted to let you know that speaking up for yourself, by either making sure you have the desk clerks attention or letting his manager know that he has employes not doing their job, can all be done in a nice way. Being nice doesn’t mean you have to let the world walk all over you.
Maybe the desk clerk fell ill or got stuck in traffic and wasn’t physically able to make the wake up call?
+1 on all counts :-)
I would have asked him his name. After he gave it, I would have said, “Great (fill in little bastards name here), I’ll be expecting that wake up call – its important.”
Reguards,
Testosterone-Fueled Middle-Aged Self-Entitled Business Prick
You have gone through some massive changes in your life.
Are you done with this changing business?
I like that last line, P.S. The iPad alarm clock app failed also. La de da.
Because when I got to Moral #2 that was exactly what I expected, something about an app that could automate this process. But the prospect of that makes me sad. I much prefer Moral #1, because the continual evolution toward Moral #2 that we are all witnessing firsthand ensures that real humans have less and less to be accountable for. When I was a teenager working menial jobs that was one of the things I learned. In college when I would talk to peers who say they’d never had a job I’d have to hold back feelings of disgust.
So in conclusion, I pity anyone who didn’t have to work in a loud, dirty laser tag place for $5/hr, or have the unfortunate experience of forgetting someone’s sweet and sour sauce at the Chinese restaurant they worked at. Somehow, despite being significantly less important than a wake-up call, people seem to have little trouble getting angry about their missing sauces.
Sorry to hear about that, Jeffrey. People can be very selfish and rude. This same thing has been a problem for me in my own travels as well. For example, back in the late ’90′s I worked as a contractor for the US Gov’t on something called the Standard Procurement Project which involved small teams traveling around the country (and US territories) to get everyone prepped to standardize on COTS (commercial off the shelf) software.
Typically I was in town for one weekend out of a month and spent my life in a hotel room. I always carried an alarm clock, but for some reason when I went to the Navy base in San Diego I didn’t have it with me (roommate “borrowed” it). I asked the desk clerk at the hotel where I was staying to set a wake-up call for 7:00AM. The distracted young lady nodded, looked me in the eye and smiled and said, “No problem, sir. Room number 123, right?” I told her yes, thanked her, and went to my room.
I woke up at 7:20AM the next morning, no wake-up call. I was 20 minutes late to meet our POC, which was reported to my superiors. Moral of my story is that even nice people sometimes forget (and always carry an alarm clock when traveling). :)
Mobile phone alarm? I’m not very trusting of wake up calls and I like the redundancy of it :-)
Great read, thanks but…
etc. etc.
That rant hit the spot
Your headline made me think of this:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/4180/saturday-night-live-ed-glosser-trivial-psychic
Is he related to the Zeldmans?
;)
You should have done it like me: download 10 alarm clock apps from the app store, turn on the built-in alarm and taje a real clock with you as well. :D
Still, it happened to me that I forgot to turn on my clock and my iPod’s battery was dead =_=
The iPhone alarm tends to work pretty well for me. I set them in 5 minute increments from each other.
That’s an incredibly selfish and uncaring response. How is he ever going to know that he’s not doing his job well enough if you don’t tell him?
Here’s a quote that I think sums this up perfectly. It goes both ways.
“When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your critics are the ones telling you they still love you and care.” — Randy Pausch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo
Wow. I was sure that J. Zeldman was so successful that he no longer need to drag his butt out of bed at 7:00. My illusion is shattered. You’re just a working stiff mortal like the rest of us.
On the subject of delegated awakenings – you gotta ride your own horse, man.
May the force be with you, blue toque man.
I look at it this way — if the job of hotel desk clerk is tenuously held down by a teenager whose brain isn’t fully developed yet rather than an engineer of some sort, than things just might be on the mend. Maybe the natural order is on its way to being restored. Sorry to dispense more unsolicited advice, but learning to converse with a teenager will probably come in handy later. Perhaps the easiest way is to be a thespian. Ring the bell. Get the eye contact. Say, “Hey, bra when was my wake-up call for? And what’s my room number?”
Oh Jeffrey, thank you for making me laugh out loud* this evening. I am sorry the experience was bad, but your rant is epic.
*I went to a wasp wedding in Santa Monica last weekend and spent most of the evening a bit horrified. I can imagine the bride’s mother taking down empires very very quietly with hellfire in her eyes.
Ms Jen, that was delicious.
the most interesting and perplexing part of this piece for me is the phrase “causing me to have nightmares about adultery”. but unlike jen [ the 1st commenter ], i don’t see this as necessarily being an admonishment of adultery. my immediate thought upon reading this was why does a single hipster like the wonderful mr zeldman have dream[s] about adultery? hmmm beddy beddy eeenteresting no?
And the little one was still asleep?! You’re a blessed man… I just rely on the kid, she auto-wakes at 6am in any timezone.
The other front desk annoyance is that once you’ve checked in after a long flight, removed your shoes and taken up residence on the bed for a quick nap, the desk clerk invariably calls just “to check and make sure your room is satisfactory”. I don’t know who started this customer service tradition — probably the same person who has instructed waiters to ask you how you’re enjoying your meal, mid-bite.
I’m a veteran of these hotels. I gave up on the wake-up services after about the 10th failure. I also have given up on ever getting the in-room alarm clock to actually go off at the right time. Usually, it’s in the middle of the night, or not at all. They are a study in obfuscation — and even the hotels that try to make setting them simple (ie Hampton Inn), fail miserably.
The only alarm I trust is the one on my cell phone. The clock is always automatically set to current local time, and I have no confusion on how to set it.
This is so Faulty Towers.
I find most places now provide very good alarms in each room. They rarely fail.
By the time I have figured how to set the clock to the correct time, set the alarm, set the alarm to beep instead of some non-existent radio station, reset the alarm after finding I just set the sleep button, and wake up any other nearby rooms with several false alarms, it usually is just about time to get up and enjoy the stale bagel and cold coffee.
Works every time.
great piece of writing. this cracked me up. love me a good rant!
also, it’s good thing everyone has submitted such wonderful (unsolicited) advice here. i’m sure that’s exactly what Jeffery was hoping for … :)
Always after booking a wake up call ask the deskies name and write it down .. then ask the name of their superior and write it down. Then what you do is look concerned, then surprised .. then Repeat the name of his superior in a sentence .. Phil !? i know Phil , he still works here ?
guarnateed at the designated time your phone will ring off the hook !
then tell the arse to get a hair cut !
I understand the curse of nice. It’s like a pair of padlocks on your brain, restricting you from doing anything untoward or outwardly pejorative.
Lucky for me I’m entering peri-menopause. Nice is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
If it’s really important that you get up, you should set alarms on two devices. Or a single reliable one. Never trust people.
Really dude? The acronym “wasp”? I waited for someone else to mention it
so since no one else did, I did. That rant is bigoted. No matter how ‘nice of a guy’ you are.
option 3.) Create a Cappsule-ccino, a timed-release caffeine capsule. Available in a variety of sleep durations to wake you in x hours.
As frustrating as that obviously was for you, that had me in stitches! What a fantastic rant. Thank you!
Don:
Shhh! They’ll hear you.
I’m glad I’m not the only non-”testosterone-fueled middle-aged self-entitled business prick”. These rants get written in my head all the time, but I usually let them go. It’s good to let one out once in a while though.
…all the time, energy and anger wasted. next time, simply make a follow-up call from your room.