Indian Death Star

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In a previous blog of mine ("Authorizing Language from July 7) I explained our complicated check-in process, and how suspicious people get. Here is an except:

When a guest checks-in, we AUTHORIZE the card OVER the total for INCIDENTALS. There are three immediate responses to this statement at check-in: "Why are you charging my card now!?"...and/or..."What are incidentals?"...and/or..."I'm not going to use incidentals so you don't have to do that!"

Notice how I said "and/or." Unfortunately, there are those who (try to) check-in that offer up the triple threat with all three of the above statements. That sounds bad. And it is. Unfortunately, there is something worse. It's the perfect storm, it's the icing on the cake, it's the thought I have: "If there wasn't a camera on the ceiling right behind, I'd reach across that counter and..." It's.....the foreign triple threat!

We get many travelers from around the world. Europeans think we do everything backwards, but have accepted it and rarely give us trouble (they sure know how to roll their eyes though). South Americans tend to pay with cash (and can I say, Brazil has the most crisp American Dollars I have ever seen) so they don't worry much about the credit card stuff, and those from the East seem to have unlimited funds on their cards, signing everything without looking.

That is, until I (tried) to check-in my first family from India. I am not racist and I am not the type of person to stereotype, but....this family was almost identical to Apu's on The Simpsons with seven or eight kids all under about twelve years old running around in circles before they even walked in the front door.

In the years I've worked at the hotel, this was, by far, the most unbelievable check-in. The wife was clearly in charge as she walked up to the front desk, while the husband stuck his nose inside a newspaper in one of our big comfortable lobby chairs. There was nobody left to watch the children, who seemingly had one goal: scatter. Within seconds, there were children in our driveway causing chaos with cars trying to drive through, there were children in the hallways banging on doors, there were children jumping on the furniture in the lobby, there were children trying to climb over the front desk to my side....and they made noise. Lots of noise.

After explaining the check-in procedure with the credit card, the lady immediately freaked. It was the quickest foreign triple threat ever to occur. She was literally screaming at me (which I could barely hear above the racket of her children and which I could barely understand with her broken English), she picked up the registration card and tore it up, she walked over to one of her bags (still screaming) and somehow produced scissors which she used to cut her credit card into four pieces with. (I hadn't even swiped the card yet! Although I did still have it on file...). Meanwhile, her husband kept his nose buried in the paper.

Normally, I would find this hilarious. Unfortunately, I couldn't appreciate the humor of the moment between the rioting children, the oblivious father, and the crazed mother. After what seemed like ages of hearing her angrily explain that she couldn't believe we would touch her credit card and she is leaving and telling everybody in the whole wide world that we're crooks, and in one of the stupidest, most ill-advised moves of my life, I explained/yelled:

"Ma'am, I'm sorry you're so upset. We do, however, have a 48 hour cancellation policy. And your card is still on file. So if you leave, I'll have to charge the card for the first night."

Picture: mushroom cloud. Better yet...picture the Death Star using its laser on Alderaan and blowing it to smithereens. This was worse.

First, her face turned maroon. This was the first time she had shut her trap in about ten minutes. This caused her husband to glance over his paper for the first time at her, then at me. Even the children could sense there was a tremble in the Force and hushed up.

I thought she was going to throw the scissors at me. I thought maybe she was going to have a heart attack because she had now stopped breathing.

She EXPLODED. She started screaming and spitting and stomping. It was so powerful that, even though it wasn't in English, I understood. The explosion was so loud it went through multiple walls to the GM's office, who finally came out to help me. It was so bad my GM couldn't get a word in, he just canceled the reservation in the computer, printed it out, and held it up for the lady to see - who grabbed it while still screaming, read it while still screaming, screamed some more at us, and walked out still screaming. Somehow during the shock wave of the explosion, her whole family had managed to get in the car, turn on the engine, and fasten their seat belts without me noticing. She got in the passenger seat, still screaming. We could still hear her screaming through the closed car doors and the closed front doors.

It was the perfect storm. I can still hear her screaming today.

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