- Report: #627716
Complaint Review: Comfort Inn - Abilene Texas
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Comfort Inn
6350 Directors Pkwy Abilene, 79606 Texas, United States of America
Phone:
325-437-3773
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Comfort Inn Fired for protecting myself, underhanded business practices Abilene, Texas
I worked for this lousy company for eight months last year, doing lousy work, getting paid a lousy salary ($8 per hour would have been fine if I didn't have a college degree, alas I have a BS with honors), and getting treated like crap from management and other employees the entire time.
When it all comes down to it, this hotel uses shady business practices, cuts costs, and pockets the rest. We were required to call other hotels undercover during the course of the night to find out what the going rate and occupancy was, and then adjust accordingly.
In addition to that, management never treated housekeepers well, and passed off much of the housekeeping work to us, the front desk staff, for no additional pay. Again, a cost-cutting scheme by the management, and more often than not laundry never got completely done and rooms were left dirty because of lack of sufficient hours and duties to go around.
Somewhere, something always seemed to go wrong, and I got phone calls and complaints all night, which I honestly understood why. Malfunctioning locks, plumbing/light bulb issues, among other things. Maintenance/management only ever bandaged the problem, again, in the name of cutting costs.
The owners weren't much better. The GM had to pay for stuff out of her own pocket because the owners would not properly reimburse her for costs of upkeep. It got to the point where she put her foot down and said she wasn't going for this. I don't blame her for this.
I dealt with a belligerent guest in September, and it escalated into a case of the police having to be called. I ended up getting terminated for protecting my own butt, as I felt extremely threatened.
There's no way I'd pay $79.99 for one of those tiny little rooms, and I always felt like I was screwing customers out of their hard-earned money charging them that much. $89.99 for a tiny double-bed room is more than outrageous. Of course, I always gave breaks from the rack rate and never offered the rack rate because of this, and I can admit that now, but I still feel that at $10 off rack I was screwing people.
The bottom line: this hotel is overpriced and has management and owners that care about nothing other than profit. They don't really care about you. I'm off to bigger and better things now, and I'll be back in Abilene this December, but I can tell you where I won't be staying.
2 Updates & Rebuttals
TopThrilling
United States of AmericaWinning. So much winning!
#2Consumer Comment
Sun, September 11, 2011
I agree with the "Ok, seriously?" post. If you cant handle the basic resposiblities of the job, then yes, you need to be fired. Maybe look at what you are doing and find a new job path, I am sure McDonalds is hiring! Good Luck
-S
Joe
Dallas,Texas,
U.S.A.
Ok, seriously?
#3General Comment
Wed, March 02, 2011
I won’t lie. I work for a company that owns a few hotels of various brands, good for you that you have a bachelors degree, don’t we all? There are a few things that I would like to point out in your report that are lost on you.
#.1 Calling the other hotels and getting rates and occupancy is a quite standard practice. A “Call Around” as it’s called does a couple of things for you. First, yes.. It lets you know what the other hotels are charging, and how they are doing at it so you can make adjustments to your rate to be competitive, and it also tells you where you can send guests in the event that you are overbooked. The hotels that you are calling are defined as your compset. It is very likely that your compset is also calling your hotel at some point in the day to check on your rates and availability. This is not a shady underhanded practice as you would try to call it. Also, you don’t even have to be sneaky with it. I have a great rapport with my compset, we know each other by name and come right out and ask for the rate and occupancy.
#2. I require my front desk staff to actually work while they are on the clock too. I have never been a housekeeper but I have cleaned more than my share of rooms, and I expect, if necessary that any member of my staff be willing to do the same. Aside from that, I often make my desk staff do a few loads of towels and fold them when there is nothing else to do. Lets be real here, sure $8 an hour is not a great paying job but we also know that unless you are working at a full service establishment or resort hotel there are maybe 2-3 hours of actual work involved in your day. The rest of the time you are making sure the building does not burn down, and probably reading a book or screwing around on a computer.
3. There is nothing wrong with leaving rooms to clean later, as long as you’re not renting them, and don’t need them turned over what is your problem with that? I’m confused by this statement though, “lack of sufficient hours and duties to go around” Either way though really, so what? If I had 80 check outs, and 5 check in’s I would not see it as critical to keep people there all day to finish cleaning a bunch of rooms that I don’t need to use.
I will agree though that housekeepers are generally underpaid and a little taken advantage of but they did choose the job knowing they would be busting their butts all day for minimum wage.
I reimburse my staff for items I have asked them to purchase on my behalf, provided that they have the receipt, and I approved of it in the first place. If your manager is spending money out of her pocket and not being paid back, perhaps she should stop doing it.
I have had crappy owners in the past, so I can absolutely sympathize with the getting calls all night about things not working and being messed up but sometimes things go wrong. While you are going on and on about how bad it was, and how they are trying to cut costs I would challenge you to actually understand how things work sometimes. You would also be complaining if your pay check bounced because they didn’t make enough revenue to cover payroll right? You worked at a hotel that you did not like, and thought was crap, you happily accepted a paycheck for it so you can’t have thought it that bad.
In your ramble going on and on about the shortcomings of the management and owners you seem to gloss over the circumstances which lead to your being terminated. How exactly did you decide to protect yourself? Often times doing anything other than calling the police and letting them handle things should result in termination.
