I was the weekend night auditor at a major brand hotel. I worked there a couple years ago but left when I had my baby and after about 2 years I went back. The front desk manager had just become the manager and I immediately heard about how her and a housekeeper had ousted our longtime housekeeping manager so the housekeeper could take his job. Well I think she bit off more than she could chew, because she was failing miserably. She had like 6-8 weekends off in 6 months when her biggest caveat of saying yes to the job is that you have to be available on the busiest time, which is weekends, especially Sundays. I believe in people having time off. But even if someone quit that week and her staff would be shorthanded she would still take the time off. A couple of weekends the only housekeeper that was there was the lady who had been there for 17 years, all by herself, to clean all the rooms and do laundry. The hk manager would leave for the night before her employees were even done with the rooms, and show up later than them. She didn't check all the rooms, and often the 2nd shift desk person would be working alone but trying to make up for it, by having to run towels to rooms that never got cleaning service, I've had to physically go clean bathtubs that were never cleaned a couple times when I worked desk during 2nd shift. This takes away from the desk and distracts the desk person from being able to give a full experience to guests. Then there the favoritism. Some employees can spend the night in the hotel, for free, whenever they want for no reason. This is pretty unprofessional in general and guests do not like seeing employees staying in the rooms. The hk manager would also leave without making sure there was any clean laundry for the hk staff to clean rooms in the morning. I'd show up for my night shift with zero towels to give guests if they asked, and a literal mountain of laundry in the laundry room, so big it was a safety hazard. I often spent 5 or 6 hours of my 9 hour shift sorting through that mountain so I could put towels in, folding and washing laundry so the hk staff could start cleaning when they came in. If I didn't do this, it would fall on our front desk staff, and I know at 3pm check-in time, if rooms aren't ready, people are pissed! Obviously our numbers and scores started declining rapidly. Our scores were and remain so low that the parent company of the brand has threatened to not allow us to use their brand anymore. We've had random inspections from the parent company in close succession. The manager openly gossips about employees to other employees. She will get attitude with guests to the point where more than one new person asked quietly “is she allowed to talk to people like that?” Her 19yo daughter works there and power trips all the time, acting like a boss, and getting the same attitude with people that her mom uses (they also deploy this attitude to employees if they dare have an issue with anything there). The gm will laugh in a guests or her employees face. One time she let her daughter, her wife, their 2 kids, and their service dog stay because “their power went out during the thunderstorm earlier”. That's a normal thing and power around here is usually restored within hours. Then they proceeded to eat their dinner in the lobby like it's their living room, leaving their dog to bark incessantly in their room. A guest came out and was complaining about the dog. Instead of letting the front desk person who was working deal with them, the daughter of the manager says from the lobby, with all the attitude “um, that's actually a SERVICE DOG so there's NOTHING we can do about that” then her mom, the GM, stood right beside her, crossed her arms, and got the same exact attitude with the guest. Then the husband came out. These people weren't TOTAL jerks, I've dealt with far worse, but I think they were reacting the way they were because of the attitudes they were given and how they were treated. She ended up kicking the guest out. When he muttered under his breath ” we'll see about that” she immediately called the cops on the guest. No waiting 10 minutes to see if he would leave, no calling the room to try to talk to them. By the time the cops showed up, him and his wife were already packed and leaving. I felt sick because I know damn well these brands want us to kiss the asses of their loyalty members. When this guy told my manager he was a gold member and had stayed at this brand for 20 years she laughed in his face. Now the housekeeping manager and her whole family (husband, 3 teenage kids and often one of their friends for some reason) are living in the hotel for free. Now, I absolutely have sympathy for the homeless and have been homeless myself, but she knew for 6 months that her landlord was kicking everyone out for renovations. She took a weekend off work to go to a gun show the weekend before she moved in. She wasn't that worried about finding a new place, trust me. At first they weren't even in our system. It wasn't until the weekday night auditor called the cops on her teenagers for soliciting that they put them in the system as a comped room, because when her kids told the auditor they were in room 214 or whatever, nobody was in that room in our system. From a business standpoint, them living there for free is completely inappropriate. They aren't subtle about it either. Imagine spending 190 a night to stay in a major brand hotel and you see the same housekeeper that seemed to be in charge that was working earlier, walk in to the room next to you wearing a cami tank top with her fat hanging out followed by her equally charming and large husband and a bunch of teenagers. Imagine making less than your housekeeping manager but having to go home and pay your rent, electric, internet, etc. Will a free place to live be offered to the next employee who falls on hard times?
Sorry this is long but context. So eventually I started to become more vocal about the bs there. Mostly because I'm genuinely scared that everyone there will lose their jobs because these brands do not play, if you cannot keep your franchise to brand standards, you will no longer have a franchise. Our percentage was consistently a whole 25% or more below what they require. I didn't want to go to the GMs boss, because she's shady and I knew she'd retaliate and I honestly figured she'd been lying to him anyways. I reached out to our old GM for advice, privately. She told me to go over my GMs head. Then she turned around and told my GM. I have all texts to prove it. A couple of weeks later, I got scammed at work. Now, if someone had told me that my manager would not be reachable that night (she was apparently in the hospital) the scam would have never happened. If there had been any signs up in the workplace, or training provided, because apparently they had tried that same scam before, it wouldn't have happened. And finally, when the scammer, claiming to be the owner, with the same name as one of the owners, told me that “someone dropped the ball” and “I've been hearing about dirty rooms, what's going on there?” If things had been different at the hotel, the scam wouldn't have happened. I am guilty of being stupid and gullible, but I did not commit a crim, I was scammed! The next morning the teenage daughter of the GM came in, sent there to count the safe and do the managers job. We have another manager who would have went in, but no, the line level employee who is the daughter of the GM was sent. She's the one who made me realize I had just been scammed. I broke down crying, feeling so stupid and ashamed. My husband was out of town on work and I needed to get my kids (I worked overnight and we had trouble finding a sitter for while he was gone as it was) but I told her that as soon as I got home I'd file fraud complaints etc, and within a few hours I'd come back with the money that was missing, even if I had to take it out of my own account, which btw the scammer almost got me to give him my own money as well) she could have looked at the cameras or called one of the other managers in to look. She could have called me to get more information. I thought me and my employer would handle this together, since I was a victim of a scam and they were too. Within 15 mins of leaving I already had the transfer cancelled and the money was heading back. I texted her to let her know. She did not respond. 2 hours later the police show up at my door, asking me what happened. When I told them, they told me “your job doesn't believe you and thinks you stole” I was so hurt and confused. I have never ever given them any reason to think I would do something like that. They didn't even look at the cameras. The cop actually seemed confused too. I showed him everything even the text where I confronted the scammer for scamming me, telling him I feed my kids with this job! About an hour after the cops left saying that I clearly did nothing wrong, I was able to bring the money back in. She also tried to tell the cop I stole a $459 cash deposit for a guests room, but I was the one who posted the deposit onto the operating system, but my coworker had physically taken and dropped the cash in the safe when they checked in days prior. The room had a balance on checkout day, but my coworker who took the money told me she already took it. Because she was still pretty new, she had just forgotten to actually post the cash into the system. This is normal type of stuff. Someone can post cash in the system that was already taken physically. It's one of those normal things that on Monday morning I'd run over with the GM like “ok you'll see Sara's drop was 459 over, but no posting to match it, and my shift report says I took 459 but I just posted it, the 459 is actually in the safe with Sara's drop from Friday” I had put a note in the safe that said basically all of that because I knew I couldn't stay late after work so in case I didn't have time to explain it in person, the note was there. They told the cops I stole that money too. Since it was the bosses daughter, and since they all openly gossip about employees all the time, I knew this was retaliation for reaching out to the old GM and being more vocal about the bs. They created such a hostile environment for me that my freedom was threatened. In this rural area that is “tough on crime”, if I had encountered the wrong cop that day, or if I wasn't a pretty blonde white woman, that scenario could have turned out way different. I'm now contacting other employees who were forced to quit due to the hostile work environment that they were also forced to work under. I'm going to the labor board, going to reach out to labor attorneys, and I'm going to their parents company corporate to make sure they're aware of what's going on there.