I was trying to check into a hotel, but couldn’t, because the useless arse-stains at lastminute.com hadn’t bothered to tell the hotel that I was coming, or that I’d booked a room. Hilariously, the hotel have had problems with them before – sometimes orders don’t come through when they’re booked at the last minute. And their phone support is closed on a Sunday, so could I call back tomorrow? A perfectly sensible idea, bum sniffers.
I quietly stood at the check-in desk, checking e-mails on my phone to give them a booking reference (and at £3,000 per MB of data, I might as well have just booked the whole hotel out and spent the night going from room to room stealing the soap.)
What I didn’t do was complain. I accepted that the situation was silly and got on with it. There were definite plans to write a snotty letter (why a snotty letter, by the way? Surely wiping your arse on it would be far more disgusting and irritating to them than just a bit of bogey) to lastminute, but by the time I got home, it had all been sorted and arguing with an insincere stranger didn’t appeal.
So instead, I’m being a bit annoyed about it on the Internet and will use the phrase “lastminute.com are useless bell-holes” to bother them on Google. See: lastminute.com are useless bell-holes.
What I did notice was a bolshy American bloke trying to check-in at the same time. He was clearly very important, in his own mind at least, and was staying for a couple of weeks but his room wasn’t available every night – he’d have to swap for a couple of days.
If that were me, I’d just grumble about it a bit and quietly pack my stuff up every couple of nights, but he wasn’t having any of it, getting more and more angry and demanding to talk to people further up the food chain until he was talking to Mr. Hilton-Hotel himself.
And the sod got his way, desperate to stop him causing a scene, they just let him have his way. He was right, he shouldn’t have to fanny about swapping rooms, but, god, doing something about it. Who’d have thought?
I worry though, that if I complain then people will get their revenge. Even if my steak is cooked so tough that it could be a replacement for Madonna’s leathery face, I won’t say anything in case it comes back with an extra ingredient. Far better to eat it, have a miserable time and then quietly say it wasn’t very good at the end, when there’s not much they can do to make it better. But at least they can’t come on it.
It doesn’t seem worth being rude to people you’ll ever meet again, because they must remember that you’re a dick and only help you as little as they have to, but if you’re reasonably confident that you won’t have to talk to them ever again, what do you have to lose?
Except finding out that you’re wrong and shouldn’t have made a fuss. That there’s some rules, etiquette or understanding that went completely over my head. They’ve served thousands of steaks, I’ve only ordered this one. What if it’s my fault it’s got weird stuff on it? I should have just kept my mouth shut because now I look like a bloody idiot and everyone is going to laugh at me the moment my back is turned.
So there you go, service people of the world, feel free to overcook my steak, give my food to someone else and make me wait for a replacement, don’t bother giving me towels in my room, overcharge and lose my luggage. I won’t say anything. Just in case it’s my fault.
