Don't Insult the Help

There are a lot of jerks in this world, I'll tell you what.

I've had more than a few guests try my patience by insulting me or my staff with comments that are completely undeserved. People seem to think that just because we work in the customer service industry it means we're morons. We aren't morons, sometimes you just aren't speaking clearly or you're wanting things that can't be done.

A while back I was working a morning shift and I got a call from a guest asking for some directions to the grocery store. Our hotel is nice because there is a grocery store just around the corner, it's not even a five minute walk. You practically just have to cross the street to get there and that's what I told this guy. I guess I didn't have very effective customer service skills that day because this guest just wasn't getting it.

"How do I get there?" He kept repeating to me.
"Which way do I go?" Around the corner.
"How long is it going to take me?" Less than five minutes.

He asked those three questions about four times and I answered him about four times. Then he asked me this:
"I don't want to walk very far okay? How many blocks away is this damn grocery store?"

Cambridge isn't set up in blocks. If you know the city at all you'll know that the streets here are more like spider's webs. They twist and turn every which way and it is really not organized like New York at all. So, I couldn't tell him how many blocks because I honestly didn't know.

This is what he said:
"Here's an epiphany for you then kid, a block is the distance between one street and another."

Yeah, dumb ass, I know what a block is. They don't exist in Cambridge!