I’m on vacation. Wow! Just a short one. A weekend affair. I’ll tell you more later, but right now I have to vent.

Pathetic, here I am on vacation, and I am still wound so tight that little things piss me off.

Mario pissed me off to be precisely. We arrived at the hotel around 11 this morning. Check in isn’t till four, but the reservation people said we should check to see if our rooms were available, if we arrived early. I went in to check, I had to wait behind two other guys. I finally got to the counter and Mario greeted me. I told him, I had reservations and gave him my name, he mumbled something and pointed to the concierge desk. Odd, I thought, but since there was a block of reservations that mine was part of, I figured maybe the concierge took care of those. The concierge was elsewhere. When he finally came back, I told him that I had reservations and he gave a strange look. He sent me back to Mario.

Apparently, Mario had just wanted me to wait over in the general vicinity of the concierge desk, while he checked someone else out.

That’s right he just sent me away so he could take care of a different customer. OK.

So I give him my info, again. He looks it up. “Your room isn’t ready,” he mumbled at me in his indistinct accent, “Check back in an hour.”

I waited 20 minutes to find out my room wasn’t ready. How efficient. I was pissed. His condescending attitude didn’t help.

We cooled our heels for an hour and a half. We went back. I was too pissed to even think about talking to Mario. I made my wife ask him. He looked. Not ready. Check back in a half hour. She asked if she could give him her cell number so we wouldn’t have to keep checking back, he could just call us. He got all bothered, but he wrote down her number. Not her name. Not her reservation. Nothing.

He had no intention of calling us. He couldn’t be bother to find out for us. He just wanted us to check back. I was hot. I had spent to much time driving for this shit. I planted myself in the lobby and stared at him. He did not check his computer once when he wasn’t with a customer. He didn’t pick up his walkie talkie and call the cleaning crew (I saw he coworkers do this on several occasions.)

Finally, he went in the back room and a young lady came out. Over thirty minutes had passed. We went up and asked her. She walkie talkied the cleaning crew. She said it would a few minutes. She took our name and Number. She called us less than 10 minutes later.

I don’t have a lot of money for vacation. When I spend it on a nice hotel at a resort location, I expect to get treated right. Not to be treated like a retail customer.

Thanks Mario.