My family and I were recently guests at a destination that shall remain nameless (Six Flags Great Adventure Lodge – oops, was that my inside voice?!). We stayed for one night during the last week of July.
I sensed that it might not meet up the the rave reviews it had received from my cousin who visited in January early on in the adventure. The main attraction, the water park, was fun, but when I went to find a spot for my towels, I found cups, food and packaging debris and towels strewn all over the chairs and on the floor – like a bad college party. While I found it to be concerning, I passed it off because we arrived at the water park at 7pm and stayed until closing at 9pm.
The hallways, our room and the main areas are decorated as you might imagine in Adirondack-influenced lodge decor and are clean, spacious and well designed. After our stint in the pool, a shower was in order. Our shower had clearly not been cleaned as there was hair in it. It was disgusting. When I called for extra pillows, I mentioned this fact and the person on the other end seemed unfazed.
The next morning, we were really excited for the water park and were among the first families waiting for them to open the doors. Before going much further, my 3 year-old needed to use the facilities so we were the first patrons in. It was filthy. There was what looked like dust bunnies that had gotten wet scattered on the floor under the toilets. In the sink there was more hair and none of the soap dispensers had any soap. I wasn’t looking or checking to see if they were up to snuff at this point. I couldn’t avoid noticing. Since it was so early in the day and nobody else had seemingly used the facilities, I thought perhaps they forgot to clean them so I approached a woman in a nearby office at her desk to let her know. It turns out she had Superintendent on her name tag. I kindly interrupted a conversation she was having with another employee to let her know ad she literally freaked out on me. She went on to tell me that she herself had just cleaned that bathroom and that there was no possible way it was dirty. I asked her if she would like me to show her because things can get overlooked. She was unprofessional and inappropriate in her response – and I was standing there with my 3 year-old. Thankfully, she didn’t swear, but she was really confrontational. Then, as we headed back to where we let our towel, I ran into a guy who I noticed had Manager in his title on his name tag. So of course, I had to tell him about the incident with the woman and the cleanliness in the bathroom. He too was rude and responded very differently from what I would have expected. Almost as if he hated his job and really didn’t give a hoot. He didn’t apologize or tell me that he’d look into it (which is all I really wanted).
Finally, we were heading to the water slides and the time was about 9:20am at this point. As I’m walking to the slides, I see something bright orange scattered under a few chairs. At a closer glance, it was Goldfish snacks. Eegads! I was disgusted now and realized that this place was not clean. Now I couldn’t help but notice the filth under the chairs – wrappers, a soggy tissue, a band-aid. Yuck. In the end, we did have a lot of fun. The kids loved it. Thankfully, they use a lot of chlorine. My red burning eyes were evidence of that. It was sanitized at least!
At check out (yes, you had to wait in a long line to check out, as opposed to the more convenient express check out that many hotels offer) I explained my experience to the woman at the desk and like the other employees I had the pleasure of interacting with, she too gave me the distinct impression that she could care less, hated her job and couldn’t wait for the day to end. Not even an apology or an acknowledgment of my concerns and that they would look into it.
I know that was a long drawn out way to say this, but it’s critical to make sure that when customers approach you on any issue, that you come off like you care and appreciate their feedback. You don’t always need to offer a discount for a complaint, but you do need to acknowledge it and make the customer feel that what they say matters – it should. If team members on your staff come off like they don’t like their job, you need to address that too. Not only is it a bad attitude for business, but frankly, life is too short to work somewhere that you don’t like.
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