A Mickey Mouse Operation

I spent last Wednesday through Sunday in the Washington D.C. area for the annual conference of the American Association of Grant Professionals. *pause for quips of "boring!"* As my boss put it, the gathering could easily be mistaken for a retired librarians convention.

The keynote speaker, however, was not boring at all. A representative from The Disney Institute spoke about organizational leadership in a way that made me wish that every "supervisor" on the planet had been in the room. It is clear to me now why Disney World is the number one vacation destination in the world. And it isn't because kids love Mickey Mouse that much. Rather than harping to employees about financial goals, Disney says its goals are excellence in staff ("cast members") and excellence in customer service. And wouldn't you know it? The profits roll in. Of course, everyone knows that money must be made for the company to survive/profit/grow. But the point is that management does not use financial goals to intimidate the staff into high performance.

Think of all the organizational departments it takes to run a Disney theme park - people who sell you the ticket, take your reservations, check you into your hotel, clean your hotel, operate the rides, sell you the food, pick up the wrappers of the food you bought and tossed on the ground, the marketing guys, the technology guys, the guys in the Donald Duck and Goofy suits, and on and on. Guess which Disney department has the lowest staff turn-over rate? Housekeeping. HOUSEKEEPING has a 4% turn-over rate each year. Compare that to the typical housekeeping turn-over rate of 100% in Florida. Why, you ask? Because when the housekeepers said to their supervisors, "You know, this supply cart we push around all day is really heavy. How about some motorized supply carts?" The supervisors said, "Thanks for sharing your frustration with us. How about you participate in the process while we design, create, and patent such a supply cart?"

Any other hotel management would have said, "Quit your yapping and push that cart faster."

Which is apparently how the staff is treated at the Sheraton Crystal City Hotel in Arlington, Virginia, where I stayed. On three occasions, I happened to ride in the elevator with different housekeeping staff. After the usual pleasantries, I asked, "Do you like working here?" The three responses were, "No, no, not at all," "Very bad," and a gagging sound. Which perhaps explains why I found M&Ms scattered on the floor of my room upon check-in and why they were still there at check-out.

I booked the reservation by phone with my company credit card, explaining that the name doesn't match because it is my VP's card, I'd be sharing the room with a conference attendee from another state who would arrive first and I gave the name, and we would ultimately be splitting the charges between her card and the card info I just provided, which I wouldn't be traveling with. The lady said yes, yes, all that was fine, without further instructions.

Well, when my roomie tried to check in before me, she was told she had no reservation. Even under my name and company, there was no reservation. But when my roomie pulled out the printed confirmation email we had both received, suddenly, they had a room for us.

When I checked in later, not knowing yet of the previous difficulty, they did acknowledge a reservation and asked for my credit card and driver license to verify it. I explained that when I booked by phone, I was told it was okay that I wasn't going to be able to present the card in person. "You should have asked for an authorization form when you booked." So, when the reservation lady said it was all fine, what she meant was that I should ask her for the form.

Even if they had taken my word for it, they couldn't check me in because they had deleted all of the credit card info I had provided by phone and replaced it with my roomie's card info. All charges were set for her card. The hotel wanted a copy of my company credit card along with a driver license of the cardholder. Inconvenient, since my VP was out of the country. But I was able to fax the form to another coworker, who filled it out, copied the company card and copied a staff ID, and faxed it back.

On check-out day, I discovered that when my fax arrived, the hotel staff had deleted all of my roomie's info and set all charges back to my card. Apparently, it takes a manager to split a room charge onto two credit cards. A fine policy, assuming a manager will be present to handle it, or that someone will be authorized to do so in his absence. At 7:30am, prime check-out time, there was no manager. Joe, the desk guy, didn't have the access to make it happen, much as he wanted to help. Because he couldn't make the system accept the split, he couldn't print a receipt for my roomie. If she didn't get a receipt, her employer wasn't going to reimburse her. At $199 per night, she wanted a receipt, and wasn't about to sign something that made it look like all of the charges were hers.

"When will the manager be here?"
"3:00pm"
"It's 7:30am."
"I know, but he can't come in today."
"Who is standing in for him?"
"No one."
"Can you call someone to ask what to do about a receipt?"
"Well, umm..."
"So, you're telling me that if the hotel was on fire, you wouldn't have anyone to call?
*silence*

Joe hand-wrote an explanation of the situation, signed it, added the manager's name and the hotel number, and gave it to her as a receipt. She left. I was staying another night.

At 10:30 the same morning, I was back in my room and heard the fire alarm sound. I peeked into the hallway, where I saw a cleaning lady going about her job, unconcerned. I saw the fire trucks approaching. After a minute or two, the alarm and sirens stopped. I was ready to head downstairs anyway, so I took the stairs since the elevators were deactivated by the alarm and hadn't come back online yet. The stairs put me outside (makes sense) so I went around the corner and back into the hotel lobby to find out if there was really a fire. Who greeted me? A MANAGER, who explained that an suv had clipped a sprinkler head in the parking garage and everything was fine.

When I returned to the hotel again at 4:30pm, the manager was gone, but the fire alarm was STILL sounding intermittently, which was also intermittently interfering with the elevator operation. Mainly, a sign by the elevator was flashing in red, "EMERGENCY. DO NOT USE. PLEASE USE STAIRS." I went to the desk to ask if it was really still out of service and/or how to access the internal stairs from the lobby. The woman, without looking up, said, "They're FINE." Since I didn't move, she sighed, looked up, and said, "Why?" I mentioned the flashing red emergency message (and the alarm that she could hear along with everyone else) and she advised me to ignore it. To top it off, the guest in line behind me loudly said to me, "Oh, don't be a baby!"

And have I mentioned that between my roomie and I, our room key cards were deactivated SEVEN TIMES? (I know about how a cell phone can deactivate it - that wasn't the issue.) Their suggested solution? When I get to the seventh floor and find out my key doesn't work, simply buzz the front desk using the hallway phone and they'll be happy to send a guy up to let me in. But they didn't send a replacement key with him to give to me, he just used his master. So I'd be in the same position next time I need in. By the seventh time, they said, "Oh yeah, every time you get on the Metro, it de-magnetizes your key." Doubtful, since my roomie never used the Metro. But if it is true, something tells me that every other hotel for a three-state radius has implemented the technology that prevents that from happening.

Amazingly, when I checked out, my bill was correct. I think Joe and I were equally relieved.

At least I wasn't at the Hampton Inn next door. That hotel charged someone's debit card twice for the four-night stay at $199 per night. Then said it couldn't be refunded for 72 hours. Yikes.