A Whole New Roach

So, I have already mentioned that I work for a hotel in my first published story, "Work Related Stress". Having said that, if you have already read it then you know I am not in the most comfortable position.

On top of the problem mentioned in the previous story we have a new problem, which really has always been a problem before but not it has become the problem numero 1. It completely took over the whole selling panic that was going on...

A few days ago my phone was blowing up with notifications from our Facebook page. It is important to let you know that I am one of the 3 people in charge of the page. I started going through an clicking on the notifications and they were all from comments in a post that our page was tagged in... "Oh shit" I thought. Once I opened the actual post I automatically knew this was going to cause MAJOR issues in the hotel.

The post from hell... Okay that is a little dramatic but it's real. The post was a video from a guest that had stayed with us the night prior to the post. In the video she is in the bathroom of her room with her phone's camera pointed at the bottom of her tub where there is a tiny whole between the tub and the floor of the bathroom... and out of it came out two little cockroaches!! It was so gross. On top of that in the actual post she went on about how she talked to the Manager (which really was the Owner) and how he didn't seem to take the matter seriously and refused to refund the food she had ordered from the hotel pool side menu. She mentions that roaches are not something to take lightly and was rightfully upset.

What that guest does not know is the fact that this hotel has had issues with pests for a long time now, I didn't know this before the post but it has. The Owner does not take this issue seriously, he once made a "joke" saying that even if the building were to burn down they (the roaches) would still be here.

On top of the post being a issue, it currently has over 200 shares, 12,000 views and a whole bunch of comments. The comments are the most problematic because the people that are commenting are previous guests that have had issues like this one before and I mean some of those people have not stayed at this hotel for years. All the people commenting are saying that the Manager didn't take it seriously when they complained about the same or similar stuff. Some people had issues with mice and bedbugs before as well as the creepy roaches.

If the health department ever did a surprise visit this whole place would be shut down. Well, maybe not the Pub I don't think that has any issues like that... but definitely the hotel and the restaurant for sure. I have been working for this Hotel for a while now and I have witnessed the Health department showing up for inspections but they never get penalized for the state of the kitchen or the state of the pool area. It is disgusting. There is little roaches all over the kitchen, in the ICE machine, in the pass through window (not sure if that is actually what it is called but it's the little window where the fresh food is placed before the servers take it to the respective tables.)... Anyway, yeah it's gross to the say the least. Had I know that this was what I was going to be dealing with I would have never taken the job here. It is to late to quit now, it is good to have some management experience but let me tell you that I do not eat at the restaurant anymore and I would never come swimming on my days off.

Back to the inspection... My first experience with this was one weekend I came in to work on payroll and the head chef came in to my office laughing. Laughing because the Health Inspector had shown up without giving him a heads up and over heard a phone conversation she was having where she mentioned that she had not had lunch and she was starving. He saw that as an opportunity and offered her food and they talked about a trip she had just got back from... after about 45 mins she was out the door and they magically passed the inspection. He was laughing at the fact that he was able to bribe the inspector with food and conversation. It also happens to be the only inspector that ever comes to check on things, she always waits around for them to fix whatever she told them to fix and then she does her walk through and they magically pass.

The pool area is a problem on it's own. There are mice and roaches hiding all over the place. I have my staff clean their work area all the time to make sure that their space, which is where we have the clean pool towels that we hand to guests, is clean and free of grossness.

I feel like someone needs to do something about this. It has gotten to a point where people are cancelling their bookings because of the video, the comments and really word of mouth. On the one hand I really hope that all the hype the video is causing actually makes the Owner come to the realization that he needs to do something to stop this from happening again, something other that quarantine the affected rooms because lets face it roaches can migrate in a second. On the other hand... I really hope the health department comes down and sees how gross and neglected everything is.

Not that I want to lose my job or see any of my coworkers lose theirs but if the hotel needs to close for a few days for them to actually be able to fumigate the whole building, I would not complain. I could go in to more detail about the many issues this place has but I don't want to make you paranoid for your next stay in a hotel.