Total Embarassment

So, V is checking in some guy when I get back from dinner. Wearing a black cap, stuble. Two daughters. I don't look at him twice. She's being awfully nice to him, showing him rooms, and even offering to take him up to our concierge floor to show him a room up there personally. At some point I notice that he has a strong Brittish accent.

But she's having some issues about his billing. As a hotel, we get stiffed fairly often. People will give you a bad credit cards or do anything they can to stay the night and then walk out in the morning without paying the bill.

So, she pulls me aside, and says something about him wanting his company to pay for it. I've heard this one before, and only one time has the company actually paid for it.

So I tell her that we're not going to do that. He needs to put down a credit card, and we'll talk to the company the next day. I think he said something about working on a movie here in town. I tell him that we still need a credit card, or no go.

V talks his credit card out of him, and is filling out his registration card, and while she's doing this, I look over at the screen. Bean. Sean Bean. That sounds familiar.

Oh, Sean Bean. Internationally famous actor. Voted the second sexiest man in Brittain a few years back.

One of nine guys with an Elvish nine tatoo. You know, one of these:



Crap. I look up at him. Yeah, definately him:



I turn to V. "Look," I whisper to her. "Swipe his card, don't run it. I'll take care of everything.

No wonder she'd been so nice to him, I thought to myself.

Rob's back, so I turn to Rob and say, "Hey, does the father of these two girls look familiar?" He nods, totally cool. That's Rob for you. He's a customer service guy too, he knows how to act.

It takes them another fifteen minutes for Rob and V to work out the details. I spend most of this time making funny faces in the back, and looking up his IMDB profile. Yup, two daughters from his first marriage.

So they're pretty much finished, and Rob turns to help another guest. Mr. Bean hesitates, turns around, and comes back to the desk. V's doing something else, so I step up.

"Is there something I can help you with?" I say smiling. Nervous as all get out, but still smiling. Customer service is about remaining calm.

"No," he says. "I don't think you have a good attitude. I don't think you know what you're talking about, and I want to talk to Robert."

Whoa . . . I feel like I've been slapped in the face, and everything's reeling. I know who this guy is now, and he just told me off. Well, don't I feel like a dumbass.

I couldn't think of anything to say except "I'm sorry."

And he leans closer, eyes flashing like Boromir and he says, "I don't think you understand. I think that you have a bad attitude."

"Yeah," I reply, "And I'm apologizing for you thinking that I have a bad attitude." The phrasing could have been better, I'll admit, but I don't think well when I'm flustered. "Robert will be right with you."

Then I stepped back, still smiling from years of customer service work. Back when I used to work Night Audit, I learned how to smile through anything. There was a while where I simply couldn't frown when someone told me bad news, when I was told that my Great Uncle had died, my first reaction was to smile.

I waited until he left. And then I turned to Rob and V and said, "Wow, I've never been insulted by the second sexiest man in England before."

To tell the truth, when he said that, I had absolutely no idea why he'd said that to me. Both me and Rob thought maybe he overhead me say the "Does the father look familiar" line. It took about ten minutes before I remembered that I'd been part of the whole "We need your credit card Mr. Bean" thing. We authorized it too, for about a thousand dollars. Yeah, I hope he doesn't find out about that.

V apparently didn't know who it was until we told her afterward either. She was just being polite, which is cool. When you find out that that person that you're helping is famous, it's always cool to know that you've gone out of your way to help them.

It's not like guests don't insult me sometimes. Customer service sucks, because few people are nice to you. You have to learn how to deal with it. Most times, people assume that since you're serving them, they can treat you like crap. But this was Sean Bean. Ouch.

Granted, he was nothing compared to the abusive handicapped woman last night. The one that beat up her husband out front of the hotel, decided she didn't like our rooms, and checked out and moved to the Loretto. Yeah, that was an interesting check in, 'specially since it took them a half hour to get around the corner of our building. Hope the Loretto's having fun with them.

Anyway, as I write this, he's not due to check in until tomorrow. So, I'm considering what I should do. Should I write a note or something? He's already pissed off that I made him give a credit card. I hope I don't piss him off more.