21 September 2010

800 Words Recovering From Staff Abuse

Ev was yelled at by one of the staff at the hotel today because she was taking breakfast that we've paid for upstairs to the room. We didn't know that we couldn't do that. Ev was at the elevator just outside of the small restaurant room and at the kitchen door with a tray of tea and orange juice to take up stairs (which she'd done before) and she had a plate of food as well. The kitchen okayed her to take it up, then this weasel of a man saw what Ev was doing and said “Excuse me miss, you can not take food up to your room. You must eat down here” Ev said that the kitchen staff said it was okay and he stamped his feet to insist that she can not take any food and that it would be a disaster if she and 80 other guests took breakfast up to their room. He offered that we could instead call from our room and pay an extra 3 euro to have the hotel deliver breakfast to us. That makes sense?? What a crock!! He made Ev give the food back to the kitchen staff. It was so embarrassing because it was in front of the staff and other guests in the dining room. After he left, the girls in the kitchen were also really embarrassed and apologised. As Ev got in the lift with the tea (cause she was allowed to only take that with her) one of the girls checked to make sure he wasn't around and picked up the plate then got in the lift as well. She said 'no charge' and put the plate on the tray. They were very lovely, but inside Ev was fuming!

We ate breakfast in our room and after an hour we started looking online for another hotel to say at for our remaining 6 nights in Rome but they were either too expensive, not available or in locations too far away, plus we don’t actually know if we can get a refund. We’ll ask later when the other reception ladies are on because we do not want to see this dickhead! Some people can be real pricks! We would never be treated like that in Australia. It just seems to be one thing after another every day not going right. We still have so many things we want to see on this trip though and have already paid for flights and accommodation for later so going home isn't an option for us. This was supposed to be our rest day.

We went down stairs to get some lunch from the shop and the tall weasel was at the counter and abruptly took our room key and said “Goodbye”, no smile or anything and no mention of this morning’s ordeal. Maybe this is the normal way they treat their guests. When we returned he just said “Room number” and handed us our key. We really don’t want to stay here any more. Upstairs we checked this hotel’s ratings online and it turns out that other guests have complained about the rudeness of the staff and how terrible the shower is, they must have all had the same room as us. Maybe we should have read this more closely when we chose this hotel. Hotel delle Vittorie, DON’T STAY HERE!! 

At about 2pm we decided we definitely didn’t want to say and needed to ask if we could get a refund so made up a bullshit story that we wanted to stay in Florence for the next 6 nights. Turns out we can’t get a refund at all because we’ve already paid for the whole stay. That’s the problem with prepaid stays. If you hate it, you’re stuck with it. 

Well if we have to stay here, we are going to exploit our stay. We have to pay 20 Euro for internet for 24hr period so we’re using up their bandwidth and downloading movies and TV series, and all the free breakfast stuff like sugar and Nutella, it’s come back to the room with us. We’re not usually this passive/aggressive but we have no option in leaving so, Screw You Guys!!
We both found it really difficult to sleep tonight so we were on the internet and writing our journal. Ev’s been feeling pretty sick from all the stress and to top it off, our day got worse when we received an email from our Tax Agent who confirmed that our return would only be half of what we were expecting. Our rent is due this week and we have recurring bills we’ve had to cancel. This is not good! We skyped Ev’s parents for some moral support and they are life savers. Our money worries are temporarily over, until we get back, but at least we can relax a little now, and they agreed the staff have been very unreasonable. Tomorrow should be a better day. Look out Nutella, we’re coming for you.

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