“Where’s the lobby?” “I don’t know.” “But you WORK here!”
As I was sitting in the “food court” at the hotel enjoying my coconut tofu and veggies, an older couple asked a hotel employee where the lobby was. He had no clue – “Only worked here two days!”. They got a little testy. I jumped in and pointed across the way and commiserated. Clueless new hotel employee came by to thank me and reiterate his newness. I suggested (in a friendly way) that he get a map and study it, because I don’t want him to get yelled at again…. But really, Universal can’t train its employees to be prepared to answer the simplest of questions?
Tour groups enter, speaking Spanish. Folks here in Orlando should be used to Spanish, right? Not to mention French, German and other languages. Barista can’t understand “Angel” — “Aaan-hel” as the name. Angel finally says “Ein-Jel” and she writes down “Angel”. Food prep guy yells “Ein-jel”, of course. Wonder if they’d uderstand “Jesus”? Oh well. But then she can’t understand my name, and I have to spell it out too. I’ve traveled a bit out of the country where I (embarrassedly admitted I spoke little of the local language) but could easily make my way through things more complicated than ordering coffee. And this is not my own personal skill, but the education of the servers outside of our anglo-centric country.
People are happy on vacation, overall. Most just want to make the most of the happy feeling and don’t let the little things get them down (yeah them!). Other vacationing folks are eager to help out — the lady that jumped up to hold the door for a mom struggling with the double stroller. I only encountered one really rude person so far.
Can’t I figure out a way to live in this dream world where the testy person is the exception? Grab my work computer and sit in an interesting lobby all day? Watch the world go by as I slave away?
