This is going to be my ramblings page......
Every day is different in a busy vacation management workday, and sometimes it gets a little bit crazy! Some of the funny, odd, and unexplainable things that make up my work day!
This is truly wild! I have heard that it is a small world but recently that point was brought home to me. We had a guest coming from the Florida panhandle to rent one of the homes on our Oregon coast rental program here at Wild Coast Vacations. I realized that the guest was living very near the white sand beaches where we had once lived in Florida and over the years I had lost my sample of the white sand of that beach for my beach sand collection.
I asked this guest if she would bring me a small jar, a sample of the white sand of her beach for my collection. She was happy to, and we had a nice chat about what the Florida panhandle looked like after I had been gone for so many years. It was nice.
Later that same summer, one of our home owners and I talked about her recent vacation. This homeowner (of Walk on the Beach on our rental program) actually lives outside of Washington DC but her and her husband had just gone to the Virginia mountains for a vacation. She told me she had rented the vacation house online, and the owner of that house lived in Florida. As she was renting this Virginia mountain house from the Florida owner, they had talked and she mentioned she had a house in Gold Beach Oregon that is managed by Wild Coast Vacations.
Yes, you are right, this turned out to be the very woman who had come to Gold Beach from Florida just months before, and had rented a house from us and brought me beach sand from my former home. I am still trying to figure out the mathmatic chances of that! A Washington DC woman who owns a vacation home in Gold Beach Oregon on our rental program at Wild Coast Vacations, rents a home in the Virginia mountains from a Florida woman, who just happens to be the same woman who came to Gold Beach Oregon and brought me Florida beach sand for her vacation at one of the Wild Coast Vacations beach houses! That is even hard to describe!
Some days can seem like a George and Gracie comedy routine.
"Hi, please sign here on the form"
"Why do I have to sign here?"
"You are just signing for responsibility"
"Responsibility for what?! I just got here!"
"No I mean you are signing that you are resposible for the house. Can I have your credit card please?"
"What do you need my credit card for?"
"That is for your security deposit"
"Why do I need a security deposit, I haven't done anything?"
"No you see that is just to protect the house in case there is damage done"
"I didn't know I had to have a security deposit"
"I am sorry but it tells you that on the website and email to be sure to bring your credit card for the security deposit, just kind of standard"
"I didn't read any of that stuff!"
Yikes....
Or the other day I get a call
"tell me what the address is of your office"
"Sure it is 29826 but please note that the GPS will not guide you to the right place, so just follow the directions we sent you"
About 20 minutes later on the phone
"I can't find your !@#! office!"
"Where are you now?"
"I am down by the coffee shop"
"ok well you need to drive north and like your directions say, we are right across from the courthouse"
"Well I saw the courthouse but the GPS says you are down here!!!!!"
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Years ago while working in a busy beach resort in Florida, we were having a very hard time getting enough housekeepers, and in keeping them past payday! With over 100 condos, we were always hiring and training new people, and they seemed to disappear just as quickly.
At the time we were providing transportation as well to the housekeepers, to bring them to the resort about 8 miles outside of town. The supervisor of housekeeping used the company van to pick up the ladies at their street and bring them into work each day. The faces always seemed to change.
One little girl we hired stood on her street corner to be picked up and came in to work as scheduled for about a week. Then on the sixth work day she was not at her stop, and we were not able to reach her by phone, so she simply was not on the corner any more. We cut her last check and mailed it out.
About a month later Kathy was making her usual rounds and there on the street corner was this young girl, so Kathy picked her up and brought her to work. I was sitting in the office when the gang came in to pick up their assignments, I saw the young girl but figured that Kathy had hired her back without clearing it with me (kind of irritated me a bit, but we were always needing help so did not give it a lot of thought). I learned later that she had assumed I had hired the young girl back.
No, no one had hired her back, she just showed up to be picked up one day, and in she came! She worked for us for about another month - none of us said a word - and then one day she just was not on the corner anymore. I guess that was her "notice" of quitting.
Hiring and training a lot of employees can be entertaining. One day I hired a rather young boy, his folks had asked that we hire him and give him some work experience. I agreed (again, we always needed help) and gave him a pretty simple job of vacuuming the hallways in the high rise condominium tower.
I got him all set up with extension cord, vacuum, little broom for the edges, took him to the first hall, illustrated how it was to be done. Several hours later I went back to check on him, and he was standing basically where I had left him, but nothing had been vacuumed! I was kind of speechless, but still I managed to ask him why he had not done any of the hall. "I am afraid of the vacuum" he said, very calmly. "It makes a lot of noise. I won't be able to use it." Well that was the long and short of his career as a hall vacuum person. I sometimes wonder what line of work he ended up going into?
Then there was Carey. She was an adorable young southern woman, probably about 19 when we hired her. In those condominium complexes we had an office on the ground floor where the housekeepers came to wait for their ride home, and to unwind at the end of the day. They were allowed to take home anything that the guest had left behind in the way of food, or floats, or blow up beach balls and the like. So each day she came down to the housekeepers lounge with something. One day it would be a blow up beach ball. The next it would be a Styrofoam ice chest, or one flip flop sandal (which we labeled for lost and found in case the guest called for it, but if not she could have it). The food they were allowed to put in a clear garbage bag we supplied, that way we could see the contents.
One day Carey came down with a big huge bag of ice. She was going to take that home. Kathy, the housekeeping supervisor had to tell her that the ice was not going to last for the next hour in the Florida heat as they waited for the others to finish, and the drive home in the van. She reluctantly threw that away.
But she found so many Styrofoam ice chests and took them home that we had to laugh. We started calling her the Styrofoam Lady. She would just smile and hold her treasure next to her. She claimed the odd one-flip flop sandal, we never did figure out why she wanted that. Finally one day she brought down a pair of matching folding chairs out of one of the condos stating that the guest must have left these behind, and we had to put a stop to her "treasure hunts" and take these back up to the proper location.....
It is always interesting in the vacation business. One of our guests explained to me that the reason they had not been able to follow any of the instructions given to him was because when you go on vacation, you leave your brain behind! Well really isn't that what a vacation is for? Some days I think "I need a vacation!" So I can leave my brain behind to rest too!
Ramblings of a busy vacation rental manager.......
