Bumps & Bruises
Hotel Gave Us the Bird
by Anita Johnston

It was 6:30am in my hotel room and I was talking to a client back east when the phone went dead. Not faint, but dead. Then the lights went dead and the emergency buzzer sounded in our room. The hotel had a complete computer, electrical and phone crash and the poor old place was kinda wounded. There was no air conditioning, but the electrical partially returned. So in the emergency lighting, we did our training from 8:00am until 10:30am. Did I mention the lack of air conditioning?

At 10:30, we then had to vacate the building for a few hours while everything was shut down and they tried to fix the electrical and the air. By the afternoon, some folks were overcome with the heat and left early. In the process, we lost about an hour of training time.

What brought this grand hotel, its people and my program to our knees? One black crow flew into the transformer out in back and fried everything. The little kamakazi gave his life but no one ever admired his work! By Sunday night, the phones and computers were still down and it was major chaos, but they did get manage to get the air conditioning running again.

The Lesson: One thing I did was to offer a substantial discount on the tape albums that were part of the training we missed, which attendees seemed to appreciate. This was a huge inconvenience for everyone-the hotel staff, workers, guests, program attendees and me. However, we managed to keep our spirit, morale and mood light but focused.

The program evaluations were magnificent despite the hassles. Yes, some folks left an hour early on that Friday because they were overcome with the heat and our stuffy room. But the rest were able to "duke it out" until the air conditioning returned. I will say that I admired how the hotel staff performed under trying circumstances-working on the problem while dealing with the guests. They, more than we, struggled with a myriad of extended problems. As bad as it was, I would rather watch them have the problems than to have them watch me have the problems.