The Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego has instituted a new policy forcing housekeepers to clean 30 rooms in an 8 hour period – almost twice as many as they had to clean before. The workers are protesting, it’s just not possible to clean so many rooms without compromising their health. So far Hyatt remains unmoved.
It’s not surprising that Hyatt will have such disregard for its workers – but you wonder why it decides to have such disregard for its guests. A housekeeper who has ten minutes to clean a room (she will have to spen precious minutes moving her cart from room to room and fetching towells and other things) will just not be able to do a good job of it. Indeed, recent reviews at Tripadvisor show that this has indeed, been the case.
One recent guest complained about toenails from a previous guest left on the edge of the bathtub (gross!), and toilet paper, kleenex and coffee packets not being refilled. Other guests have complained about dirty sheets that are never changed and filthy bedspreads.
For more information on the protest see:
Hyatt Housekeepers United – Home
Category: Products & Services (Page 22 of 24)
When we went to Washington State last month I made reservations for a full-size car with Budget rent-a-car. I chose them both because they were cheap and because supposedly they were located at the terminal. It was a BIG, BIG mistake. While I was getting our luggage, Mike and the two kids (3.5 yo and 7 months) were in line at the Budget counter. They only had one person there, who worked at a pace that would have embarrassed a tortoise. Then, after half an hour in line, when he was the next person in line, she closes the counter and says he has to go downstairs. When we finally get there (with two kids, a stroller, a suitcase and a couple of car seats it took us a while), there was a line of about ten people in front of the Budget counter, and again, only person working. It was almost like a Far Side version of hell.
We quickly noticed that the other car rental company counters were pretty much empty, so I held our place in line while Mike went to see if anyone else had cars. A couple of them were out of cars, but Avis not only had them, but were willing to match Budget’s price. Because they didn’t have a full-size car (what I’d reserved) they bumped us up to the “mini SUV” category for the same price. That ended up being a Pontiac Vibe, a.k.a. the Toyota Matrix, a car we’ve thought about buying.
We loved the car and we loved the service we got at Avis. Next time we have to rent, there is no question who we will go with.
I no longer travel as much as I’d like, but we still manage a trip here and there. In 2003 we went to Argentina for six weeks and last year we went to Hawaii. In planning that trip, I found Trip Advisor‘s reviews very useful so I decided to start writing my own hotel reviews. A few months later, Mike has returned them to me edited and they’re now on the website. If you’re curious, you can find them at http://www.marga.org/fun/travel/hotels/
These are some of my favorite internet products & services, some of which I use daily. Check them out!
Skype
A free internet telephony product that really works. I use it to call my parents in LA, and my colleagues around the world. You can also use it to call phones – rather than computers -, at very low rates. If you want to call me, my username is mlacabe.
Picasa
This is a free image editor by Google. It’s great in that it’s very small and it takes minutes to download and install, but it lets you do simple photo editing (cropping, red-eye correction, color correction) very quickly and easily. It doesn’t have the functionality of photoshop and its folder structure is a complete and total mess, but I like it quite well, in particular when used in conjuction with:
Hello
This is a tool that helps you share your pictures with other Hello users. It’s also free and extremely quickly to download and install. Picture transfer is amazingly quick and you can see what your friends are looking at. My username here is margalacabe
Craigslist
I spend way too much time at the discussion groups here, but Craigslist is most useful as a place to buy and sell anything you want, find a job, a nanny or a lead or just kill some time.
Salon
The grandaddy of the internet magazines, it’s also my favorite. I love the wide range of topics and viewpoints it presents. It’s well worth the $35 annual subscription.
Epicurious and All Recipes.
These two websites offer thousands of recipes with user reviews. Epicurious’ recipes come from cooking magazines (Bon Appetite, Gourmet and others) while All Recipes accepts submissions from everybody. I usually have better luck with epicurious recipes, but not always. They’re both worth checking out.
btefnet.net
There are many torrent sites out there and they often close as quickly as they open, btefnet has been pretty stable so far. It’s for episodes of TV shows only, mostly from network TV.
Amazon
I hate being so dependent on this megahuge ecommerce site, but it’s the first place I go when I want to read consumer reviews of specific products. epinions is usually the second. Amazon also has good prices and lately I’ve been lucky with their shipping.
Yahoo Shopping
It has thousands of small stores so it’s a great place where to go for comparison shopping and where to find difficult-to-find items.
Please feel free to comment with your favorites.
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