Dropping Keys

My wife and I have a thing for Portland. I don’t know what it is exactly, but we love it there and usually go a few times a year without the kids for some R&R (the tax free shopping doesn’t hurt either).

Usually we do the Priceline game, but this last time we decided to splurge a bit and stayed at The Nines hotel. (Since we are cheap, by splurge I mean drop $110/night on Hotwire instead of $60-80 on Priceline). We loved The Nines by the way. It will probably be our default Portland stay from now on.

Since I am an extreme morning person and my wife is not, usually the way our trips go is I will wake up early in the morning and then, not wanting to disturb her, I will go for a walk or go hang out in the hotel lobby to read.

On our latest stay, the first morning I was in the lobby reading Linchpin, and noticed a hotel employee walking through the lobby on her way somewhere. All of a sudden she stopped, and I watched what she was up to.

She went into the little sitting area you see in the photo and adjusted the green chair. One of its’ legs had gone off the carpet. She straightened the chair, then went on her way doing whatever it was she was heading off to do.

I found this pretty remarkable for a few reasons. First of all, I was sitting right near the chair and didn’t even notice anything wrong with it. Obviously she saw something “off” and corrected it.

Second, as a guest, even if I had chosen that chair to sit, it would have taken me zero effort to move it up to the carpet. I wouldn’t have thought “This is the worst hotel ever!”, but still in the back of my mind something would have been “off”.

Third, as far as I could tell it wasn’t her job to be working the lobby. She was just passing through. However, she saw something that would cause her guests discomfort (a chair with one leg off the carpet), and stopped to correct it.

It’s difficult enough to get employees to do what they are supposed to be doing, let alone the little extra things that can make a big difference to your customers. Whoever manages The Nines has obviously figured out how to do it.