Last week I stayed at the Hilton Mexico
City Reforma (yes they deserve to be named in this blog and I have kindly
forwarded a copy on to them). On my first morning I was sitting with a
colleague in the lobby with my eyes closed as we waited for our friends to
arrive for the day. All of a sudden I was prodded by a security guard who
proceeded to lecture me in Spanish for some unknown infraction. It turned out I
was not allowed to “sleep” in the lobby which I was not in fact doing. Just
because one’s eyes are closed does not necessarily constitute sleeping. My
colleague will attest there was no requisite snoring.
Once I understood what he was adamant
about I went to the front desk to share my unhappiness regarding my treatment. The answer was, “It is policy sir.” I asked
for the front desk manager, told her what happened and was told, “It is policy
sir.” She knew that I wanted to talk to the hotel General Manager but he was
unavailable and we left for the day.
Inexplicably, the General Manager did
not attempt to leave a message for me although he had been told of the
situation so I called him later that afternoon to dialogue with him about my
treatment as a guest at his hotel. “Sorry sir, it is policy” he said. “We have
had people from the street come and sleep on our chairs so we have this policy.
It is unfortunate but it is our policy.”
I suggested to him that it would be
fairly evident that I was not a homeless individual from the streets of his
capital – I was wearing professional clothes including a white dress shirt, had
a camera and was sitting with a colleague but that seemed to make no
difference. After all, he said he had not met me personally so he could not
make a judgment on that. Policy is policy. And this is the hospitality industry
and I was paying to stay in his hotel.
I asked him why I should consider
staying in his hotel again for which he had no answer nor seemed the least bit
concerned: So much for “hospitality.” Incidentally, I have Diamond Status with
Hilton which seemed to make no difference in any of the three conversations.
Now I stay in a lot of hotels around
the world each year and this has never happened to me although I have had many
adventures in lesser hotels – which is to be expected. When I shared this with
the manager he just said, “I am sorry, but that is our policy.”
It got me thinking about policies. It
is easy to write policies but harder to write policies that get the right
outcome. In this case, in an attempt to stop street people from sleeping in
their lobby the hotel developed a policy that disenfranchised their own guests.
They were also evidently unable to differentiate between a street person and a
hotel guest. How dumb is that? Yet we do the same thing in organizations all
the time, especially when we write policies to solve problems that could and
should be solved in other and better ways.
Following his lead, I will never stay
at his hotel again. It is my new policy! I learned from the best. What policies
do you have that are counterproductive to what you are trying to accomplish?
3 comments:
There are both problems with the writing of the policy and the enforcement of the policy.
Our church had a "policy" about the doors between the Fellowship Hall and the Sanctuary. We desired that conversations, community and Fellowship be fostered in the Fellowship Hall AND we desired that a quiet environment be present in the Sanctuary during solemn moments of the service (i.e. during prayer or when a guest was speaking on the stage). Both of these values clashed when the sanctuary doors would open and a burst of laughter would echo from the Fellowship Hall.
So, we had to manage hospitality to the person who arrived late, those who were enjoying conversation in the Fellowship Hall and the worshippers who were being ushered into a solemn moment.
Our solution - after the service begins, the doors would remain closed and only opened during appropriate times when the noise from the Fellowship Hall would not detract from what is happening in the Sanctuary. This solution is agreeable to most people when the reason is kindly explained by the ushers. we learned 2 lessons.
1) Some people are so self-absorbed that they will not accept the idea that their demands to enter and leave at will has any impact on others.
2) FREQUENT retraining is necessary to ensure that our volunteers communicate the "policy" in a hospitable manner.
Great story! I think we have all had close encounters regarding the, "It's our policy" comment. Typically, the "It's our policy" comment usually comes with a conflict of common sense. Staff cannot or will not take one step further and ask themselves what is the reason for the policy and make an important decision on their own. In the business world this is called initiative. Initiative is the next step past the concept of common sense. Evidently, the hotel management fosters neither.
Well dad I have often thought you look like a homeless fellow from Mexico City.
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