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Half Moon

We checked into the hotel close to midnight after a long drive. The lobby area was heavily decorated for Halloween with a ghost presiding over the front desk. A woman came over in a couple of minutes to check us in. I opened the door and walked into piles of clothing, an unmade bed and strong smells. Apparently the system had not registered the person had extended their stay, marked the room as clean and given it to us. They system also showed there were no other rooms available. The woman continued to smile a big smile at us even as my frustration mounted with time and growing tiredness. She offered no solutions other than repeating that her supervisor was on her way. For a well know hotel chain to commit this kind of faux pas placing customer privacy and safety at risk was already mind boggling but that unrelenting smile on that woman’s face was even more aggravating. 

At some point in the next hour that we waited to have the situation resolved, I realized that half of her face was paralyzed giving her a permanent smile. It made me think about the great difficulties she must face everyday in a customer service role with such a handicap where she is unable to convey any expression except the one her face is frozen into. My aggravation over the situation faded as I felt sorry for her unique plight. She was dealing with the same problems as her peers - bad system design, poor workflow management, lack of autonomy to make game time decisions when that’s an essential job function given the diversity of situations humans can bring about, she had this unsolvable problem that could make a bad situation significantly worse. 

I had a good mind to file a complaint with the hotel's VP of customer service about the what had transpired. But considering that the only outcome of such a complaint would be some punishment of this poor woman who had no role in causing the trouble I had experienced. That would be the way the hotel would make me whole and bury the sins of their leadership's incompetence. I knew that I definitely did not want that outcome for me or for this woman who God had blessed with an unfading half room smile.
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