Steven near the Tokyo office
Originally uploaded by James in Taiwan.
I began this day by checking out of my hotel and rolling my luggage 30 feet to the next building to the hotel I would be staying at for the next five days.
When I first arrived I was a bit upset that the lobby was on the second floor. It was a hot-humid day and I had a large suitcase I had to pull up a floor. By the time I made it to the top my shirt was soaked. I then entered the building and was pleasantly surprised to see six people waiting to welcome me behind the front counter.
I walked up to the counter and was welcomed and I asked to leave my suitcase in the lobby office until I came back after work. They said wait one moment and began to search for my reservation on their computer.
The receptionist behind the desk then asked for help from two other people working at the counter. It seems they could not find my name. They then asked me to write my name, and I did so.
They spent another 5 minutes looking and they still could not find my name. I mentioned that my co-worker Henry is staying here, and they said "Oh, Henry-san!" and then looked on the computer and could not find him. I mentioned my company name (which is well known) and they could not find anything under my company name.
Another three minutes later someone came from the back room and they had a small piece of paper with a few numbers and names scribbled on it. It seems that someone took the information from my office, but no one entered the reservation yet. Everything was finally ok, and I could leave my bag and head off to the office.
When I finally got to the office I told Henry about what happened to me and he told me that the same thing happened to him. I thought it was very clueless of them, since he was there only 20 minutes before I got there and they did not remember the entire ordeal. I guess if you are not in the computer, then you aren’t a customer!
My day was normal, and once again my meetings with customers were put off until the next week. Steven got into Tokyo right around the time I was checking in. Henry, Steven and I all went out to dinner and I now have the weekend to look forward to.
