A couple on the trip brought their two year old son with them. Let's just start with how annoying that is. When you have a company trip, and the company trip is for you and a guest, why would you then think its O.K. to bring a third guest, even if it is a kid? But, I digress.....that's not what this blog entry is about. It's about this one particular family, which(to protect the guilty) will from here on out be referred to as Mr. & Mrs. Moron.
Anyway, there were a lot of people who brought their kids on this trip, so the client decided to let everyone bring their children to the Welcome function. For the parents that just wanted to enjoy the dinner without their offspring, we arranged for the Kids Camp at the hotel to offer a babysitting/kids event that the parents could sign up for. Great idea.
O.K. I am going to tell the rest of this tale in time format so you get the true effect of how ridiculous these parents are. I would say enjoy, but their is nothing enjoyable about this.......
6:30 PM
The event starts. It is a beach party way down from the main hotel building. It was a gorgeous setting, out on a cliff near the water, and there were all these Chinese balloon lights all over the place. It was beautiful, but it is about a 20 minute walk from where all the rooms are in the hotel.
8:00 PM
Our hotel contact finds me at the function, and tell me that he just got a call from security, and that we needed to find Mr. and Mrs. Moron right away. I asked what happen.
Apparently, the housekeeper was going about her business in their hallway to do turndown for all the rooms, and heard screaming coming from one of the rooms. She knocked on the door and no one answered. A little worried, she calls hotel security, and a guard goes up to the room. Also hearing the screaming, he decides to go in. What does he find........
A 2 year child alone in the dark,screaming, in a crib in the room!!!!!!
So, now we are back to where I come in.
8:05 PM
I go with security up to the room, while the rest of my staff is frantically looking all over a function of 900 people for the The Moron Couple.
8:15 PM
After running up to the room, I walk in to find 2 security guards, the housekeeper, and the Manager on duty. The kid is still screaming for his mother.
I am so amazed that anyone would leave a kid in a hotel room, that I immediately ask the Manager if we have ruled out everything else. He looks at me like I am crazy. so I say "Does this room look like it has been tampered with, did we check under the beds and in the closets?" I was basically just wanting to make sure that something didn't happen to the parents. The security guard checks the whole room and determines that indeed, this was a child left in a hotel room.
8:25 PM
My staff at the function calls me to tell me they have not yet found Mr. and Mrs. Moron, but they are in the process of getting a microphone to page them.
The security guard is holding the screaming kid, and we all end up passing the kid around between the Manager, the security guard, and myself trying to quiet this kid down. Nothing is working, and we all find out that none of us are parents, or know anything about kids. The manager decides to call in reinforcements, and nextels one of the babysitters at the Hotel kids camp to come up to the room.
8:30 PM
The security guard tells me that if we didn't locate the parents in 5 more minutes, he was going to call the Maui Police. (interesting fact that I was not aware of until this moment, not only is it stupid to leave a child alone in a hotel room, if the kid is under 10, it is actually illegal.)
8:32 PM
A TD calls me to tell me that they found Mr. and Mrs. Moron, and they are in a golf cart on the way back to the room. Thank God...because being the selfish person that I am, I really didn't want to have to deal with bailing people out of jail.
O.K. I am now going to switch to transcript of the conversation between the security guard and Mr. Moron when the couple got back to their room to see us all there, and their crying child.
Mr. Moron: What are you doing with my son?
Security Guard: Why did you leave your two year old child alone in this room?
Mr. Moron: We did not want to bring him to dinner with us. He is a good boy who falls asleep, and sleeps through the night. We leave him alone all the time. Why did you wake him up? And for that matter, why did you come into my hotel room?
Security Guard: Sir, your son was screaming so loud that a housekeeper heard it in the hallway.
Mr. Moron: Well, next time we will put the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door.
Security Guard: Sir, you will do no such thing. It is illegal to leave a child unattended in a hotel room, and you are lucky that the hotel has decided against calling the police this time.
Mr. Moron: I don't see what the big deal is. We were just at the party. We were only gone a couple hours (sidenote: He really did admit to leaving the child for a "couple hours", I almost gaged when I heard him say that!)
Security Guard: Why did you not use the Hotel Kids Camp?
Mr. Moron: We didn't think it was worth the money. (another sidenote: It would have cost them $25 for 3 hours. The client worked out a deal with the hotel)
Security Guard: I am not going to discuss this further. Do not leave your son in this room alone again. Be prepared that for the rest of your stay, we will be doing a random check on your room to make sure that child is not unattended. If you do this again, we will call the Maui Police.
Mr. Moron (finally getting it): O.K. We understand. Sorry about all the commotion. We didn't think it would be a problem.
Then we all left the room, and to be honest, I never saw that couple again the rest of the trip until departure day when they were getting on the transfer to go to the airport. Mr. Moron looked a little embarrassed, but he did say "thanks" as they left.
So there you have it. I can't decide what I am more bothered by...the fact that they left the kid in the room, or that they said they did it all the time, and were trying to defend the choice.
Not being a mother, I guess I don't really have a lot of perspective, but this is weird, right? Parents do not usually leave a child unattended, right?
Feel free to share your thoughts on this one...............
1 comment:
Actually Viv, you know that whole story about the British girl that was taken in Portugal, Madeleine McCann; well her parents left her and her twin siblings alone in the room while they went to dinner. That is allegedly when she was taken. People are crazy.
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