You may wonder what I am doing sitting at my keyboard at 1 in the morning!

We have a rule - "we don't take reservations for tonight after 10 p.m." We made the rule as we're really not well suited to provide accommodation to people who have spent the evening in the local pub and are then looking for somewhere to stay because they can't drive home and they hadn't really thought about planning ahead. Bitter experience has shown us that such people will drag us out of bed, tell us they want a room and that they don't care about the price - but then tell us that our price is far too high for them and say they've only got twenty five pounds and can we do it for that. And by the way they need a room with three single beds (which we don't have for that. The customer is always right and in these cases especially - our prices and facilities are not what they are looking for, and I just wish they had looked at the illuminated sign that makes the prices very clear before they rung the bell that dials us at home.

It was about 20 past eleven - that's about 2 hours ago - that the phone rang last night. "Here we go". And, yes, an enquiry for rooms "tonight". "Sorry - we don't take bookings for tonight ...." but there was something different, and it turns out that the search is on for rooms for four people who have been working on the railroad about 8 miles from here since 7 this morning - a job that's long overrun and they need somewhere to lay their heads when the job is done. And so I wait; I feel I've made the right decision to bend the rule, but really I can't yet be sure. All I can say is that I made what I feel was the right judgment at the time, and whatever the outcome there's always the need to consider the individual and not tar everyone with the same brush.
(written 2008-03-12)

 M300 - Well House Manor - Behind the scenes
  [203] Holes in on line information - (2005-02-05)
  [677] Sympathetic development - (2006-04-09)
  [742] A visit from the solicitor - (2006-06-03)
  [769] King Edward VII - days of empire - (2006-06-20)
  [813] Monday Morning at Well House Consultants Melksham - (2006-07-24)
  [868] Smoking, or no - (2006-09-16)
  [897] Too much for the National Trust - (2006-10-18)
  [927] Hotel door furniture - (2006-11-15)
  [931] Before and After - Well House Manor - (2006-11-18)
  [939] Swipe cards for hotel rooms - Security issues - (2006-11-23)
  [951] What happened at Geekmas - (2006-11-28)
  [1000] One Thousand Posts and still going strong - (2006-12-18)
  [1083] Behind the scenes - (2007-02-17)
  [1105] A week is a long time in the life of a conference centre - (2007-03-10)
  [1159] It can take more that one plus one to get two. - (2007-04-22)
  [1179] Sizing sheets and other domestic issues - (2007-05-07)
  [1189] Meet, greet and welcome - (2007-05-16)
  [1285] In the army, or in civvie street? - (2007-07-31)
  [1311] What do people look for on a hotel web site? - (2007-08-20)
  [1319] Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business - (2007-08-25)
  [1369] One business, four different angles! - (2007-09-28)
  [1371] Hotel in Melksham at Christmas - (2007-09-29)
  [1441] On cancellations, rebooking, and pricing schemes - (2007-11-22)
  [1490] Software to record day to day events and keep an action list - (2007-12-31)
  [1515] Keeping staff up to date on hotel room status - (2008-01-22)
  [1520] Terms and Conditions - Hotel, England - plain English - (2008-01-26)
  [1637] Providing exceptional service - and carrying on doing so. - (2008-05-09)
  [1854] Three Seasonal Pictures - (2008-10-25)
  [1900] Table Topics - (2008-11-22)
  [1904] Ruby, Perl, Linux, MySQL - some training notes - (2008-11-23)
  [1948] Blame Culture - (2008-12-17)
  [1957] Why are cooks bad tempered? - (2008-12-22)
  [1973] Required Request - (2009-01-03)
  [1991] Rules for a King - (2009-01-13)
  [2125] We have lost a regular business guest - (2009-04-10)
  [2247] A day in the life of a hotelier - (2009-06-18)
  [2396] Easing off in our 50s? - (2009-09-06)
  [2910] Robust - testing the system - (2010-08-09)
  [2916] Testing the robustness of our hotel and training systems - holiday and sickness times - (2010-08-11)
  [2960] The Well House team - September 2010 - (2010-09-19)
  [2961] Initial handling of phone calls and walk in visitors - (2010-09-19)
  [3093] How many toilet rolls - hotel inventory and useage - (2010-12-18)
  [3743] Sunday - no longer a day of rest - (2012-05-28)
  [3844] Rooms ready for guests - each time, every time, thanks to good system design - (2012-08-20)
  [3961] Well House Staff Party - (2012-12-22)
  [4302] Sunday is never quiet at Well House Manor - (2014-09-21)
  [4365] The changing face of Christmas - (2014-12-26)

Back to London Midland ... Merrymaker ... Percy Danks

Previous and next or Horse's mouth home

Forward to C - structs and unions, C++ classes and polymorphism

Database design for a shopping application (MySQL)
Joining MySQL tables revisited - finding nonmatching records, etc
Budget tax increases hit vehicle market
C - structs and unions, C++ classes and polymorphism
Await guests in the early hours
London Midland ... Merrymaker ... Percy Danks
I dont care - goodbye
What colour is the season?
Melksham - Swindon. Train v Bus v Car
Strange behaviour of web directory requests without a trailing slash