Today I finally talked to my first difficult guest.

The major reason for this guest being difficult was because he spoke only Japanese and Japanese only. He just refused to speak in a way which I could understand. And now when I thought about it, even if I spoke Japanese fluently, I might not be able to solve his problem either.

Here it goes: his wife wanted a kettle in her room, but there was none in our hotel. We gave her hot water but she just wanted what she wanted. Her husband called and refused to cooperate, and asked us to call Tokyo branch in order to let him complain more. Here’s where I got stuck in the language. "Tokyo?" I thought to myself, " What does Tokyo has to do with the situation here? He wanted to go back or what?" I just didn’t understand his command. Of course I didn’t do so, and in fact, I couldn’t because of the IDD account. I just told the guest I didn’t understand and asked if he could speak English to explain one more time. He just replied bluntly in Japanese, " No."

He hung up finally and it freaked me out so much. I told the front desk about the situation and finally they bought a kettle for him. When I tried calling this guest, he refused to answer the phone. I had to admit I was not totally unhappy about his refusal. In the end, one of the managers brought the kettle up to the guest and the problem was finally solved.

What will happen next? I am a little worried. Will I be mentioned in the complaint record? Luckily I didn’t mention my name, but that’s not the point. I know this guest was unhappy maybe not because of me anyways, yet I felt that I was not doing my job as well, since I couldn’t fully understand the guest’s needs. I wanted to solve the problem myself and not passing it to other colleagues. I really wanted to make a difference......

I am sure I will do better tomorrow.