3rd January 2012 was not a good day. In fact it was just about the worst day I experienced in the Mountains. It started out fine. In fact I wasn't working till 3 so I got a lovely lie in and I went skiing before work (I didn't do this often but this was one of the rare occasions I did).
I had been in work about 3 minutes when someone complained about their shower being cold. I was used to this set of guests complaining. They were all from Wales. They enjoyed complaining. I didn't pay a huge amount of attention but sent the bar man (who had a great love of all things manly and so jumped at the chance at mending anything he could/ changing light bulbs) to go and investigate the boiler. He came back a few minutes later to say it had run out of water. I went to find the complaining Welsh lady and informed her to wait an hour and then try again. Half an hour later she had gathered a lynch mob to confront me at the reception desk,
'There is still no hot water and the heating has gone off, I need a shower and am freezing'
'Hear Hear' cried her accompanying Welsh lynch mob
I sent the bar man back to the boiler and once again he came back with the same story.
Ten minutes later the Welsh lynching mob had regrouped, stronger this time and they headed directly to the bar man to accuse him of lying to them.
Things had now become rather desperate and I was beginning to panic. I called the hotel manager who at this point was with his girlfriend in La Plagne and pointed out that there was the telephone number of the boiler repair man hidden somewhere in the office. As I speak only enough French to ask for a bottle of wine and where the post office is I had to get one of the assistant chefs to make the call.
Eventually they said they would come out the day after and I said 'no you will come out now' and they said they would do what they could. By this point I was fielding complaints from 60 angry and cold welsh people (you would have thought they would be used to being cold coming from Wales) and I was getting a bit fed up of saying 'I am very sorry, we are working on it as fast as we can and I will let you know as soon as I know anything'.
I did contemplate hiding in the office with the door locked but soon the boiler repair man turned up. I brought out the assistant chef to translate. What quickly transpired was that we had run out of oil an couldn't get anymore till the next day.
My manager called back and said 'what ever you do, don't tell them we have run out of oil, they will think we are idiots', I wasn't convinced that lying to the angry welsh people was a great idea but went with it anyway. With dread in my heart I went up to each table in the bar and with my best 'I'm very sorry' smile on my face I said 'the good news the boiler repair man has come and checked things out, the bad news is that he can't get the right part till tomorrow' (that wasn't technically lying if you could oil as part of the boiler'.
They all spent the night enjoying having a good moan about the situation. It wasn't actually that cold. I think having something as big as being cold made the holiday for them, they obviously had a great time moaning and being vile to everyone. The staff did what they could, getting all the blankets and distributing them as if they were helping refugees after a major natural disaster. The angry welsh guests continued to treat the bar man as if he had lied to them on purpose.
As my shift ended I trundled home feeling like I had spent the last eight hours fighting a battle on three fronts and knowing it would start all over again when I got into work at seven am.
And it did. It was not a good morning. Every single person asked me for the exact time of the arrival of the boiler repair man. To each and everyone I repeated the same thing 'I am not sure but I believe it will be quite soon'.
And soon enough, like a mirage coming up the mountain, a truck filled with beautiful beautiful oil arrived in front of the hotel. I was actually ready to snog the driver. I would have done it. At that moment he was my dream man, the resolver of all my problems, of the longest 18 hours of my life. I would have given him anything. In reality he didn't really want anything from me. He just wanted to get the fuck out of the hotel and go home.
Soon after I went home myself to lie on the sofa of dreams in my chalet, close my eyes for an hour and then drink lots and lots of gin.
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