This past weekend, ThinkTank attendees stayed at a beachfront hotel– a beautiful resort on the coast, north of San Diego. A perfect stay, except for the scene created by a rude hotel employee. In his defense, he’s got a stressful job– working 80-90 hours a week, primarily wandering about the bar and being social with drunk guests. This is a story of a guy who made a bad thing worse, deciding to take his anger out on professional Internet marketers.
Jeremy Shoemoney was sitting in the hotel lobby, wearing no shoes at this beach resort. This punk employee yells at him to put his shoes, on in front of a dozen friends. Treated like an idiot in front of his wife and friends, he refuses– and the punk goes nuclear instantly. He calls over multiple security guards and attempts to throw out Jeremy. By now, everyone else is interested in the disturbance– it’s become an ego battle.
Fortunately, George Avery steps in help, getting in the middle of two yelling men, in the process being threatened to be thrown out, too. The hotel employee threatened to throw me out, too, which was irritating, but I kept calm. Certainly, this fellow was quite important, as he kept asserting his right to throw out anyone in the hotel.
Now there’s a blog at ChristopherPuffer.com– it ranks #1 for “christopher puffer” on Google, by the way, since so many people are linking to the site. And the hotel management continues to deny that Puffer was in the least bit out of line or slightly aggressive. Even Puffer continues to say dumb things. I’m surprised the hotel management hasn’t swooped in to silence him, issue an apology and have the situation go away.
Remember the video on United breaks Taylor guitars? Or perhaps the untied.com site? Those customers were so pissed off that they took the effort to write songs and build websites, which in turn, were picked up by the press. All the while, the company sat on the sideline, continuing to deny any wrongdoing.
Can you think of examples where you had a bad experience and wanted to tell others? Amazon has a book on how satisfied customers tell 3 friends, while unhappy customers tell 3,000.
I’m surprised that more companies aren’t including social media training for employees. But an ounce of courtesy would prevent such situations from flaring up in the first place.
If you find this interesting, put a link to this story on your blog– or just link to ChristopherPuffer.com. I’ll keep you updated with what I hear from the hotel staff and their PR agency. The PR agency’s site is a 404, by the way. And next time you see Shoemoney, tell him to keep his shoes on!
Update:
Have you seen the parody site about whether Glenn Beck murdered a young girl in 1990? Obviously, he didn’t. The site’s author put up the site because Glenn Beck used rhetoric to pin Representative Keith Ellison, a Muslim, to offer proof that he wasn’t working with the enemy. Outrageous claim, of course. So this guy gives Beck a taste of his own medicine with this satirical blog.
