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James McConaughy’s headache had grown to the size of the Stone of Scone and knocked steadily on the inside of his skull. He had spent an entire day guiding a gaggle of bloody ignorant tourists around his native Ireland. It was the second-to-last night of his ‘around the Isles in Eight days’ bus tour. As soon as he got the pushy, demanding lot of them settled into their accommodations he could retire to his own room in blissful solitude.
Only the hotel had lost the reservations. Thirty hungry, damp and disgruntled tourists waited beneath the elegant crystal-chandeliers of the lobby, no doubt wondering what the delay was and how they could blame it on him. Thanks to the glory of the internet, one bad blog post could kill his next season.
He leaned on the elegant grey marble check-in desk. “Look, we booked this tour three weeks ago.”
“Sorry, sir, but if it’s not in my computer, then it’s not booked.”
The clerk’s face was as beautiful and unmarked with emotion as a granite statue. If James suspected her to be as bright as said statue, he had enough diplomacy left in his body to avoid suggesting it. Barely.
There was no way he was going to find suitably classy accommodation elsewhere for a group of this size on a Friday night in Dublin.
He took a deep, cleansing breath, following the advice in those dealing-with-stress books his doctor recommended. His doctor didn’t spend his days making nice to rude tourists.
“Maybe I had best talk to the manager on duty,” he said.
She smiled sweetly. “I am the manager on duty.”
So much for that. “I know I made those reservations.”
“Perhaps you have the wrong hotel,” she suggested in the false-concerned customer service tone he recognized too well, having used it himself on many occasions. “People make that mistake all the time.”
Amateurs made that mistake all the time. James was a professional, and he had been using this hotel every season for more years than he cared to recall.
“Is it possible you lost the reservation?” James asked, his voice the calm of water pooling behind a dam.
“We never lose reservations.”
Hers was the confidence of a True Believer. He, himself, was an atheist.
He tried to insert the heresy of reason into the conversation. “How do you know?”
“Because they’re all in the computer.”
“But if you lost one, it wouldn’t be in the computer, would it now?”
Reason was getting him nowhere. He tried for charm.
“Be a love, just check the phone logs or something.” He gave her his most winning smile. “I booked over the phone with the receptionist.”
She stared at him as though he’d said he sent a carrier pigeon with a parchment. In ogham.
“Why would you do that?”
The Blarney Stone joined the Stone of Scone, and they both banged in unison against his skull.
“Because I didn’t trust the computer.” And what a fool I’d been.
“I understand sir. My Grandda, he’s just the same way.”
He couldn’t be more then five years her senior. Maybe seven. Ten tops. No way should the impertinent chit be comparing him to her grandfather. His hard-held patience took a runner.
“I have thirty grumpy Americans in your lobby, and I’m not afraid to use them. Get us into rooms now, or I swear I’ll tell them that your mother was French and your father was Arab and you purposely lost our reservation because you didn’t like that blue-haired old lady’s American flag earrings.”
The granite mask crumbled into an expression of almost comic terror. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Being a bully was a heady feeling. “You do that. You have five minutes.”
In four minutes, thirty-three seconds she found the lost reservations. Within twenty minutes he was in a view suite away from his pesky Americans, enjoying complimentary champagne.
He would have to be a bully more often. Or maybe it only worked if you had Americans.
Shawna Reppert is a Pennsylvania native, but she has lived in the Pacific Northwest for over a decade, first in Portland and now in the wine country of Yamhill County. Her love of Irish music and culture often shows through in her work. She has won two Honorable Mention awards from Writers of the Future and three of her previous works have appeared in 10Flash Quarterly. Her first steampunk story will be appearing in an upcoming anthology edited by Phyllis Irene Radford. Purchase The Three Tunes, a collection of three short stories about the power of music, on Amazon.
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DIPLOMATIC MANEUVERS • by Shawna Reppert,
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16 Responses to “DIPLOMATIC MANEUVERS • by Shawna Reppert”
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July 23rd, 2012 at 1:56 am
Do not try this at home. Threatening people with Americans – are you ready for it? – is more likely to leave you with no point of contact at all. The more likely response is “I’ll see what I can do” – but not accompanied by fear, simply followed by a strategic retreat of the “she’s not coming back, is she?” sort. For a more fruitful approach, read Heinlein’s description of how he dealt with Soviet bureaucracy as a tourist – and remember, the wrong sort of confrontation makes others deal with you as a problem, not as a valued customer.
July 23rd, 2012 at 3:26 am
I thought it was well written. Just didn’t quite feel like it was a story.
July 23rd, 2012 at 4:41 am
Surely if he’d been using that hotel for years, he’d know how to make a reservation. Normally when you make a reservation over the phone, they send you some confirmation by post or e-mail and give you a reservation number and maybe ask for a deposit. As an experienced tourist guide, he must have known this. I’m afraid it doesn’t ring true somehow.
July 23rd, 2012 at 4:49 am
Very entertaining story. Like the above who seem to have experience in the hospitality industry, I too have worked in that field. It’s not being a bully by New York standards – it’s called “assertive” here.
The story is well written and the fatigue of the tour-guide is palpable.
July 23rd, 2012 at 7:17 am
PM and Mary, obviously you’ve never traveled, as an outsider, in a tour group of loud, middle-aged Americans. This is a great story. I could feel for him.
July 23rd, 2012 at 7:47 am
The plethera of adjectives in this story was a bit grating, as were the obvious plot holes. An entertaining enough piece, though.
July 23rd, 2012 at 9:19 am
Thanks! This made my morning. I laughed out loud at my desk.Guys, it’s fiction, not a non-fiction travel piece. And yes, I have talked to “that woman” who thought if it wasn’t in the computer it didn’t exist. Loved the threat….I’ve seen tour groups that made his threat quite plausible. Sorry, but many Americans don’t travel well. (It’s why I don’t travel with tour groups.)
July 23rd, 2012 at 9:58 am
As an American (translation: arrogant but enjoy laughing at us as a group) I thoroughly enjoyed this. Maybe he should have been more computer-savvy, but it still amazes me how many people in this world are in transition (translation: being dragged kicking and screaming away from the way they’ve always done it and feel comfortable with). i.e., I found the situation quite believable. Don’t know how many times I’ve discovered that “assertiveness” does actually work with those people whose little bit of power has gone to their head. All else aside, I thought it was well-written; the prose had an easy flow.
July 23rd, 2012 at 10:53 am
A missing hotel reservation is a conflict that’s easily solved and doesn’t seem to require a story. The much more interesting conflict, as many have pointed out, is the tour guide’s relationship with his obnoxious travelers. I would have liked to read a story built around that. If they are “hungry, damp and disgruntled,” they must be in rare form, and the author has a wonderfully fluid writing style that would work well in showing us how that plays out. The clerk may become his ally, not his adversary, in that case.
July 23rd, 2012 at 11:06 am
This was not something I would have called a story. It’s was a blip on the map.
I do understand that it’s fiction, but plot holes are as real in fiction as they are anywhere else and this didn’t make sense or seem plausible.
July 23rd, 2012 at 1:28 pm
i found this soul-satisfying. having just spent 9 hours in a California emergency room to get 5 minutes of treatment, i can only wish that i’d had 30 noisy, disgruntled, fed-up, pushy Irish persons clustering around me. or a few pit bulls. or just one attorney. thanks for several good laughs, shawna.
July 23rd, 2012 at 1:46 pm
I quite enjoyed the story but I wonder if the author is aware that the Stone of Scone is Scottish, not Irish? I just wondered as it was later joined by the Blarney Stone (which is Irish). Somehow the mention of the Stone of Scone jarred for me but otherwise I enjoyed the read.
July 23rd, 2012 at 3:42 pm
Too entertaining to be inconvenienced by plot holes or travel detail illogicalities, for me. People do this stuff, this chap’s exasperation was palpable, as was his dual nationality headache!
July 23rd, 2012 at 9:31 pm
Phil Cantrill, you’ve missed my point (and you’re wrong about me, too, since I have travelled in a group that included Americans – though not only those, or I couldn’t have been there).
My point was, that sort of threat does not have that sort of effect. The more credibly unpleasant the group is threatened to be, the less reason someone who doesn’t have the group has to let them in. I wasn’t at all in doubt that the threat was real, I was only pointing out this circular firing squad aspect it has. The tour guide is only making a threat that will hit him, like the black sheriff’s threat in Blazing Saddles.
July 24th, 2012 at 11:30 am
I enjoyed this story – right up to the point where it slammed Americans. I would have felt the same if it were any other group. Sterotypes and racism are ugly – much like bullying.
July 25th, 2012 at 3:01 am
Rings Very True: My True Story Encounter
Clerk: I’m sorry sir there is no reservation under your name?
Me: I made the reservation yesterday, at your on-line reservation center.
Clerk: (clicking computer keys) I’m sorry sir there is no reservation under your name? You must not have completed the transaction.
Me: I checked my on-line bank and I already have a pending payment to your hotel.
Clerk: (more computer mashinations!) I’m sorry sir there is no reservation under your name?
Me: I printed out the reservation response e-mail.
Clerk: ( taking hard copy from my hands) As I said sir, there is no reservation under ….
Clerk: Oh here it is. I spelled your name “Duvid.”