Hotels

A bed for the night

Hotels are used a lot by pharmaceutical companies and their representatives. It may be more efficient for the representative to stay away to work the distant part of their territory in one trip. National exhibitions and conferences usually need an overnight stay, and of course, internal company meetings need a venue.

If the team gets together in one place, it's usually an airport hotel (ease of access for those coming from afar), or if it's a Christmas meeting or product launch, a really plush hotel in the middle of nowhere. Like the exhibition venues, these hotels charge an absolute fortune to stage these meetings and the companies continue to pay the price. Amazingly, if you question the sense of continuing to do this, it's always 'already budgeted for...' Give me a motel and a night out in town any day.

Management normally stay overnight in the hotel prior to company meetings because they've got things to discuss. The fact that they work at adjacent desks in head office seems to mitigate against constructive discussion during a normal working day. Too many distractions, I suppose.

Often the plush hotels are really over the top in terms of 'service'. For instance, one particular establishment in the heart of England owned by the BBC has instructed the waiters in the dining room to assist people in and out of their seat. The second your backside leaves the seat, someone leaps in behind you to drag the chair away to facilitate your exit from the table. Similarly, on your return to the table, the seat is thrust into the back of your knees, thus forcing you to sit down again. Given that the majority of sales meetings lunches are buffets you can imagine the chaos this causes.

When we had a meeting there I put up with this for a short while but by the time we got to the dessert course I had become a bit p*ssed off with it and politely explained to the waiter that standing up and sitting down was something I had mastered in my infancy, so could he please leave me alone, thank you very much. He had to OK this with his head waiter before he did so and it caused some of his colleagues apoplexy that one of the guests was moving about the dining room totally unaided. God knows what happened if you needed to go to the toilet in the middle of the meal!

Service in less salubrious establishments is not always so meticulous. For example, when you hold a meeting in an hotel it is usual to have coffee available in the room on arrival. However, you can normally guarantee that it will appear ten minutes after the meeting starts. A door at the back of the room bursts open and an odd-jobbing, foreign language exchange student in a waistcoat reverses a hostess trolley laden with refreshments through it. He - it's always a man - then neatly lays out a large number of cups, saucers and Danish pastries, taking care to make as much noise as he can before leaving as discretely as he entered.

Hotel bars are sad places.

In the early evening, (apart from the normal paying guests) hotel bars tend to be frequented by solitary business travellers, enjoying a quiet drink and a read before eating in the restaurant. Sometimes, they will return to the bar after they've eaten for another drink, hoping for intelligent conversation with like-minded individuals. Most of the time, they get another drink from the bar and carry it back to their hotel room where they'll do some more work or watch television.

The latter part of the evening gets more interesting. The team of sales reps on an 'over-nighter' stagger back from their curry and immediately head for the hotel bar for a night cap. You immediately see the barman's face drop because he knows his chances of closing up early and getting a good night's sleep are now absolutely zero. He also knows that one of this group of individuals will try to engage him in light-hearted drunken banter, whilst another will be mildly abusive because he's physically incapable of serving twelve people at once. Being a hotel barman is a thankless task and you couldn't pay me enough to do it!

Sometimes you even sleep in hotels.