by Deedles
Today I quit my job as a cruise consultant at an underhanded travel agency. I feel both empowered and ashamed – I can’t believe I worked at such a hellhole for nearly a year. In my defense, the money was good…that is, until our brilliant CEO decided to piss off our multi-billion dollar cash cow.
When I started my training, the call volume was high, commission was good, and I was excited to have a business card. I found out later why our calls were so steady – this company owned two websites that misspelled the second part of a popular cruise line’s name, Caribbean. Type in ‘Caribean’ or ‘Carribean’, and that spelling-challenged consumer would be mirrored to our website. The website discreetly bears our company’s logo, but to the untrained eye, or total morons, it appeared as if I was a reservations agent at a cruise line, not a travel agent. Crafty, right? If our entire business hadn’t been built around this – sure.
The cruise line in question eventually realized that we had these lucrative websites that they wanted. Why should they pay commission to independent agencies for customer stupidity? They made a multimillion-dollar offer for the domain names, but that would end the prosperity we enjoyed. This angered the cruise line and they punished us by cutting our commission. To anger them further, Mr. CEO put out a couple of scathing press releases bashing their company. Had these actions only affected the management and stock-holders, theywould not have bothered me. However, without commission, everyone in reservations takes home six dollars an hour. I can’t even super-size with that.
The press releases were the final straw for the cruise line. They put us on a ‘no book’ status; I could not even take payments on reservations I already made (how I make commission). I sat for a day and a half, wondering how I would pay my bills and feed my mongrel, while every other department sat on their ass making salary. Marketing even went to the CEO’s goddamn beach house for a week. I felt that the ‘negotiations’ my boss said were happening were bullshit, so I called in sick, got a well paying waitress/bartending job, and set up some interviews for the following weeks. Today I took my paycheck, cashed it, and told my manager that when he was laid off he could come drown his sorrows at my bar.
Was this job a total waste? I think not. It was not a learning experience, getting my foot in the door, or any of that other crap that people normally say when they leave a bad situation. As I said before – Jesus, what a hellhole. I did, however, get some priceless material from the special people who thought we were a cruise line.
Upon visiting misspelledcaribbean.com, people would find the ‘contact us’ portion of the website and send their questions, complaints, and ramblings to our customer relations department. The guy in charge of CR would forward us these emails every now and then. Originally he sent us legitimate complaints from people who were actually our clients. A few months ago, he started sending us the funny ones that I guess he’d discarded previously. Before deleting my entire inbox and telling the company to take a swim (and paying off my own cruise) I forwarded these gems to my personal email account.
And now, dear reader, I will share these with you on a weekly basis. In addition to the comedy provided by these dumbasses, I will provide commentary. I hope you enjoy – and always use your spell check.
Here’s one to wet your appetite:
DEAR SIR OR MADAM,
DO YOU HAVE OPORTUNITY FOR NUDE SUN BATHING ABOARD YOUR SHIPS?
SPECIFICALLY THE ENCHANTMENT OF THE SEAS.THANK YOU
...I don’t even think I need to comment on this one.