So when it rains it pours, and then I wonder if it will ever stop pouring....

I know, the title of my blog doesn't sound to good...but so much has happened in the last three and half weeks that it feels like it is still pouring outside and my head will never come out of the clouds. To start off with, I will briefly tell you about my Dad and what happened. He was forced to resign from the fire department after 25 years of service. There was a new city manager in town and he deiced that he needed to make a statement and my dad was it. He either resign or be fired. My dad was less then 2 years away from retiring and now, he loses everything. So this happened at the end of last month. While we are still trying to put our heads around what happened, my husband was then fired from his job. Wow, I know. Ket and I were and still are devastated. I have a lot more details about what happened with that one, and will include it at the end of this post. And lastly just this week, my mom was let go from her employment. Wow, I know!
It has accrued to me through all of this that it must be really easy for people to just fire other people. I mean all three of these situations, they are hard working, honest, dependable, kind of employees that everyone would want. It is still a little hard to put my mind around what has been going on, or even what has transpired. When my Dad was going through this, we were fasting for him, giving our support and shocked at the way things were handled. Then the next week it was our turn to be shocked at how things were handled. We decided that really the only security that you have on a job is if you own the business. If you work for your self then at least you can not fire yourself. Then when it happened to my mom this week, I started to ask myself if there is some kind of lesson that we should be learning, and we had not learned it yet and that is why it has happened three different times with in a mater of weeks. My stomach still turns at the thought that we are all with out jobs. For my Dad and Ket, it will be a tough and long road to get a job, it seems like the higher up in a company you are the harder it is to get a job. I know they will both find work, we will make ends meet but how long will that take.
Just to though mud in our face when we are already down, the renter that we had in our house has discovered that the pergo flooring is bubbled out and there is water damage. We invested what the cause was and it was because she had installed the water to the fridge (the ice maker) and there was a leak in the connection. For six months the little leak did its damage. She of course feels that it is not her fault at all. I told her that she could hook up the fridge water and if I had told her that there was a leak then she would never have touched it. I even wrote on her move in form that it didn't work. So go figure.
So will it stop pouring any time soon. Can it get any worse with the holiday season coming?
To tell you what happened to Ket, I don't know if I could even write it all again. I have however already written a letter to their coropertate office and have sent it out. I will post that letter here. It pretty much tells everything that happened, and how angry I have been these past few weeks since it has happened. I know that everyone is concerned about us, and I just want to thank you for your concern. I have to get this all off my chest and tomorrow I will post a gratitude post, because there is still many things to be thankful for.
Be warned, it is long....
To whom it may concern:
I am writing this letter as a complaint against an employee of yours regarding a contract that was set up between Heritage Makers and the Marriott TownePlace Suites Meridian. The contract was set up so that my business along with five others consultants could hold monthly meeting in the meeting space from the time of 6pm-midnight. We prepaid for the space for a total of six months. Our first meeting took place in July of 2008. The total price was 300 dollars. We were later given two extra months due to moving our meeting to the Residence Inn and missing the month of August.
On November 7th 2008, Ms. H. a Regional Director for your company decided that I could no longer hold my meetings or my companies meetings at her hotel. This had nothing to do with the meetings; it was all based on personal reasons against me. Let me explain what happened. I would first like to bring to light the unprofessionalism Ms. H. displayed from Tuesday November 4th through Friday November 7th. Upon arrival to the Towne Place Suites, Ms. H. informed Ket (my husband who was the General Manager) of the possibility of termination, and that it was not up to her to decide. In fact it was a corporate decision, Ms. N. had the finial say, and she was there to investigate missing funds in the month of June. Over the next few days, Ket waited for the final decision, and then finally on Friday, Ms. H. let him know it was really her decision, and she had decided to end his employment with the company. I felt this course of action by Ms. H. was incredibly unprofessional to “string” him along for several days. It looked like she didn’t want to be without a General Manager for the week, while she had other business in the area. He was included in all company meetings with other GMs and expected to perform daily tasks as if nothing was going on. She even had his paycheck sent to the hotel and it arrived on Thursday morning, but it was dated for Wednesday termination.
When Ket informed me of what had happened, he also informed me that Ms. H. walked him across the street, to the bank, so that he could cash his final check, where he was instructed to give Ms. H. cash in the amount of $599, to replace the amount that was misplaced/stolen by an employee at the TownePlace Suites in Meridian. Ms. H. informed Ket that the owner of the company, Mr. D. , wanted his money back. Insinuating that Mr. D knew what was going on. Although Ms. H. assumes that this was stolen by Ket, there is no evidence to support this “theory” nor is there any evidence as to who in fact stole the money. This action by Ms. H. is in fact, illegal.
Later that day, Ms. H. emailed me about a camera that the company had bought and wanted to know if I could have Ket return it. Around 7:00pm, I approached the property so that I could return the camera and retrieve some personal property left in the General Manager’s office. I also wanted to get a receipt for the money Ms. H. took from Ket. When Ms. H. came down from her room, she politely asked me how I was doing, and under the circumstances, I replied “Not too well”. I wasn’t in the frame of mind to exchange pleasantries with her. I retrieved our personal property, and asked for the receipt from Ms. H., and with slight hesitation, she gave me one.
At 8:15pm I returned to the property to retrieve some chairs that were left in Ket’s office that belonged to him. Upon arrival at the hotel, I was able to get the chairs, and as I started loading them into my van, Ms. H. approached me and asked me to come into the office with her. I stood in the doorway while she began to verbally attack me. She began with how she perceived that I had an attitude with her earlier, and that I should be upset with Ket for taking the money and trying to hide it. That his termination was his entire fault, He should have known better. I was not going to stand there and let her treat me with such disrespect and rudeness, so I expressed my opinion on the subject. I replied that he did not in fact steal the money that he was a man of integrity. That she was the one to blame for lack of training, when in fact he was not even trained until September 18th of this year and that is when another GM in the area was also trained. He had opened the hotel in April and should have been trained the week after it opened like the other GMs. She came back at me with more angry comments and I decide that this conversation had to be over; I had taken enough verbal abuse by her. I proceeded to the front door to retrieve my finial chair. When I started to walk away, she followed me out of her office and threw at me that I was no longer welcome on the property, and that my “little group would be stopped”, meaning my business could no longer meet at the TownePlace suites or the Residence Inn.
I could not believe what I was hearing. I had a meeting coming up the 14th of November and my customers where counting on it. I told her I didn’t think she could do that, and we had already paid in full. She told me she would check into “what kind of price Ket had given me.” I then replied that he had nothing to do with it. It had been set up between the Sales Manager and one of my co-workers. I had nothing to do with it, except that we worked for the same company. She came back at me that she would check into it; and then proceeded to stomp back into her office.
I left the property and returned home to tell Ket what had happened, and Ms. H. had already called my husband by the time I had gotten home. I am appalled at the lack of respect and professionalism that she displayed. The next day she had a meeting with all her GM in the area and told them I was banned from all the properties and could not hold any meetings there. She has even gone as far as to tell some of the employees at the TownePlace Suites to “not have a Nicole attitude” with her.
My husband and I have tried all week to get a hold of someone in Human Resource to find out if a check was coming, if we needed to move the location of the meeting or if we could still have it at the Residence Inn, no one has returned our calls. One of my other co-workers decided to go down to the hotel and see if we could still plan on meeting at the hotel. The GM of that hotel said that we could still have the meeting there but that she had instructions from Ms. H. that I was not allowed to be on property. I decide not to show up at the hotel in question so that I would not have a confrontation, and because of this I am sure that I have lost business.
In conclusion I am shocked at two things, the way my husband was treated in being terminated, and above all, the way I was treated and banned from other properties that are run by Ms. H. I did not seek her out; she called me into Her office. I have lived in this area all my life along with my family, know many people. If this is the way that your company does business, and Marriott, then I don’t want to do business with them. The fact that Ms. H. let personal feelings affect how she ran things, does not say a lot about her character. I was treated poorly and with no respect as a person. I am not an employee of the company, but a business associate. Thank you for your time in this matter and I look forward to hearing your response to these issues before I take further action.