Day One, Revisited

I know I wrote that a year and a half ago, but now that the restoration is (almost) over and the innkeeping has begun, it seems just as appropriate today.

Our first guests were a couple from Philadelphia just looking to get away on a Friday night. The sheets had arrived that morning, and I had to rush out at the last minute to find little bottles of shampoo, but we just finished it when the guests arrived...at 8pm.

They went out to dinner and I went to turn down the room, and realized I had no idea how to turn down a room. Dawn, who had to show me how to do "hospital corners" earlier that day, was also stumped. So we unmade and remade the bed at least four times, finally abandoning the whole idea.

The couple didn't mention the bed when they returned, but did let us know the remote for the whirlpool tub wasn't working. We assumed it was batteries, but the only other AAA batteries were on the other side of the farm, so I ran as fast as I could, in the pitch dark, to the other end of the farm and back, only to find it wasn't the batteries. The wall controls worked, but after a few minutes of us playing with those, they stopped working, too.

So there was no whirlpool bath and no turn down service. And no phone or water glass, either; I'd forgotten those. In the morning, though, I think I made it up with home-made bread, fresh fruit, and waffles, plus a mini-tour of the wolf sanctuary. When it came time to go, though, I couldn't pay the bill.

I'd just set up a merchant account a week ago, but hadn't received the credit card reader yet. So even though the couple wanted to pay, I couldn't accept it. I ended up printing a "receipt" on my computer, and telling them I'd charge the card as soon as the terminal arrived.

And that was it. Oh, except for the part about cleaning the room. I realized that I haven't cleaned a bathroom since 1996, the year we discovered housekeepers. It took me twelve trips around the house to assemble all of my cleaning supplies, and in between I was interrupted by phone calls and several people stopping by for tours. In the end it took me six hours to clean the room, but I just finished it before the next guests arrived...at 8pm.

But that's a story for Day Two.

P.S. Dawn has a new phrase: "You're the innkeeper, you do it."