So, my best friend is doing some shifts over the holiday season at the spa attached to the hotel I used to work at. She started at the spa when I brought her in over a year ago - she was brought down to the hotel primarily because we needed staff down there and she was able to work it so that she could do shifts at the spa and the hotel. And then, as more spa guest services staff was hired and trained, she eventually was doing all hotel shifts.
At first it was all okay, but none of knew how bad Nicole would end up getting in terms of how she handled staff and the pressure of running a business in the first place. Narcissists don't have a clue how to properly delegate and all the little gods and goddesses know that is the case with her!
In the end, my friend quit the hotel without notice. Rightfully so, by the way. Too much bullshit all at once and no clear sign of there being an end to that particular tunnel.
Well, she made an offer to the spa manager to help out during the holidays. Which the spa manager gladly took her up on. Now, I've not been a huge fan of the spa manager for ages but now that I've been able to look at the entire situation from the outside I can understand where she had been coming from back when she went on medical leave during the summer of 2021. It's not easy butting heads against the likes of Nicole every damn day, especially when Nicole continuously proved that she didn't know how to run the spa correctly and made demands that were impossible to meet. Such as demanding that the spa manager somehow fit in a couple's massage in for somebody last minute when there is no availability at all, and then losing her shit at me when I told her that what she wanted couldn't be done due to the rules set in place by the College of Massage Therapists of NL - each massage therapist can only do a maximum of five massages a day, and the demand Nicole made would have put two of the massage therapists over...in the end we ended up losing several massage therapists over similar bullshit.
Anyhow, I digress. Jenn is able to completely avoid having to go down to the hotel - which was one of her stipulations for going to work at the spa again. But that doesn't mean that she's not able to get all the tea for what is going on down there. Which she shared with me on her way home from her first shift back at the spa last night ^_^
Nicole's little spy in the spa from around the time that I left the hotel is no longer working up in the spa. At all. She made a huge mistake in bragging to all the spa employees about how she was reporting anything I said on FB to Nicole. She had NO idea how well respected I was in the spa as she had never worked with me during my time up there and had no idea that I had gone to bat for the spa girls on more than one occasion and that they would often come to me with issues they were having. She got ostracized by all the spa staff and when Nicole needed somebody to help with the hotel desk Suzanne was promptly told that she was going to be the one going down. Besides, the spa already had enough guest services trained people that they didn't need Suzanne but because she was buddies with Nicole it wasn't like there was much choice in taking her. At first. Now, she's point blank not welcome to return to the spa, and I find it fucking hilarious - karma came to bite her in the ass!
Mandie is doing everything in her power to keep Nicole's nose out of spa business, and it's easier now that Suzanne is no longer up there to report on everything. Thank fuck for that. And now I have a lot more respect for Mandie than I ever did before - back when I started working up at the spa I'd been labouring under the idea that Mandie was the one who fucked things up in terms of staffing up there, that she was completely behind a lot of the estheticians going out on medical leave as well. I didn't know the role that Nicole played in all of that, but I sure as hell know now. And when Wendy had to step in to run the spa as well as the hotel a lot of staff lumped Wendy in with Nicole, but they weren't aware that Wendy did everything she could at the time to keep Nicole out of the loop with a lot of things in that place and that Wendy went to bat for them even stronger than Mandie had been able to. In the end though, the spa staff saw what Wendy had been trying to do...and Nicole figured it out too, and did her level best to work it so that when the business started reopening after we had to shut down back in January of this year that Wendy was not included in that reopening. I saw the writing on the wall about a month into being reopened and I had no problem telling staff that when they asked me about it. And Nicole gave me shit for starting rumours...which obviously weren't rumours at all. They were observations based on what I'd figured out about how Nicole operated.
So, Tyler is still working at the hotel despite even the owner not wanting him there, and the useless Sarah is still there as well. And now Suzanne is in the mix. Cindy has pretty much lost the plot and I'm so glad that she didn't end up moving in with me - she shows up when she feels like it and half-asses it half of the time when she does show up. I truly get it though, and it's tough to watch her basically fall apart, but at the same time I have a feeling that it would have happened even if she had been able to move in with me in the end. And because I tend to react to other people's mental health going to shit I know that mine would have spiraled downwards too, and that is not something I can afford to let happen. It's one thing if my mental health goes to shit on my own, but not if it's in reaction to somebody else's going to shit.
Oh, and the hotel recently had a guest there who was in the news for shooting a couple of people in CBS...and the guest destroyed the room. Holes in walls, busted furniture, and more. This despite knowing full well who the guest was as he reserved the room in his own name. And more and more of the criminal element has been staying at the hotel, running drugs and worse out of the rooms, mainly the outside rooms where there are fewer cameras monitoring things. I guess it lines up with Nicole's whole 'heads in beds' push - it doesn't matter WHO stays so long as it's money in the business' pockets. And no consideration is taken into what sort of damages these people leave in their wake. Just like there is no consideration taken into the amount of time and money it will take to repair these damages.
The hotel's reputation is getting worse by the day and I am so glad that I'm no longer attached to it. If people ask me about my time at the hotel I sing Wendy's praises and let them know exactly why and how I quit. I warn people to stay away from the hotel, the B&B, and the long-term stay apartments attached to the business, but that the spa and the health clinics are definitely worth the money. If people ask me what it's like to work there I tell them to avoid it unless they are truly desperate and to keep their options open for something else. At one point I would have considered it a good stepping stone towards getting experience that could be used towards employment at a better hotel, but now? Yeah, avoid the place at all costs if you can. I also describe Nicole as a malignant narcissist - I was raised by one and could see all the hallmarks in her, but I figured that because I didn't have to deal with her 24/7 that I could handle it long enough to find something at a better hotel...until I couldn't. At least I could recognize what she was trying to do - I've been gaslit by the best, bitch, so don't think I don't know what you were doing. And, yes, it is entirely my opinion about what sort of person she is/was but it's an opinion based upon personal experience and more than a little research into Cluster B personality archetypes.
Now that I know that the spa staff hasn't been poisoned against me and that quite a few of them genuinely miss me, I plan on making a few appointments in the new year. Once I get my bills paid down again and can start saving a bit of money instead of playing catch-up every pay day, that is. Sure, I'll have to pay full-price, but for the services I usually get they don't cost an arm and a leg anyway. And I've got a feeling that I might get a reduced price anyway. At least for the first visit back. Let's just see where this goes from here!
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