I think we can all agree that no matter what gender you are, when it comes to your wedding day you want everything to be perfect. Men and women vary on how important a marriage ceremony is, but once you plunk down that large chunk of cash….. You have expectations that need to be met. I have watched enough Judge Judy to know that weddings are expensive, wrought with drama and generally exhausting. So when my best friend decided to have herself one, I was nervous. Fort collins has several beautiful hotels in the area, so it wasn’t difficult to go with the Ramada Inn on Mulberry and I-25 for the select reception venue. The price was modest, but seemed worth it since the catering would end up being quite a pretty penny. Like every wedding since the dawn of time, bullshit was just on the horizon. I went last night to pick up the hall and arrange the decorations with the bride and her family. We arrived and were greeted with indifference and shortly after meeting the staff I found out why. The bride’s father walked out of the kitchen with a shocked look on his face. He didn’t say much, he just simply asked that the bride and I go look for ourselves and decide what would be best to do.My bullshit-o-meter started going wild and I grabbed the camera I carry in my purse like any good wanna-be journalist would. What I saw in the kitchen was astonishing. I would equate this place to an episode of “Kitchen Nightmares” but it was so much worse than the horror stories I had seen on television. My mouth dropped open, only to be quickly shut in order to avoid contamination from whatever might be living in that kitchen. Cigarette butts adorned the counter tops by the hundreds. Discarded clothing and tables turned on end were littering the entire room, while the railings were caked in what could only be ten years of gunk. Weddings are so important and so short that one thing causing a wave can ruin the entire day. This wasn’t a wave, this was a TSUNAMI. The Ramada Inn of Fort Collins is the dirtiest place I have ever been to in my life, including the homeless shelters and crack houses I used to deliver food to with my church group. I have never in my life witnessed such a vagrant absolve to ignore health and safety codes. Not only would I REFUSE to have my wedding there, but I would sue the ever-loving pants off of the owner, the manager and every single employee that allowed this to happen. My poor sweet girlfriend just didn’t know what to do, bless her heart. She walked around the kitchen in shock for a few moments before I asked her to please let me handle it. My initial thought would be to take the manager by the ear lobe and show him what his mother obviously had forgotten to show him. I wanted to scream, and cry for the emotional distress the bride must have been feeling. I wanted to knock someone out. Calmly, and with much more respect than was deserved, I politely asked the people working to fix what they had done. Realistically there is no way I could ask that they make it right, there is no way to make it right 12 hours before the reception and with the food already being prepared. A COMPLETE refund is not only mandatory, but I believe that this family has every right to go after more money for the emotional toll it has taken on them. Finding out the night before the wedding that the chances of poisoning the guests at your wedding are astronomically high, isn’t easy to recover from.

So what did I do?

I gave them the opportunity to fix it. I asked them to please have the room sanitized and cleaned top to bottom before guests were to arrive in a few short hours. The reception was less than 16 hours away, and a change of venue that late would have been disastrous. The previously closed off room was suddenly the most important room in the entire hotel.

What did they do?

Nothing. They actually did nothing. The morning of the wedding we went over to check the place out. It was disgusting, it was putrid. The management team was rude and unapologetic. They lied to our face, insisting that the food wouldn’t travel through the room that time forgot, and instead would be traveling up an elevator. The elevator they were talking about? Broken, with tape over the doorway.  My best friend was about to have a wedding reception in the worst place I had ever seen. I sent a representative over to them and within four hours he had the place scrubbed top to bottom. He had the food placed into a room that was all the way across the venue to avoid contamination, He had the waitstaff jumping at the very twitch of my finger to get me whatever I needed to have to get through the reception. It was enough to make my stomach turn, but when the floors were bleached and the walls scrubbed to an almost acceptable level just moments before the guests arrived… we all had to breath. The floors were still wet when the party started, but it was bleach water this time instead of some mystery fluid that had built up over years of transients living in some back room. So that is why I am writing this. To give you, my loyal readers and friends a small glimpse into the story that I have sent to every newspaper, every radio station and news organization in the state of Colorado. The opportunity to make right the obviously attrocious kitchen was ignored up to the last few hours before the wedding. It was still disgusting, I still politely declined any food that came from the kitchen and urged my friends to do the same. The bridal party ended up feasting on subway sandwhiches and chocolate brought from home.

Would I encourage anyone to go to the Ramada? No. I simply would not. In fact, I will never stay at another Ramada in my life no matter what the price may fall to. Nothing is more important to me than the health and safety of my friends and family and nothing is further from the minds of the staff at the Ramada.

So let me hear it, Whats your worst experience with customer service?

© 2009, AntiSoccermom. All rights reserved to the original author unless stated otherwise.