I used to stay here a lot for work probably over 10 years ago now. After finding out our usual place was booked up for our night back in SJC, I convinced my coworker to stay here because I know the guys that come into town from India like this place although I try to convince them to stay at the Courtyard with the rest of us.
The woman at the front desk was super nice to us and gave us cookies during our check-in. She was also super nice to my coworker who was making some book recommendations to her after we asked her about the hot tub location and usage.
She pointed us to the hot tub and said it would be open until 10PM. We both tried to activate the bubble timer, but it did not seem to be doing anything. You could tell the timer was working because it was ticking away, but the blower that it was powering didn’t work at all. We stayed in the hot tub for a bit and were joined by two other adult females whom we did not know but they were friendly enough and appeared to be totally sober. After about 5 minutes later, a gentlemen in uniform appears and tells us we need to leave the pool area because it is closed and he needed to lock up the area. My coworker explained to the gentleman that the front desk receptionist said we were allowed to use the pool and the gentleman started getting really angry with us saying that he is the maintenance person for the area and that the pool is now closed. We said okay and then looked at each other for about 20 seconds while we decided silently who would be the first to get out first and then he asked us if we are going to get moving or not because he urgently needed to close the pool.
There must have been some misunderstanding about the closure time being 10PM and not any later than that since the time can go by quickly in the hot tub even without it being a Time Machine. The two women appeared to be even more confused about the situation than my coworker since the employee didn’t do a good job of explaining why he was kicking us out. I got out first to dry off with a towel while the others followed. This male worker waited impatiently for everyone else to get out and only then went to the other end of the pool while we dried and gathered our items to leave. On the way out I informed the maintenance worker about the non-functioning bubble timer and he said he would have someone looking into it in the morning. When we got into the lobby, we checked the clock and it was 10:04 so we had already inconvenienced the gentleman from leaving his post by 4 minutes. I think overall the experience wouldn’t have been so negative had this hotel worker not been so openly hostile from the beginning to the guests. Maybe he was just having a bad day and us getting out of there was the last thing that kept him from going home, or maybe he is used to dealing with drunk or belligerent people. I just didn’t see the point in taking it out on guest that weren’t being rowdy or exhibiting obnoxious behavior. Really strange behavior and experience for me to observe a West Coast hotel to be openly pushy like that.
All the more reason to encourage my coworkers to stay at the Courtyard with me to next time around! Even the Residence Inn staff is not like this and that is a super cheap (but older) property to stay at.
I would have given this a 1-star experience, but the woman at the front desk was super, super nice to us! Maybe the other maintenance employee can learn more about the concept of hospitality from her?
