If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

- George Washington

Thursday 27 December 2012

The missing egg-slicer scandal

I work in the Tourism/Leisure business, and this piece was passed around recently, to an accompaniment of sighs and knowing shakes of the head.  I'm pretty sure it is a spoof, like the familiar 'insurance claim form' howlers, but it made me laugh - mainly because in my experience it is all too believeable.

From Thomas Cook Holidays - listing some of the guests' complaints during the season.

1. "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts."

2. "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time - this should be banned

3. "On my holiday to Goa in India , I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food at all."

4. "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our swimming costumes and towels."

5. A tourist at a top African game lodge over looking a water hole, who spotted a visibly aroused elephant, complained that the sight of this rampant beast ruined his honeymoon by making him feel "inadequate".

6. A woman threatened to call police after claiming that she'd been locked in by staff. When in fact, she had mistaken the "do not disturb" sign on the back of the door as a warning to remain in the room.

7. "The beach was too sandy."

8. "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white."

9. A guest at a Novotel in Australia complained his soup was too thick and strong. He was inadvertently slurping the gravy at the time.

10. "Topless sunbathing on the beach should be banned. The holiday was ruined as my husband spent all day looking at other women."

11. "We bought 'Ray-Ban' sunglasses for five Euros (£3.50) from a street trader, only to find out they were fake."

12. "No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled."

13. "There was no egg slicer in the apartment..."

14. "We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish..."

15. "The roads were uneven.."

16. "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England it only took the Americans three hours to get home."

17. "I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends' three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller."

18. "The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the accommodation'. We're trainee hairdressers - will we be OK staying here?"

19. "There are too many Spanish people.. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners.."

20. "We had to queue outside with no air conditioning."

21.. "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."

22. "I was bitten by a mosquito - no-one said they could bite."

23. "My fiancé and I booked a twin-bedded room but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."

8 comments:

  1. As you state, oh so plausibly Brit comments.

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  2. Thanks for the chuckle.

    I am sure it is probably a spoof as you say, but always funny.

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  3. I'm not sure it's a spoof. Even though I'm not in the tourism industry, there are a lot of tourists walking around here at some times of the year. The university business office has had numerous requests to exchange money from American to whatever the Alaskan currency is...

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  4. Personally, I think you'd have to go a long way to beat no. 1. Forriners don't have custard creams! The scandal!

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  5. RichardM: you could be right. My 'business' is 5-star and gets some reasonably classy clients (sorry, guests) but even so the level of stupidity is often dangerously high. What people like holiday reps in Torremolinos have to put up with is anyone's guess. We did get a request about Welsh currency once, but it was from a 5-year-old, so funny rather than stupid.

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  6. These are the people who return Labour governments in this country...

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  7. Some of these I made in confidence

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