...but not so bad that they couldn't get EVEN worse. My big plan was to take the one guaranteed no-show and simply hand that room over to the newlyweds. Hey, any large room qualifies as a bridal suite, so why should I let the fact that someone already paid for this particular large room stand in the way of getting shit done? Sometime in the indeterminate near future the rightful owners would come looking to check in too, but that would be then, this was now. I almost made it too. I was seconds from giving the groom the keys. Right then, it turned out that the rightful owner of those keys was also from the wedding party and standing   right   next   to   the   groom. Woops. So much for that plan. I was out of ideas.
"What exactly happened? Why can't you just give us the keys to our room?" asked the groom.
"I well, uh, there was a slight computer mixup you see, and..."
"Sounds like you people need to get a better computer system."
"That's exactly what I've been trying to tell them, sir." why is the crappiness of our computer system obvious even to guests who are seeing it for the first time from further away than they could punch, and yet completely eludes the managers who pay untold thousands for it each year? "Sir, I'm going to call my manager and ask him to come in. He'll fix everything."
*ring* *ring*
The night manager picked up and said "Hello?"
"Um, it's me again. For a while, I thought I had a solution, but I didn't. I don't know what to do. Should I try walking them?"
"Walk a wedding party???"
"Um, I guess that's a no."
Silence.
"Okay, look, I'll think of something. I'll look around for some room that we can somehow cram them into, I don't think they care anymore. Can you, um, come over? I haven't even started with all the night audit stuff yet."
"Okay. I'll be there in 15 minutes."
"Thank you. I'm really sorry."

The romantic interest of this story happened to drop by the office at this point. To preserve her anonymity, I'll call her Cutiepie.

"How's everything going?" said Cutiepie, looking at me with her clear, baby-blue eyes.
"Bad. Awful. We're totally, completely screwed. I checked the wrong person into their wedding suite."
"Okay, well, good luck. I guess I'll go upstairs and finish up the paperwork."
"Hey, if you see, um, the guy, what's his name..."
"I know what you mean."
"...the security guy, can you tell him to come down here? Nothing serious going on, we'd just like some company."
"Okay, I'll tell him."
She walked out, past the guests. Only later did I find out that she had just gotten done kicking all of them out of the bar for being rowdy.

"Look, um f1r3br4nd" he said, reading my nametage. "I want to speak to your manager. Right now."
"He's on his way over already, sir. He'll be here in minutes."

Not knowing what else to do until the night manager arrived, I left Mr. Backoffice "in charge" and wandered off, hoping against hope that somehow, some miracle would happen. Like maybe a first floor, poolside, jaccuzzi-equipped, empty, clean wedding suite might have managed to not only slip past us unnoticed up till now, but would also offer some way of making sure that it was in fact empty without risking 'walking in on someone'. No such luck. I came back to the Front Desk of Chaos and started desperately mumbling and fumbling through the 'bucket'-- the thingie in which we keep the hardcopy room registration slips. All along, I was doing my best to present and upbeat, positive spin on things to the guests, who were ready to drown me in the pool by now (luckily our trusty security guards had finally gotten there, and were keeping us company). I had hit rock bottom. I was having a valley experience. Now things were so unspeakably, nightmarishly awful, that there was simply no way they could possibly get any worse. Could they?

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