This week I had to make a little trip toward the eastern edge of the state, to Susanville (which I discovered to be a really pretty, charming little town.) I left in the evening and stayed in Redding overnight so I could meet with my colleagues there in the morning before heading out to Susanville.

Since our company has a corporate account with the chain, I stayed at the Red Lion Inn. It’s handy, it means the bill is handled directly; I don’t have to put the charge on my credit card and get it reimbursed. Besides, as far as I’m concerned all these chains offer more or less the same comforts; all that separates them is price and service.

I’ve stayed at the Red Lion Inn in Eureka before; it’s fine, not a memorable experience but OK. Well, the Redding Red Lion made Eureka’s look like a shining beacon of suave, cosmopolitan charm.

It’s not that anything terrible happened; it’s more that the service was generally disappointing. For example, the room had a single bath towel, and half a pot of old coffee had been left in the little in-room coffee-maker. But the best was the bar.

It was 8:30 pm when I got to the hotel, and I was tired and parched. I checked in, dropped my luggage in the room, etc. so it was at most 9 pm when I came back to look for something to drink. The dining room was closed but the bar seemed open so I went in, looking for a glass of iced tea, lemonade, soda, cold water, whatever. Two off-shift employees were talking to a crusty old bartender who looked and sounded like a triplet to Selma and Patty Bouvier. I had seen the off-shift employees a little earlier, smoking outside; now they were chatting animatedly with the bartender.

I looked around; there were no customers at all. The three employees, including the bartender, paid no attention to me at all as I waited for a few moments. I thought maybe the bar was closed and the crew was about to clean up the place so I stepped out to check the posted hours, which extended until 10 pm. I went back in, waited another moment until somebody took a breath, and asked the bartender: “Is the place open?”

“What?” growled Bartender Lady.

“Is this place open?” I repeated.

“Is WHAT open??”

I was a little baffled, but one of the off-shift employees helpfully clarified. “She wants to know if the bar is open. Oh yeah, there’s at least half an hour to go.”

And with this, the same off-shift employee returned to telling and miming her adventures at dog obedience training class. The three slightly turned their backs to me and Bartender Lady was pointedly enraptured in the conversation. I stood there for a moment more, stunned, tired from a day of work and three hours of driving, trying to figure out to whether they would actually offer any service to, you know, a customer. Unasked, Bartender Lady pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels and started pouring for her pals.

At that point, I got the message and gave up on even asking for the location of a soda machine. I walked to a nearby gas station and got a bottle of ice-cold water.

(By the way, the next morning I received friendly and competent service in the hotel restaurant, which went a long way to improve my view; I dutifully filled the little feedback card and praised the nice lady there.)

None of the experience was particularly traumatic, especially for someone who’s had to sleep in some pretty damn roachy motels (including a bed set up in a basement boiler room, next to the janitor’s mop, with water running on the floor.) But given that the hotel looked about 30% occupied, and is set on a strip filled with other similar hotels, you’d think they would make more of an effort to offer service in this economy.

I would not be surprised to learn that there have been employee cuts and the remaining ones are disgruntled. Whatever — the root cause is still bad hotel management. Don’t treat your employees so poorly that they’ll give bad service, and get rid of bad apples.

This resulted in lost income for them the very same day, too! Along the way to Susanville, I told the story to two co-workers; and one said: “Oh, I have to stay in town tonight so I need a hotel, but I’ll go across the street, then.”

Instant lost customer — and you can bet I’m not going to make an effort to go back either. How stupid is that, when everyone is hurting for business?