Monday, March 26, 2012

Are you a Member?

Over Spring Break this year, our family had a chance to visit Disney World. After a patchwork of discounted rooms and good deals on rental cars we had everything ready. Two days worth of driving landed us in the Hilton Hotel and Resort in Orlando across from Downtown Disney. So Cool! We checked in and found our room. Mike mentioned that he was NOT impressed with the staff that did our check in. Now, he travels wwaaaayyyy more than I do and because I didn't really know the difference, the check in process was foreign to me. We got our room key... what's the big deal? I just kinda shrugged my shoulders and we all headed out to Disney!!!!

The next morning, Mike called down to the front desk and asked for extra coffee for our in room coffee pot. After looking at our account on the computer the front desk clerk said housekeeping would be happy to help. "However, Mr Pendergrass, you could get plenty of coffee down at the Gold Member lounge......" What? Nobody told us about this? With Mike's job, he travels a lot. I mean....... A LOT. As a result, he stays at the same hotel and has earned hotel points. That makes him a member of some secret hotel club. Yes, we are very high end. Apparently we were supposed to be informed of all the perks upon check in...... but we weren't. We soon found out that a Full On breakfast was waiting for the Royal Pendergrass's in the Hilton Honors Lounge. After the front desk realized we were in this special-hotel-Gold-member-secret- membership-thang they treated us TOTALLY different. They answered the phone different, they talked to us differently as we left the hotel, they went outoftheirway and fellalloverthemselves to be out New Best Friends. Hmmmm...... something smells fishy. And not just because we were near the beach.

When we were just a Run Of the Mill family from Arkansas we got Run Of the Mill treatment. No special "Yes Mr Pendergrass" or "Right away Mr Pendergrass". However, once the staff realized we were members of The Club..... well that changed everything.

So, I started thinking.... do I do this in my everyday life? What I mean is- when I first meet someone do I treat them one way and then when I find out they are a Believer or that they go to a church (ie: they are a member of "The Club") do I treat them a different way? Now, don't get me wrong..... I don't MEAN to do this. I would like to think that I treat everyone the same- Believer or not. But do I? If I want EVERYone to be a member of "The Club" shouldn't I treat everyone equally? The more I thought about this, the more convicted I became.

So now it's a science project :-). "Emily's Study of How I Treat Total Strangers"....... to be continued..........