Crazy Tourists

Yay, more northern adventure stories! So in this one I’m going to talk a bit more about what I did up north last year in Inuvik (besides just dogsledding). When I got up north there were five people working at the business. There was the two owners, the kennel master, a German boy who was volunteering, and a local man who worked in the yard. The day I arrived I met the kennel master and the German boy, Jonas. The owners were away for the week on vacation I believe. The next day another Canadian boy showed up who was supposed be there for as long as I but he quit so he’s not super important to the story. In addition the kennel master was leaving for the summer in June (I arrived in May). The point I’m getting at is that within a month, I was going to be senior staff. This was a little surprising to find out.

 Come June we had three new staff members, all girls that I was theoretically in charge of as “Head of Housekeeping”. In addition to supervising the cleaning efforts at the bed and breakfast portion of the business, and being “Interim Kennel Master” at the kennel, there were multiple other facets to the business. It was a bed and breakfast, car rental, touring company, private cleaning service, and provided dog kenneling services. They had five cars they rented out. The tours included kennel tours, town tours, organizing flying tours, and Dempster highway tours. The bed and breakfast portion included airport shuttles. They also sold straw and dog food on the side. Basically I think you get the picture that there was a lot going on.

So one week, the owners were gone, I don’t remember exactly why, but they might have gone to Edmonton. They used to just kind of leave every once in a while, and then because the kennel master was gone for the summer, I was in charge. This specific week wasn’t super busy but there were a couple of things I had to deal with. There were some tours to Tuktoyaktuk going out, and there were some guests at the bed and breakfast. The tours to Tuk included a flight, where the pilot would point out landmarks of interest, and then a bus tour of the town with a local tour guide.  

The first tour group I’m going to tell you about consisted of about ten German people and two Swiss. So they had all come into the office the day before to pay for the Tuk tour and they have a guy whose helping to organize them so that goes fine. 

Just as an aside , I received about two hours (not even) of training in the office to learn how the tours work, how to process payments with the debit machine, what to do with the receipts, how to fill out car rental forms etc, etc… like, it was a lot to learn considering I’ve never worked in customer service in my life.

So this German tour group is good to go, they’re staying at a hotel in town and we’re going to pick them up in the bus tomorrow morning to go to the airport. Fine.

THE NEXT MORNING

 There’s a couple checking out and I stay behind to deal with them and send two of the other staff members to pick up the German tour group. I check the couple out and they also want an airport shuttle so I end up driving them to the airport. When I get to the airport and get them unpacked I notice our bus there and decide to go in to see my coworkers. I walk in and they’re standing off to the side so I go over and ask them what’s up. They say that they just learned that it’s too foggy to do the scenic flying route to Tuk but they can still fly straight there and do the bus tour. The Germans feel cheated and they’re not sure they want to go if they can’t do the flying part of the tour.

 The Germans are all standing in a circle by the desk talking (in German) so I walk over, bold as hell, and ask them if they’re getting on the flight. Their designated leader tells me that they’ve decided they don’t want to go if they don’t get the flying part of the tour, and they want to go back to the hotel. I turn to the guy at the desk and say “Is the flight canceled because of the weather?” and he says “No, they can still fly they just have to go straight to Tuk cause it’s too foggy to fly around.” So I tell the Germans “The policy is that if the flight isn’t canceled, I can’t give you your money back.” The flight guy behind me says “Do you want me to say it’s canceled?” and I just turn and give him a withering look, you know the ‘you're cute but just shut up' look. And the Germans start arguing with me “We were promised the flying tour.” “We shouldn’t have to pay because it’s not the full tour.” “We should get a discount.” That kind of thing. I tell them that maybe the owner would give them a discount since it’s not the full tour, but that I personally can’t authorize or guarantee that. I say that I can guarantee that if they don’t get on the plane, they get nothing back because the flight isn’t technically cancelled.

They ask me to give them a minute to decide so I walk back over to my coworkers. After a minute they tell me they’ve decided to go on the tour. I nod at the desk attendant, tell my coworkers “Let’s bounce.” And we walk out of the airport in slow motion V formation as I put on sunglasses and pop the collar of my jacket. Job done.