Friday, October 29, 2010

Don't stay at the Vilu Reef Beach and Spa Resort in the Maldives

Their employees humiliated a wedding couple.  Good grief.

The hotel has suspended the employees involved, but this sort of thing is absolute death for a tourism industry.  Google makes this sort of thing high up in its search results, and seems to maintain that ranking for quite a while.  Hotel managers everywhere need to make sure that their employees all know this.

And that this sort of behavior is a firing offense.

Via The Drawn Cutlass, who knows the hotel business.  He also relates the infuriating story of some UK firemen who let a man drown because they hadn't been "trained in water rescue" and so saving his life would be against policy.  Cowards.

5 comments:

Divemedic said...

As a firefighter, I can sympathize with those guys. We have many policies in our department that, as a firefighter and a paramedic, I do not agree with.

However, refusing to follow the rules will get us fired in many cases. I have a family and a future to protect. I imagine the same is true of the firefighters in this story.

Let's not forget that the true cause of the accident was the idiot that walked onto thin ice in the first place, and the firefighters who weren't trained in rescue on thin ice may very well have wound up also becoming victims by entering a situation that they were not trained and equipped to handle. Now instead of one drowning victim, you have three or more. That doesn't do anyone any good.

TOTWTYTR said...

The mask has slipped a bit and now people know what the inhabitants of the Maldives really think of westerners.

No doubt the staff will be punished, not for their insults, but for letting the cat out of the bag.

Now the foolish infidels will not come and give us money that we can send to our brothers so they can kill more foolish infidels.

As to the fire fighters, no sympathy from me. The public will tolerate our salaries and pensions as long as they know we will do our job. Part of which is figuring out how to improvise when something falls out of protocol or policy.

"I was only following orders" doesn't work any better now than it did in 1945-46.

Bob said...

Thanks for the link, Ted. Much appreciated.

Divemedic said...

TOTWTYTR: Scene safety. Are you telling me that you have never staged because a scene was unsafe? Would you, without equipment and training, run into a large chemical spill to save someone?
A burning building?
Why should a lake covered in thin ice be any different?

Phillip said...

To back up what Divemedic says a little: In my Rescue Diver class, we're taught that if we go to jump into the water to help a drowning victim, we take a moment to put on mask, fins, and snorkel if possible, and full gear if we can grab it fast enough. You'd be amazed how fast I can grab my full vest and get in the water.

Because if you jump in the water without equipment, you just have another victim. This was driven home to me one time when I was the one in the water, and I saw a boat captain jump in the water and leave an untrained person driving the boat... the boat which then hit me and forced my sinking boat under the water, while the captain with no gear simply became another person struggling in the water.

Now, you don't just stand around and do nothing because of policies, but you should try something that keeps you safe. What are lifeguards trained to do around a pool? Throw a hook or something while they stay out of the water. Use your head. Don't get in the water with the victim unless you can't get to them any other way. But it all has to make sense at the end of the day.