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I was not about to accept any suggestions of "don't try to solve this
during the con".
Fuck that -- I had already fixed it four years ago, so why was this
happening again now??
Unacceptable.
I started making some inquiries, against various resistive factors such as
front-desk personnel who had no idea who management really was, our people
in hotel-liaison roles who didn't seem eager to defend our own, and downright
ignorant employees who had no idea what our relationship with the hotel and
its subsidiaries consisted of from well-established precedent.
I did speak with one sympathetic day-manager who had been there for over a
decade and favorably knew all about our prior status and good relationship,
so I handed her
one of these
along with my contact info for the weekend to pass along.
She was able to helpfully vouch for us and facilitate continuing some parts
of the discussion, so while I shouldn't have needed to spend any of my
time working on this at-con, I managed to push the interaction along a bit
more than it otherwise may have gone.
From some other key people I got some amount of vague finger-pointing excuses,
"I'm just doing what I was told", without identifying the actual source of
such supposed directives.
Another typical cowardly response based mostly in personal prejudice without
wanting to be held accountable for it.
And the most ironic part?
I had forgotten to bring my remaining pack of "barefooter" badge ribbons
to the con, to hand out to the *many* barefoot people I spotted around
the hotel, and help them assert their own preferences.
I hadn't really thought they would be so necessary again.
Raising the issue on the spot seemed to carry some small benefit; I was told
later that "I was good to go" and that things had been all settled.
Except that this apparently only applied to me personally, not
anyone else at the con?!
Now, how does anyone not flag something so obviously stupid?
Because our hotel liaison of that year couldn't be bothered to push the
point that I was speaking in defense of the entire convention, and
she simply wound up confusing the whole issue even farther.
So as of Sunday morning unshod people were still getting ejected from
the breakfast buffet, and we still had events to run and then strike and
loadout to do, so I couldn't really spend any more time on this.
I did locate the food-service manager in that area and had a brief chat,
and got such a litany of the typical bullshit excuses that I knew that
thorough followup post-con would be needed anyway.
I had in hand what I thought was the right contact information for all the
authoritative people in various loops, and began sending email after I
got home and recovered.
Except that the info I had was only half right, and my inquiries were
probably going into the ether or recipients' spam-folders.
How does *anything* ever get done in the business world, when the "oh, I
never saw that email" excuse is so easy to make?
A week later I started making followup calls, and was finally 1>
given correct contact info, and 2> got someone to prod the right
other people to check their email more carefully.
I also learned that some of the newer Westin management were no longer direct
Marriott employees, as the property had moved to a franchise status under
a third-party management outfit called
"Aimbridge".
Except that the people *at Aimbridge itself* couldn't even find some
of the names I had been given in their own records, let alone correct working
email addresses.
On the Westin side I had to make my efforts a bit scatter-shot in the hope
of actually reaching the right people, so what ultimately got me a response
was the second letter I sent in that general direction.
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