“Got your food, Katie,” Wyatt said.
Caleb silently reached out for both the box and the food before his foot grazed the edge of the door.
“Thanks, guys,” Caleb said. “See ya after we’re done eatin’.”
Then Caleb closed the door on both of them as I buried my smile in the depths of my glass of tea.
CHAPTER 28
DYLAN
Finance meetings were a terrible way to spend a week. I had to field insanely stupid questions about stuff I laid out in a packet I handed out that people never read. It was a waste of time and paper to make these packets, but one time I didn’t and there was practically a rebellion. I was going over the short-term finances with our Houston resort, trying to figure out why in the world we were spending more money than we needed to. The bank accounts weren’t averaging out to what they usually did, and even though we were turning a decent quarterly profit, our monthly expenses for the main location and the Houston location had shot through the roof.
Some of the investors were getting nervous about our spending. While I assured them I had everything under control, I was a little nervous myself. All the expenses were justified. More feed as we acquired more animals. More advertising fees as we became more popular. New jobs and requisitioning the funds to pay for those positions. A couple of renovations that had taken place at the Houston establishment to update it and broaden its horizons based on feedback from the customers.
I reassured everyone we would recoup the money, especially once we got Charleston up and running, which seemed to get them off my back for the immediate future.
I was walking back into the lobby of the main resort when I ran into Katie. She was at the front desk dealing with a difficult check-in. The woman’s kids were running around and yelling. Katie looked as calm as she could be, though her body language was curled in a bit. The woman had her finger wagging in the air like she was giving her a good chastising.
What in the world was going on?
“Excuse me, ma’am. Maybe I can be of some assistance,” I said.
The look of relief on Katie’s face made me want to kick this woman off my property.
“What I’m trying to get this young girl to understand is that I booked with a coupon. Twenty percent off the final price of my stay at the resort. And the bill she’s got me trying to sign here is three hundred dollars more than I’m supposed to be paying!”
“Do you have your coupon with you?” I asked.
“Yes, I do. She’s got it,” the woman said.
“Do you have your receipt confirmation of your purchase?” I asked.
“No, I don’t. I haven’t booked online. I still have yet to book, and I’m not signing anything until that total comes down to what it’s supposed to be.”
“Well, first off, I want to thank you for choosing us for your stay. Let me get this coupon settled for you, and then we can get you settled in,” I said. “Just give me a second to figure out what’s going on.”
I walked Katie back into my office as the woman huffed in response. I went over and sat at my desk with Katie hunched over my shoulder. Her breath on my neck was very distracting, and I stole a glance at her to make sure she was okay. I could tell she was still rattled from the encounter, and I cursed myself for stopping for a drink before I got here.
“Dylan, that’s not a valid coupon,” she said.
“It’s not one I’ve seen before,” I said. “But I think I know what’s going on.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“There are websites out there that scam people out of their information by forging coupons to businesses like ours. It’s the price of becoming successful in the industry. Predatory websites ask for all sorts of information from people and, in exchange, they get coupons like this that don’t work at places like ours.”
“Are you sure? I scanned the barcode on it, and it popped up in the system. It just popped up with an error,” I said.
“They’re becomin’ more and more convincin’ these days. I’ve seen a couple of them in the past month. I’m not gonna walk you through this because it doesn’t happen often, but here’s the gist of what I’m doin’. I’m typin’ in the website URL advertised on the coupon, and I’m reportin’ them for predatory practices. Then I’m gonna keep this coupon, take a picture of it, and get Andrew or someone to upload it onto the website so our faithful patrons can be aware of it.”
“What are we going to do about that woman out there? I feel bad for her,” she said.
“I know you do, so here’s what we’re gonna offer her. I’m gonna give her ten percent off her entire stay here, as well as multiple complimentary room service tickets. The kids can have free horseback rides since we really aren’t busy this week anyway, and Momma there’s gonna get a complimentary massage. It’s all we can do right now, and then tell her the only coupons we issue are directly from our website and mailing list.”
“All right. I can do that,” she said.
I sat back and watched as Katie handled herself with grace. The woman still wasn’t happy with what had happened, but I could tell the free room service and complimentary massage were wearing her down. Katie got the woman and her kids checked in and even offered to help them with their bags. Even though I knew she wanted to make law her career, I would’ve paid her anything to get her to stay in that customer service position. She was wonderful at it.