Sometimes I feel like I'm married to the Wolf of Wall Street (OK, maybe minus the drug and sex addict part of his personality). I'm talking about his sales skills of course. Fabrice could sell ice to an Eskimo for all I know. I don't know how he does it, but he *almost* always end up getting what he wants from people and he's a really good negotiator. In short, he's my complete opposite.
As you might be aware, I've made it to the final of the Blog Awards Ireland and when I got the news, I decided it would be a good idea to attend. However, I learned that the hotel was fully booked and it seemed like all the B&Bs around where unavailable either. Fabrice decided to use his sales skills, and basically sell our desperation in finding a place to sleep.
I made a list of pretty much all the B&B in Co.Kildare, from Straffan to Kill, Naas, Celbridge and even Maynooth. The first one I rang was probably the most unhelpful B&B owner in the world. I politely asked if there was a room available for the 4th of October and the answer I received was: "I don't know, just go check booking.com"! Of course I didn't check and even if they had rooms, I wouldn't have stayed there after that kind of rudeness. The second one I rang was fully booked, unfortunately.
Do you think that would have stopped my husband?
"I'm taking over", he said to me.
"Give me that list".
He rang another place and for some unknown reason, pulled off a fantastically fake English accent. After introducing himself for a good 5 minutes, he eventually asked if there was a room available, but sadly there wasn't.
"Why did you take so long to ask for a room? "
"You see", he said, "you have to build a "relationship", and get the person to trust you so that she can be confident in renting you a room..."
"Yeah, right, sounds like a lot of bullshit to me..."
That's when it all started to go pear-shaped. During the next call, he tried to fabricate an entire fake story about the reason why he was looking for a room. The B&B was "Failte Ireland" approved, and for some bizarre reason, said we were going to one of their conference in the hotel. Why, Fabrice, why??? The lady seemed all excited about that:
"A tourism conference? I might close the B&B then, because I want to go to!"
After 10 minutes of vague explanation of what the event was about, he managed to get himself out of that awkward situation and hung up the phone.
"She didn't even tell me if she had rooms! All she wanted to know was about the event itself!" Well done honey, well done.
"I'll ring back. And I'll take my French accent."
Some people never give up, don't they? The B&B was fully booked. But you know what, I'm not sure I would have dared staying there, and he would have had to keep his French accent. Too complicated for just one night.
He also tried all the hotels around, the ones within our budget obviously (although I would have loved to stay in the K club!), but sadly his "sales skills" didn't get us anywhere. In the mean time, I sent at least 5 messages on AirBnB and finally, after 2 hours of research, our last phone call had a happy ending. Well, sort of. There was a room alright, but only with 3 singles beds. Ah sure, we're only there to sleep anyway. So we booked it.
Of course, since that happened, I had 3 messages back from AirBnB, all positive! If you're still looking, go that website, you might be in luck!
As for us, well, everything is sorted now, I just have to find an outfit, and trust me, this will take more than 2 hours...
