What is yours to decide, what is not, and what to do the moment something changes.
5 chapters · about 40 min to read · everything is open, including the answers
This is for coming back to — before a shift, or with your trainer. The chapter screens are where you work through it the first time.
01Stop, Confirm, Escalate
After thisYou stop, confirm and escalate in that order, and you know which questions are yours to answer.
Her second week. A guest asks something she half-knows the answer to.
Both answers are polite. Only one of them is safe.
○“I think it's usually fine, but let me double-check for you.”
The intention is good and the first six words already landed.
She has heard “usually fine.” Whatever comes after it is a correction, and corrections travel more slowly than first answers.
Look at B.
●“That's a good question and I want to get it right rather than guess. Give me a moment.”
Why this one
Yes.
Nothing has been promised, nothing has been withheld, and she has been told something true: you would rather be right than quick.
A guest almost never minds waiting sixty seconds. What she minds is being told two different things.
Three words. They are the whole of this course.
You will use STOP a hundred times more often than ESCALATE.
That is not a failure rate. It is the system working.
STOP
The moment you notice you are not sure. Not after you answer — at the noticing.
CONFIRM
Find out. From the person or the source that actually holds the answer.
ESCALATE
When it is bigger than a question, hand it to the Manager on Duty.
Three words. Put them in the order they happen.
Four questions arrive in one shift.
Which of these is yours to answer?
●“How long is this service?” — you know it, you have booked it twenty times.
Why this one
Yes. You know it because it is written down and you have checked it, not because you remember it.
That distinction is the whole chapter. Something you can look at is yours. Something you can only recall is a guess wearing a confident voice.
○“Would this be all right with my blood pressure?” — you have heard the answer before.
No, and this one is not close.
Health questions are not yours, however many times you have heard them answered. Having heard an answer is not the same as being the person who may give it.
○“Can you make an exception on the cancellation fee?” — it seems reasonable.
Reasonable is not the test. Authority is.
An exception outside your authority goes to the Manager on Duty — not because the guest is wrong, but because it is not yours to grant.
○“What does this crystal do for anxiety?” — you have read about it.
What you have read is not what PALOMA claims.
You can say what something is. What it does to a person is a different kind of sentence — and that is its own chapter.
You have stopped. You are not sure. The guest is standing there.
What does CONFIRM actually look like in the room?
○Ask the nearest colleague what they'd do — she has been here longer.
Often helpful, and it is not confirming.
Longer service is not the same as authority. She may know exactly, and she may also be repeating something she was told wrong in her own first month. Ask her where it's written.
●Go to the source that holds the answer — the written standard, or the person whose decision it is.
Why this one
Yes.
Confirming means going to where the answer actually lives, not to the nearest person who might have it.
Sometimes that is a document. Sometimes it is the Manager on Duty. For anything clinical it is neither of those, and that is the next screen.
○Tell the guest you'll follow up, and find out after she leaves.
Sometimes that is genuinely right, and it should be a choice rather than an escape.
If she needs it to decide something now, following up later is a no dressed as a yes.
A question about whether a guest should have a service at all, given something she has mentioned about her health.
Who at PALOMA can answer that?
○The Manager on Duty — she holds operational decisions.
She holds a great deal, and not this.
Operational authority is not clinical authority. The Manager on Duty is exactly who you tell — and telling her is not the same as her being able to answer it.
●Nobody in the room. It goes to a qualified clinical or professional reviewer.
Why this one
Yes, and this is the one people find surprising.
Not the manager. Not a founder. Not the most experienced therapist on the floor. For clinical, licensure, contraindication or scope questions, a consensus of confident people is still not clinical authority.
You escalate it. Someone qualified answers it. That is not slowness — it is the only honest route.
○The therapist performing the service — it's her area.
She has licensure, and her licensure has its own boundaries which are not PALOMA's to move.
She may well decline the service. That is her professional judgment, not a PALOMA ruling — and the two get confused constantly.
You have to tell a guest you don't know.
Four ways to say it. One of them costs you nothing.
○“I'm so sorry, I'm still quite new, I don't want to tell you the wrong thing.”
Honest, warm, and it hands her your inexperience to hold.
She did not ask how long you have worked here. Apologising for being new invites her to wonder whether anyone here knows.
●“I don't want to guess at that one. Let me find out properly.”
Why this one
Yes. Seven words of it, and none of them are an apology.
Not knowing is ordinary. Guessing is the thing PALOMA does not do — and saying so plainly reads as standards, not as a gap.
This is the sentence to have ready before you need it.
○“Let me check with my manager.”
Perfectly fine and slightly smaller than it needs to be.
It tells her where you are going rather than why. “I'd rather be right” is a better reason than “someone else decides.”
○“Honestly, I'm not sure anyone's ever asked me that.”
Charming, and it makes her question the outlier rather than answering it.
The question is not unusual to her. It is the reason she came to the desk.
Stop. Confirm. Escalate.
In that order, every time.
Something you can look at is yours. Something you can only remember is a guess.
For anything clinical, no amount of confidence in the room is authority.
Next: the four things that go to a manager, and why escalating is not failing.
Stop. Confirm. Escalate. In that order, every time.
Something you can look at is yours. Something you can only remember is a guess.
For anything clinical, no amount of confidence in the room is authority.
After thisYou recognise the four families of thing that go to a manager, and you hand over without it feeling like a refusal.
A guest is unhappy. It has already been going on a while.
Two associates reach the same decision. One of them arrives late.
○She keeps trying — three more attempts, warmer each time — and escalates when nothing works.
Everything she did was kind, and the guest spent the whole of it getting less happy.
Escalating after you have exhausted yourself is not escalating. It is surrendering. By then the guest has repeated herself four times.
Look at B.
●She offers what is hers to offer, sees it isn't landing, and brings a manager in while the guest is still being reasonable.
Why this one
Yes.
The moment to escalate is while you still have something to hand over — a guest who is disappointed rather than furious, a situation with room in it.
Escalating early is a judgment. Escalating last is a collapse. They look identical on paper and land completely differently in the room.
Four families. If it belongs to one of them, it goes.
You do not have to decide which family it is.
You have to recognise that it is one of them.
SAFETY AND HEALTH
A medical emergency. An injury. A possible contraindication outside your authority. A safety threat. Anything needing clinical or professional judgment outside your role.
GUEST CONDUCT
Harassment. Discrimination. Threatening behaviour. Significant disrespect. Intoxication or impairment creating a safety concern.
POLICY AND FINANCIAL AUTHORITY
An exception outside your authority. A significant refund or compensation dispute. A chargeback threat. A repeated policy dispute. A waiver or override outside your authority.
SERVICE AND EXPERIENCE FAILURE
A serious complaint. An injury or adverse reaction. An allegation of inappropriate provider conduct. A privacy or boundary concern. A guest still significantly dissatisfied after appropriate first-level support.
Match each one to what it means.
A guest is speaking to you in a way you would not accept from anyone.
You are calm, you are capable, and you could address it. Do you?
○Yes — kindly and once. Naming it respectfully is well within a warm, grounded response.
You may well be right that you could do it beautifully. It is still not yours.
Having a conversation with a guest about how she is speaking to us is a manager's conversation, every time, regardless of how well you would handle it.
●No. That specific conversation is a manager's, and you bring one in.
Why this one
Yes.
The explicit respectful-conversation boundary with a disrespectful guest is manager-only. It is one of the few places PALOMA draws a hard line around who speaks.
That is not because you couldn't. It is so that you are never standing alone in it — and so that what gets said is consistent.
○Only if it escalates further. Right now it is uncomfortable rather than serious.
Waiting for it to get worse is a plan that only works if it gets worse slowly.
Significant disrespect is already in the guest-conduct family. You are not deciding whether it has become serious enough — you are recognising where it belongs.
You have decided this goes to the Manager on Duty. The guest is watching you decide it.
How do you hand it over without it feeling like a rejection?
○“I'm not allowed to make that call, I'll have to get my manager.”
True, and it puts a rule between you and her.
“Not allowed” makes PALOMA sound like a place with a lot of rules and not much judgment. She hears a wall.
●“I want to get you the right answer on this, so I'm going to bring in the person who can give it. One moment.”
Why this one
Yes.
You have described a better outcome, not a limit on you. Same handover, entirely different feeling — and it is also simply what is happening.
Notice what it does not do: it does not apologise, and it does not explain the org chart.
○“Let me see what I can do,” then go and find the manager.
Warm, and it leaves her expecting you back with a yes.
Disappearing and returning with someone else is a small surprise at exactly the wrong moment. Say who is coming.
○“That's above me, I'm afraid.”
Self-deprecating, and it tells her she is now dealing with someone junior.
Nothing about escalating is about your seniority. It is about whose decision it is.
Four moments from one week.
Two of these go to a manager. Choose one — you will see the other.
●A guest mentions a reaction on her skin after her last visit.
Why this one
Yes. An adverse reaction is service and experience failure, and it is also safety and health.
It does not matter which family you filed it under. It matters that you did not absorb it as feedback and carry on.
○A guest asks for a later checkout time than we usually give.
Ordinary, and probably yours or a quick confirm.
A small courtesy is not an escalation. It becomes one only if granting it is outside your authority — which is a question about authority, not about the guest.
●A guest says something dismissive about another guest's appearance.
Why this one
Yes. Discrimination sits in guest conduct, and the conversation about it is manager-only.
The part people hesitate on: she said it lightly, and to you. That changes nothing about where it goes.
○A guest is unhappy that her preferred therapist wasn't available.
Disappointing for her, and squarely yours to hold well.
It becomes an escalation only if she remains significantly dissatisfied after you have done what you can. Not before.
Both are escalations, and they arrived looking completely different — one is a health matter she mentioned in passing, the other is a remark. Neither of them announced itself.
You escalated something and it turned out to be nothing. How should that feel?
○Slightly embarrassing — worth being more certain next time.
That instinct is the one that gets people hurt.
An associate who has been made to feel foolish once escalates later the next time, and later is where the harm is.
●Fine. It is what the system is for, and it cost a manager two minutes.
Why this one
Yes.
Escalation is not failure. The cost of escalating something ordinary is a short conversation. The cost of absorbing something serious is not comparable, and it is not yours to carry.
If you are ever unsure whether it is worth it: it is worth it.
○Like a good instinct that happened to be wrong — you'd do it again but check more first.
Close, and the second half quietly undoes the first.
Checking more first is exactly the hesitation the rule removes. STOP is at the noticing, not after a private investigation.
Safety. Conduct. Authority. Failure.
Four families, and you only have to notice.
Escalate while you still have something to hand over, not once you have run out.
Escalation is not failure — it is the part of the job that protects the guest and you.
Next: what to do in the moments that do not wait.
Safety. Conduct. Authority. Failure. Four families, and you only have to notice.
Escalate while you still have something to hand over, not once you have run out.
Escalation is not failure. It is the part of the job that protects the guest and you.
After thisYou can take the first five steps of an incident in the right order, with the person before the process.
Five steps. They are the same five whatever has happened.
PALOMA responds first to the person, then to the process.
Both happen. The order is not negotiable.
RESPOND
To the person in front of you, first and immediately.
STABILIZE OR ESCALATE
Call 911 where emergency medical attention is indicated. Stay with her.
NOTIFY
The Manager on Duty immediately. The founders by phone once the response is underway.
DOCUMENT
The facts, promptly, while they are still exact.
FOLLOW UP
Through leadership. Not by you, alone, later.
Put them back in the order they come.
A guest in the lobby becomes unwell. It looks serious.
There are three of you nearby. What is the first thing that happens?
○Someone finds the Manager on Duty so she can decide what to do.
The Manager on Duty absolutely leads this — and finding her is not the first move.
Where emergency medical attention is indicated, 911 is called and someone stays with the guest. The manager is notified immediately, in parallel, not first in sequence.
●911 is called, someone stays with her, and the Manager on Duty is notified immediately.
Why this one
Yes. All three, and the staying matters as much as the calling.
A guest who is unwell is never left alone while someone goes to ask.
Then: the founders by phone as soon as the immediate response is underway, and a second associate goes to bring the responders in and hold the space and privacy around her.
○Someone gets the first aid kit and assesses her while another calls for help.
The kit is in the Breakroom and it is not the first move.
Assessing is the word to look at. Associates do not diagnose, speculate about what is happening, or provide treatment outside their training — and that holds most firmly at the moment it feels most useful to try.
The immediate response is underway. A colleague asks what she should do.
There is a job here people forget. What is it?
○Keep the other guests calm and carry on with the schedule as normally as possible.
Worth doing, and it is not the named job.
Something specific is missing from this list and it is the thing that goes wrong most often.
●Go out to direct the responders in, and protect the space and privacy around the guest.
Why this one
Yes — and it is a named role, not an improvisation.
A second associate directs responders in and protects the space and privacy around the guest. Minutes are lost at the door of a building nobody has been shown into.
The privacy half matters just as much. Something is happening to a person in a place she came to feel safe.
○Start writing down exactly what happened while it is fresh.
That comes, and it comes after.
Documentation is step four for a reason. Nobody should be writing while the response is still happening.
A guest calls two days after her visit. She says she has been in pain since.
Three sentences you might say. Two of them PALOMA does not say.
○“I'm so sorry — that shouldn't have happened during a treatment.”
Kind, and it has just told her the service caused it.
Do not tell a guest the service caused her condition. You do not know that, and saying it warmly does not make it known.
●“Thank you for telling me. I want to make sure I have this exactly as you've experienced it — can you take me through it?”
Why this one
Yes.
Received warmly and seriously, and captured in her own words. You are not diagnosing, not defending, and not deciding anything.
Three timestamps matter and will be asked for: when the service was, when the symptoms started, when she got in touch. Then the Manager on Duty and the founders, promptly.
○“That's really unlikely to be from the massage, but let's look into it.”
Reassuring, and it is the mirror image of the first one.
Do not tell a guest the service could not have caused it either. Both sentences decide something that is not yours to decide, and one of them will be quoted back.
After the call. You are the one who took it.
One of these is expressly not done. Which?
○Preserve the appointment record, the intake or waiver, and the provider's documentation.
Done, and important. Preserve all of it.
●Go back and tidy up the notes from that visit so they read clearly.
Why this one
Yes — and this is the one that is done with good intentions.
Do not alter historical documentation after receiving a complaint. Not to clarify it, not to complete it, not to make it more readable.
A record changed after the fact stops being a record. Leave it exactly as it was written.
○Notify the Manager on Duty and the founders promptly.
Correct and prompt. Both.
○Route any further substantive response through leadership.
Correct. The conversation does not continue with you, however reasonable it is being.
The fire alarm sounds. You have guests in treatment rooms.
What is true, and what is instinct?
●Get guests to the exits — front and back — and help them out. The Manager on Duty leads and sweeps the spaces where it's safe to.
Why this one
Yes. Front and back are the designated exits, the Manager on Duty leads and coordinates the sweep where it is safe to do so, and associates assist guests out.
And the part that is hardest in practice: do not delay evacuation to retrieve personal belongings. Not hers, not yours. A guest will ask for her bag. The answer is that we will get it back to her.
○Let guests collect their things first — many are undressed and they will not leave without them.
The instinct is real and the rule is explicit.
Do not delay evacuation to retrieve personal belongings. Priority is safe, efficient evacuation. Dignity is handled by how you help, not by waiting.
○Wait for the Manager on Duty to confirm it isn't a false alarm before moving guests.
No. You do not have the information required to make that a safe decision, and the time spent finding out is the only time that matters.
The power goes out mid-afternoon. Three treatments are in progress.
Someone says “let them finish, it's dark but it's fine.” Is it?
○Yes — ending a treatment early is disruptive, and the rooms are lit by candlelight anyway.
This is the exact assumption PALOMA has corrected.
“Allow massages to complete” is not an automatic rule. A decision comes first, and it is not a decision about disruption.
●Not yet — a decision comes first: is the building safe and appropriate to remain occupied?
Why this one
Yes, and the Manager on Duty makes it.
Against real things: emergency lighting · fire and life-safety functionality · safe visibility and egress · building-management instructions · water and restrooms · temperature · communications · how long the outage is expected to last.
If continued occupancy or service is not clearly safe or permitted, services stop and guests are safely assisted out. Comfort is what you do inside that answer, not instead of it.
○No — power out means everyone leaves.
Too fast in the other direction, and it is still not your call.
There is a decision to be made and a Manager on Duty who makes it. The rule is that it gets made, not what it concludes.
Two facts about first aid at PALOMA. One of them surprises people.
○The kit is in the Breakroom, and there is an AED by the front desk.
The first half is right. The second half is the thing to know.
PALOMA does not currently have an AED. Assuming one exists is worse than knowing there isn't one, because it costs seconds at the only moment they count.
●The kit is in the Breakroom, and PALOMA does not currently have an AED.
Why this one
Yes. Both, and the second is the one to carry.
Knowing what we do not have is part of knowing the building. In a cardiac emergency the answer is 911, immediately, and staying with her.
The kit is checked and restocked quarterly, so if you use something from it, say so.
○The kit is at the front desk, and there's an AED in the Breakroom.
Neither half holds. The kit is in the Breakroom, and there is no AED.
Respond. Stabilize or escalate. Notify. Document. Follow up.
The person first. Then the process.
You do not diagnose, speculate, or treat outside your training — least of all when it would feel most helpful.
You never tell a guest the service caused it, and you never tell her it could not have.
Nothing written down gets tidied up afterwards.
Next: what PALOMA says about what things do.
Respond. Stabilise or escalate. Notify. Document. Follow up. The person first, then the process.
You do not diagnose, speculate or treat outside your training — least of all when it would feel most helpful.
You never tell a guest the service caused it, and you never tell her it could not have. Nothing written down gets tidied up afterwards.
After thisYou can test your own sentence before it leaves your mouth, and say you don't know in a way that still cares for her.
A guest, holding a piece of rose quartz.
“I swear this one found me.”
Two replies. Neither is dishonest.
○“They really can feel that way. There's some interesting research on how touch and texture affect the nervous system, actually.”
Warm, well-meant, and it has quietly swapped her sentence for a different kind of sentence.
She said something spiritual. It came back as science, and slightly invented science at that.
Look at B.
●“That's usually how it goes. You don't pick crystals — crystals pick you.”
Why this one
Yes.
Avoiding fake science is not the same as being scientifically sterile. You met her exactly where she was, in PALOMA's own language, and claimed nothing.
The trap in A is the one worth naming: reaching for evidence to make a spiritual moment respectable. It makes it less true, not more.
Six questions. Ask them of your own sentence, before it leaves.
Knowing the boundary of your knowledge is part of expertise.
Not a limit on it. Part of it.
EXPLAINING OR DIAGNOSING
Am I describing something, or naming what is wrong with her?
GUIDING OR PRESCRIBING
Am I suggesting, or instructing?
POSSIBILITY OR PROMISE
Have I said what may happen, or what will?
EVIDENCE OR BORROWED AUTHORITY
Do I know this, or does it merely sound like something known?
TRADITION OR FACT
Am I naming a tradition, or presenting a belief as fact?
WITHIN WHAT I KNOW
Is this actually mine?
One sentence. Tap the part that is not ours to say.
A guest asks whether the sauna will help her inflammation.
Four answers. One of them is inside your scope.
○“A lot of people find heat really helps with that.”
It sounds modest and it is doing more work than it looks.
“A lot of people find” attached to a named medical condition is still a claim about that condition. The softness of the phrasing is not the test.
●“I can tell you what the sauna is and what people come to it for. What it would do for something you're managing medically isn't mine to answer — is that something you've talked to your doctor about?”
Why this one
Yes, and notice how much you still said.
You described the thing. You declined the claim. You pointed at who could actually answer. None of that is a refusal.
That last question is the whole move: not a wall, a direction.
○“I'm not able to give medical advice.”
Correct, and it lands like a form letter.
The boundary is right and it has been delivered without any warmth at all. She asked a real question and got a policy.
Same boundary, different sentence — see option 2.
○“It's not a medical treatment, but it does reduce inflammation.”
The first half is a disclaimer and the second half is the claim it was disclaiming.
A caveat in front of a claim does not neutralise the claim. She will remember the second half.
A guest describes her service as “so detoxing.”
Do you correct her?
○Gently, yes — we shouldn't leave a claim standing that PALOMA wouldn't make.
Understandable, and it misreads whose sentence it was.
Guest language is information, not necessarily PALOMA language. She is telling you how it felt. Correcting her turns a lovely moment into a lesson she didn't book.
●No. Stay with her, and be curious about what she means rather than what she said.
Why this one
Yes.
Do not police guest words. Listen for meaning. “Detoxing” from a guest usually means lighter, clearer, less heavy — which is worth knowing and worth asking about.
The rule cuts one way only: her words are hers. You still don't say it back as a PALOMA claim.
○No — and use her word back, since it clearly resonates with her.
Half right, and the half that's wrong is the important half.
Not correcting her is not the same as adopting her word. The moment you say it, it is PALOMA saying it.
You are asked something you would need to be a clinician to answer.
“I don't know” is right. What has to come after it?
○An offer to find out and come back to her.
Right for most questions and wrong for this one.
Some answers do not exist anywhere in this building. Promising to find out suggests PALOMA holds it somewhere, and it doesn't.
●Who does know — her doctor, her own provider, someone qualified to answer it.
Why this one
Yes.
“I don't know, and here's who does.” The second half is what turns a gap into guidance.
A guest who leaves with a direction has been helped. A guest who leaves with only your uncertainty has been handed it.
○An apology, and a redirect to something you can help with.
The redirect is kind and the apology is unnecessary.
Nothing has gone wrong. She asked something outside our scope and you recognised it — that is the system working, not a shortfall to apologise for.
Four sentences an associate might say in one afternoon.
Three are fine. One has crossed something.
○“This one's traditionally used for grounding.”
Fine. A tradition named as a tradition is an honest sentence — it says where the idea comes from without claiming it as fact.
Fine. It reports experience as experience and promises nothing.
●“It'll help balance your hormones.”
Why this one
Yes — and it is the clearest crossing on the page.
A promise, about a body, in a domain that requires evidence PALOMA does not have. Three of the six scope questions fail at once: promise not possibility, borrowed authority not evidence, and not within what you know.
This is not a phrasing problem. There is no warmer way to say it that makes it sayable.
○“This is designed to support recovery.”
Fine. “Designed to support” is a statement about intent, not about outcome — and that difference is doing all the work.
Say what a thing is.
Be careful about what it does.
Knowing the boundary of your knowledge is part of expertise.
Her words are hers — listen for the meaning, and don't adopt the claim.
“I don't know, and here's who does” is a complete answer.
Next: your trainer, and the floor.
Say what a thing is. Be careful about what it does.
Knowing the boundary of your knowledge is part of expertise.
“I don't know, and here's who does” is a complete answer. Her words are hers — listen for the meaning, and do not adopt the claim.
After thisYou can use PALOMA AI's two doors correctly, and you know the line between what it hands you and what still needs a manager.
There is a tool for this.
It is very good at one thing, and it cannot do another.
PALOMA AI is an internal tool for the floor. When a guest asks you something you cannot answer, or something has gone wrong and you are not sure what happens next, it is where you reach.
It will give you the words. What it will not do is decide anything on PALOMA's behalf — and knowing exactly where that line falls is the whole of this chapter.
You will be given the link and a code. Both stay inside the team.
Two ways in.
Which one you pick is the first decision, and it is usually obvious: has something gone wrong, or does somebody want to know something?
GUEST ISSUE — WHEN SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG
Pick the category — the experience, a reaction to a service, booking and scheduling, or an emotional response — and fill in what happened.
It gives you back four things: the steps to follow, a word-for-word script, which resolution fits, and whether you need a manager.
GUEST QUESTION — WHEN SOMEONE WANTS TO KNOW SOMETHING
A service, a price, a wellness benefit, a policy.
Type the question and you get an answer you can say to her right away. Not a document to read later. Words for the moment you are standing in.
AND THE LINE WORTH READING EVERY TIME
On a Guest Issue it tells you whether you need a manager.
Of everything it hands back, that is the one part you cannot overrule.
Five things happen on a Tuesday. Where does each one go?
A guest finished a facial twenty minutes ago and has come back to the desk. She says the room was too cold and she could not settle.
Which way in?
●Guest Issue — the experience.
Why this one
Yes. Something went wrong with the experience, and that is one of its categories.
The useful part is not the script. It is the line telling you whether this one needs a manager — because "too cold" sounds small, and what she might be offered for it may not be yours to decide.
○Guest Question — she is really asking what you will do about it.
She is not asking a question. She is telling you something went wrong.
Guest Question is for what is this, what does it cost, what does it do, what is the policy. This is the other door, and taking the wrong one gives you a tidy answer to a question nobody asked.
○Neither. It is small — apologise and offer her a tea.
Kind, and it skips the part that protects you both.
A tea is not a resolution, and choosing one yourself is how two guests with the same complaint get two different afternoons. The tool exists so the answer is the same whoever is on the desk.
A guest arrived twenty-five minutes late and the fee applies. She is upset. PALOMA AI has given you the steps and a script, and you have read them.
She asks you to waive it. What now?
●Use the script, then get a manager. The words are yours; the fee is not.
Why this one
Yes, and this is the line the whole chapter is about.
It guides you. It cannot approve anything. Waived fees, discounts, moving an appointment, late cancellations and no-shows all still need a manager — however clear the answer on your screen looks.
Use the script. Then go and get someone.
○Waive it. The tool walked you through it, so the answer is sanctioned.
This is the mistake worth naming out loud, because in the moment it will feel reasonable.
A tool that hands you confident words reads like permission. It is not permission. It cannot spend PALOMA's money and it does not know what else has happened today.
○Tell her the system will not let you.
It is not the system, and she will know it is not the system.
This is a decision somebody is allowed to make — just not you, on your own, standing there. Saying that plainly costs less than hiding behind software.
A guest comes out of a massage and tells you her shoulder is worse than when she arrived, and that it hurt while it was happening.
The tool has a category for a reaction to a service. Do you use it?
●No. Notes, and a manager, now.
Why this one
No. This is the one situation where you close the tool and go.
Take notes while it is fresh and get a manager straight away. What happens after that is taught in When Something Happens, and none of it starts on a screen.
The part people get wrong under pressure is the apology. Do not say sorry in a way that accepts blame, and do not accept blame. That is not coldness — it is that nobody yet knows what happened, and working it out is not yours to do standing at the desk.
○Yes — that is exactly the category, and the script will keep you steady.
The category exists, and this is still not the moment for it.
Anything a guest describes as pain or injury stops being a guest-experience problem. It goes to a person, immediately — not because the tool is bad at it, but because the clock and the written record both matter now, and a manager owns both.
○Yes, and apologise properly while you fill it in.
The first half is slow and the second half is the half that costs.
An apology here sounds like agreement about what caused it. You can be warm without being sorry: stay with her, take notes, and get a manager now.
You are filling in a Guest Issue. The box asks what happened.
What belongs in it?
●What happened, what she said, what you have already done — and no name.
Why this one
Yes. Leave out guest names and personal details.
It needs the shape of what happened, not who it happened to. The steps it gives you back are the same either way, and nothing you type needs to carry her name around with it.
The link and the code stay inside the team, for the same reason.
○The full picture — her name and the number she rang from — so it has everything.
More is not better here.
Names, numbers and personal details are hers. They belong in the systems PALOMA already keeps them in, not typed into a box to get a script back.
○Just enough to get a script. The detail does not change the answer.
Too little, and the answer gets vaguer along with it.
What happened, what she said, what you have already tried — that is the detail that changes the steps you get back. Specific about the situation, blank about the person.
It guides you.
It does not decide.
Two ways in — something went wrong, or somebody wants to know something. And one line in every answer you cannot overrule: whether you need a manager.
If it gets something wrong, say so.
If it gets something wrong, or has no idea what to do with what you are describing, say so. There is a feedback survey and it reaches the founders. A tool nobody corrects gets worse, and you are the one standing where it is used.
For anything you want to be certain about — what is in a service, how long it runs, who it is not for — the Reference shelf is still the shelf. This is for speed, with somebody in front of you.
It guides you. It does not decide.
Two ways in — something went wrong, or somebody wants to know something. One line in every answer you cannot overrule: whether it is yours to handle.
If it gets something wrong, say so. And for anything you want to be certain about, the Reference shelf is still the place.
