During peak check in period (between 3 pm and 4 pm on Friday), .there was only one very young person at the desk. There were at least 6 sets of customers waiting. During this period, it was hard not to notice the phone at the desk was constantly ringing and the person at the desk, would answer, immediately say "front desk, please hold and hang-up the phone. This continued for the entire 30 minutes we were in line to check in. Other interesting observations, apparently the hot water in the building had been unavailable for several days just before we checked in (this was pointed out to us while in the elevator to our room). There was no mention of this at the front desk, but even though the water was running it was a dark brown and stained the shower enclosure. For the entire hotel there was only one ice maker (on the 4th floor, we were on 17) which worked, again no mention of this during check in. In this case tribal knowledge from the guests distributed the information. Finally, while visiting family in another room, the battery operated fire/smoke alarm began to chirp loudly, signalling that battery needed to be changed. Every minute or so it reported (note this was now 8pm). 45 minutes passed before "engineering" arrived with a ladder, and removed and then replaced the detector. Before departing "engineering" commented that "lately alarms had been chirping at an unusual frequency" and when asked why they just didn't proactively replace every detector ...