I had a very poor experience with this at the Hyatt SFO hotel the first weekend in May. I arrived at about 11:00pm on a Friday night after coming off of a transcon from Newark. I was the only one in the check-in area, yet stood there for a minute or two while all the clerks chatted. One said "it's time for break" or something like that and they all started to walk out a back door. I asked the last one leaving if he could please check me in and he grudgingly did so.

Hyatt usually has excellent front desk staff which made this all the more surprising.