12.06.2007 = JAYPLAY
speak
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Adventures in And how one Jayplayer learned to be courteous to every customer Green Polyester
I should have known the first day I donned the polyester green vest and tie that I was in for an experience, rather than just a new job. If I couldn't tell from the wardrobe I most certainly should have learned from the events of the first day of work at what we call a hotel-motel.
On my first shift, a man whose face was swallowed by his glasses—the kind that make hub caps out of eyesfurtely stopped by and threw his keycards on the front desk.
"Have a nice day, Mr. Smith," Theo, my trainer, said, not moving for the keys until the man and his hub caps rounded the corner. Instead of going straight for them, Theo reached for a pack of handi-wipes just out of site from the customers. He used the wipe to grab and dispose of the keys.
He explained to me that, unlike other customers, we throw out his keycards rather than re-use them because we simply can't trust the sanitation of anything that comes from his room.
Once a week, like clockwork, he comes in for the Jacuzzi suite and asks for two keys. One key goes in his wallet, the other, under his windshield wiper. Sometimes in the night, a woman (or sometimes a man) walks in with a key in hand, often asking where the room number scribbled on a piece of paper is, and isn't seen again for another hour.
It's people like these we set our clocks to. They are our usuals, our valued customers. It's the kinks in this routine we dread. I was trained on the kinks on my
first day, as well.
With one hour left to go on my first shift, I was told I should start answering the phones. On the second call I answered, a woman asked for rates on a certain date. I had already begun to memorize prices, so I quoted her what I thought to be true. After typing in more information I saw there was a ten-dollar difference, so I apologized and corrected myself.
The woman on the other end of the line, well-on in years judging by the sound of her voice, came completely unhinged. She ravaged me with curse after curse for nearly five minutes. She called me many things, most of which rhymed with "runt," "witch," and... "mass soul."
I stared at the phone and
wondered if this was a test. Was this a job I could honestly take for more than a week? How much should you put up with for a steady job?
Getting slapped, apparently.
I stuck with it and a few months into the job, a foreign exchange program put several students up in our hotel. One in particular was Natasha.She was in her 30s,and spoke little English. All conversations between us were lost in translation,which I found out when she tried to make a long distance phone call.
The first night she was there, she rushed to the counter and shoved a plastic card in my face.
Kyle Gray
"I call Kazakhstan!"
Withhandgestures
and pointing I tried to explain how to use the calling card, but all she would say was "i call Kazakhstan."
She finally walked away to the computers across the lobby to figure it out.Five minutes later I got a phone call.
"Good evening..."
"I CALL KAZAKHSTANI" she yelled into the phone, and began reading me
the number she wanted to call.
I kept trying to explain to her that it was me at the front desk, but she couldn't understand. Finally, I politely hung up. She called six more times! Every time I shouted louder so that she might hear me across the room.
Finally, on her
seventh try, I put the phone down on the counter and walked over to her. I tapped her on the shoulder, picked up the phone and said, "It's me!"
She turned back to her phone, "I call Kazakhstan!"
I hung up the phone and walked over to her to dial the card and number for her, but when I reached for the phone, she slapped me.
I was lost for words. I dug my heels into the carpet and turned around, went back to the desk and finished my shift, red in the face.
More than a year into working for the same hotel I'd grown accustomed to the wide variety of odd customers. Mr. Smith and his late night visitors were just the regulars, and no customer, no matter how crotchety, could dig under my skin. It had officially become just a day job.
In September, not 15 minutes into one of my shifts, the head housekeeper came in and told us to put a guest in for one more day because he had a do-not-disturb sign on his door, and she had peeked in to find him asleep.
I noticed we had extended his stay the day before, too, and jokingly said,
"Wouldn't it be funny if he were dead?
We could be on the news!"
Something about
my joke struck a chord with the housekeeper and she decided to get our maintenance man to check on the quest.
I had to run errands, deliver towels and go through the daily monotony that comes with my job.When I got back to the front desk, I heard sirens.I asked one of my co-workers what was going on and he said that the man I had joked about was, in fact, dead.
Immediately I ran outside to make sure the housekeeper was okay and to see if there was anything I needed to help out with. It wasn't until I saw the guy that I realized there was a dead man at work.
Work didn't stop. It couldn't. We went on checking guests in and out, and taking care of their every request, no matter how odd. I didn't think I was at all affected until we found him on our surveillance back-up video.
I watched the man I had seen dead in a bed only hours before walk up to the front desk, get a room, smile at the clerk. It was eerie. I had checked people in so many times and a week later I probably wouldn't be able to pick them out of a line-up. Had life at the front desk hardened my heart?
ILLUSTRATIONS BY BECKA CREMER
I went back to the front desk and resumed checking in guests.
"Driver's license and credit card, please."
"How many keys would you like?"
Then I remembered the man in the video.
"How are you doing today?"
The guest smiled, "Great actually, thanks for asking."