Well I am officially an intern and have begun my professional housekeeping career. Let me just preface my housekeeping adventures thus far by saying this, it is hard work. I thought that housekeeping wouldn't be that bad. I mean I've cleaned my house, how difficult can it be to clean a few rooms. Well I'm here to say, it's harder than I thought.
I have also found that when trying to make a good impression on hundreds of new people I get really awkward, say really stupid things, and catch myself afterwards going did I really just do that. I have always been really good at meeting new people but this just took it to a whole new level.
My first day started off a little hectic when I missed my exit to get on a different interstate and ended up having to completely turn around. I know, I know you are thinking that this is what I get for bragging about how great I was doing navigating the city, but it happened and I accept it. Thankfully, I made it to work right in time. I picked up my lovely housekeeping outfit seen below which includes of a pair of black pants, a black short sleeve button down with a frilly white collar. It really honestly is not that bad! On my first day I pretty much watched the Head Housekeeper do purchase orders, schedules, inventory on each floor and coordinate with the laundry to get each floor what they needed to have. It really was a good learning day but I didn't actually clean any rooms.
The past two days I have learned what it is really like to be a housekeeper. You have to first get up really early and go to bed really early to get a full amount of sleep. It takes almost a full 8 hour shift to get through 9 rooms. Depending on if they are checkouts or stay overs, the cleaning time per room can vary. Because this hotel is 4 star everything has to be done meticulously and it hasn't been easy learning. One of the main challenges I have faced is that most of the housekeepers including the one that is training me speak little to no English. I myself, took 2 years of high school Spanish and 1 semester of college Spanish but I was never good with it and I don't remember much of anything. It has been really frustrating getting something wrong in a room and my trainer not being able to tell me how to do it better besides showing me. Finally, today after lunch I pulled out my phone and typed some sentences into Google translator and told her that I appreciated her helping me and that she was a good teacher. I told her I was trying my very best and appreciated her patience. After that she was so much more understanding and way nicer to me! She even put on different music other than the Mexican music channel. The funny thing was that she put it on the classic country channel because she thought I would like that (I giggled on the inside). The hardest part of cleaning the room is definitely the tucking of the sheets. They use two normal sheets so you have to tuck both a certain way so that there are no wrinkles on the bed anywhere. All in all I have learned that I am very slow at cleaning efficiently.
So far this experience has taught me a lot about respect and being in someone else's shoes. I now fully realize that housekeepers do a whole lot that not many people know about. They have to not only make the beds and clean the room and bathrooms but they clean the halls, the baseboards, the doors, dust everything everywhere and lots more stuff for very little money. Not once in the past 3 days have I heard or seen one person complaining because they have to clean up after someone. So next time you stay at a nice hotel, tip the housekeeping staff, it will make their day. I have also learned what it feels like to be the minority. I understand that this is an English speaking country and before this experience I was completely in the category of not feeling sorry for a language barrier but the fact is, and my mom even pointed it out to me that it is hard learning another language especially as an adult. Before this experience, I could never really imagine going somewhere where no one really understands you, but now I do and all I know is that it requires patience from everyone. I am thankful I am getting this opportunity to know what the job of housekeeping is all about but I am even more thankful that after next week I will never have to do it again...or as my uncle says, "at least not professionally."
I have also found that when trying to make a good impression on hundreds of new people I get really awkward, say really stupid things, and catch myself afterwards going did I really just do that. I have always been really good at meeting new people but this just took it to a whole new level.
My first day started off a little hectic when I missed my exit to get on a different interstate and ended up having to completely turn around. I know, I know you are thinking that this is what I get for bragging about how great I was doing navigating the city, but it happened and I accept it. Thankfully, I made it to work right in time. I picked up my lovely housekeeping outfit seen below which includes of a pair of black pants, a black short sleeve button down with a frilly white collar. It really honestly is not that bad! On my first day I pretty much watched the Head Housekeeper do purchase orders, schedules, inventory on each floor and coordinate with the laundry to get each floor what they needed to have. It really was a good learning day but I didn't actually clean any rooms.
The past two days I have learned what it is really like to be a housekeeper. You have to first get up really early and go to bed really early to get a full amount of sleep. It takes almost a full 8 hour shift to get through 9 rooms. Depending on if they are checkouts or stay overs, the cleaning time per room can vary. Because this hotel is 4 star everything has to be done meticulously and it hasn't been easy learning. One of the main challenges I have faced is that most of the housekeepers including the one that is training me speak little to no English. I myself, took 2 years of high school Spanish and 1 semester of college Spanish but I was never good with it and I don't remember much of anything. It has been really frustrating getting something wrong in a room and my trainer not being able to tell me how to do it better besides showing me. Finally, today after lunch I pulled out my phone and typed some sentences into Google translator and told her that I appreciated her helping me and that she was a good teacher. I told her I was trying my very best and appreciated her patience. After that she was so much more understanding and way nicer to me! She even put on different music other than the Mexican music channel. The funny thing was that she put it on the classic country channel because she thought I would like that (I giggled on the inside). The hardest part of cleaning the room is definitely the tucking of the sheets. They use two normal sheets so you have to tuck both a certain way so that there are no wrinkles on the bed anywhere. All in all I have learned that I am very slow at cleaning efficiently.
So far this experience has taught me a lot about respect and being in someone else's shoes. I now fully realize that housekeepers do a whole lot that not many people know about. They have to not only make the beds and clean the room and bathrooms but they clean the halls, the baseboards, the doors, dust everything everywhere and lots more stuff for very little money. Not once in the past 3 days have I heard or seen one person complaining because they have to clean up after someone. So next time you stay at a nice hotel, tip the housekeeping staff, it will make their day. I have also learned what it feels like to be the minority. I understand that this is an English speaking country and before this experience I was completely in the category of not feeling sorry for a language barrier but the fact is, and my mom even pointed it out to me that it is hard learning another language especially as an adult. Before this experience, I could never really imagine going somewhere where no one really understands you, but now I do and all I know is that it requires patience from everyone. I am thankful I am getting this opportunity to know what the job of housekeeping is all about but I am even more thankful that after next week I will never have to do it again...or as my uncle says, "at least not professionally."
My uniform on the job!
My official Capital Hotel badge!
