Behind the desk- 11 months in the hotel industry

I worked full-time as a front desk clerk for a somewhat hoity-toity hotel for almost a year.

I learned a few important things.

1) Check your cancellation policy.
     The cheapest rates are usually prepay rates, which means they will debit from your account the second you make the reservation and are often non-refundable and non-changeable.  Be very sure before you book these.

2) Check the hotel no show policy.
     Every hotel has a time at which they assume you're not actually showing up for your reservation.  At my place it's around 2am, at some properties it can be as early as 6pm.  Find out what the time/policy is and plan accordingly.  If it's the height of tourist season and you didn't plan well, you may end up having a very bad time.

3) Incidentals and authorizations
    'Incidentals' is hotel shorthand for 'anything you charge to your room'.  Almost every property from the fanciest five star to the cheapest motor lodge will require that you have a credit card on file in the event you charge something to your room and forget that you'll have to pay it, or damage something in the room, or abscond with something in the room.  This was not always the case, but hotels got tired of people skipping out on movie and room service charges and here we are.  Some places will merely swipe it to have it on file, some places (typically the higher price ones) will hold a certain amount of funds per day.  If you don't spend anything it gets released back to you at check out.  If you do spend part of it, that amount will be kept and the remainder will be released back to your card.

     When you hand over your credit card at check in it is authorized for the full amount of your stay, plus any incidental holds.  The hotel creates a pending transaction for the full cost on your account and then only finalizes that transaction at check out when the final cost is calculated. (i.e. after we've gone into your room and determined that nothing is broken or missing)

   It is really important to use a credit card instead of a debit card.  Debit cards and banks will often take a lot longer to release incidental holds, sometimes 14 - 30 DAYS.

4) Third Parties
     Big hotel chains do not like third party booking agencies.  If you booked anywhere but through the hotel's website or call center, your reservation and business is, frankly, not important to them.  Booking through a third party indicates you're only interested in price, while a reservation booked through the hotel website indicates you're here because you like the brand and will probably be a return guest.

Advantages to booking through a third party:  Price, ease of searching.
Disadvantages:  Almost always prepaid/non-refundable, WILL NOT GUARANTEE ROOM TYPE.

     That's right.  If you book through a third party at my hotel, your room type is not guaranteed and I do not have to give you one bit of compensation for the trouble, nor does the third party you booked through because it says so in the fine print.  All the hotel has to do is provide you a room, it doesn't matter which kind.
     Now, because most front desk staff would rather clean a public toilet with ungloved hands than give you one less bed than you thought you were getting (the confrontation usually is that bad) we try our hardest to not make that happen, but it will happen in the busiest months.  Do your homework on your agency before booking.

5) Concierge vs. Front Desk staff

     In a full service property there is a person who is dedicated to making your visit a good time.  They help you make vacation itineraries, book you on tours, make appointments at a spa, make dinner reservations for you, and generally provide every scrap of information you may need to enjoy your stay.  These people are formidable in their knowledge of the area and are definitely your friend.  The front desk staff are the ones handling your actual reservation, the billing, the room assignment, and any communication to housekeeping, food service, or the bellhops that is required to fulfill your reservation.  They have distinct roles and are more practiced at them.
     In a limited service property (probably has a pool and a gym, probably doesn't have a restaurant or spa) the front desk staff fulfill both roles.  They will always try their hardest to answer your questions, but may not have any knowledge besides what the internet can offer when it comes to planning your trip or day.
     As a front desk person at a limited service property that has had to learn the tourism side of my new city in a hurry I will ask that you not assume the front desk person is an expert.  I personally wasn't hired or trained with any travel planning in mind, just a "Look it up for them." expectation and internet access.

6)  What can we do for you?

     A LOT.   At my front desk alone you can get earplugs, toothbrushes, toothpaste, q-tips, cotton balls, makeup remover, shoe polish, nail clippers, razors and shaving cream, hair spray, sewing kits, over the counter medicine, etc, etc.  And this is just a select service place where we hand it over the desk.  In a full service hotel you have a store to work with.
     We can negotiate late check outs, special room requests (you want to be on the north side closest to the emergency exit?  Sure.  You just got married and want something special in the room for your honey?  Doing sweet things actually makes our day.), store your luggage, receive and send off your packages, send you things you forgot (phone chargers are often shipped free), store foodstuffs for you, respect allergies and prep your room for them (react to industrial cleaners?  Ask for a no chemical or chemical free clean prior to your arrival).  Essentially, your desk staff can do a lot to make your stay better and you should always ask.  Even if we can't do exactly what you asked for, we're pretty creative.

7) When things go wrong.

     They might.  I'm sorry, they might.  I can't predict whose fault it'll be but something will go sideways at some point during your travel.  Tell the front desk right away.  TELL THEM.  Room not clean? Come back down to the desk and ask for a different room.  Something not right with the reservation?  Ask why.  It might have been something you missed in the fine print but we would rather fix it if we can.  If you get to the hotel and the staff tells you that your room isn't available because _____, they knew this was going to happen.  Hotels oversell intentionally because they want a 100% capacity night and they will send people to other hotels if that's what it takes.  Honestly, having a completely sold out night is more important than honoring every reservation.  Typical practice is that they only do this to very late arrivals and will have already secured you another room at another property, maybe even paying for it.  The desk staff can make some adjustment to your bill.  They can waive a variety of charges, a percentage of your room cost, etc, if your complaint justifies it.  I would recommend being polite and calm while you're communicating however.

Fear of Hell

Recently I asked my counselor how to deal with the fear of hell that was leftover from my fundamentalist christian childhood that I had otherwise decoupled from.  The specific conditioned fear that one wrong choice would make me ‘bad’ forever.

 After a lot of conversation this is what stuck with me:

“In the rest of life everything is nuanced, nothing stays within a binary, so why would it make sense that an afterlife would be less nuanced?”

It *doesn't* make sense and I don't have to be afraid of it anymore.

Tip

When trying new recipes for yourself it's pretty important to pay attention to the 'Serves ___' section, lest you end up spending a week eating chipotle flavored mashed potatoes that made up the filling of your vegetarian tacos, a recipe which you neglected to understand served eight.

Compliment

One of the best compliments I've ever received was when a strange man told me "Your hair and your smile, you've got kind a Poison Ivy thing, you remind me of her."  And you know, I'm feeling pretty proud of that.

Tipping, you should!

I get that tipping is expensive.  I get that you don't like that people feel entitled to your money.

Perhaps you need to consider that you feel entitled to making an employee your personal servant for no extra pay.

There are all sorts of reasons people don't want to tip, but here are few that shouldn't be.

"It's your JOB."  Correct, however they are performing a luxury service for your benefit.   This is going to cost more than taking your chicken nuggets from the counter, which costs more than making rice at home.  There is a scale and you are only an ass for refusing to recognize it.

"I refuse to support big companies who are just making me pay fees for profit." (mostly applicable to delivery drivers)  You refusing to tip the driver has no impact on company policy.  None.  You refusing to tip the driver means the driver is going to be short money they need to service their car, fill it with gas, and pay the bills, because this same big company doesn't pay them anywhere near enough to keep up with the wear and tear on vehicles and in one recent case, require a class action lawsuit to increase the gas reimbursement to match rapidly rising gas costs.  You refusing to tip the driver tells them you think they're undeserving of the couple bucks they earned finding their way to your home at night because for whatever reason you couldn't make your own dinner.  What will get companies to change policy is for people to get carry out instead (the places usually don't expect tips for this) and then TELL THE COMPANY that you got carry out because you refuse to play into their unfair delivery practices.

"I can't afford it."  Then you can't afford this luxury service.

Seriously folks.  Tipping is a tricky road, but most folks who work for tips deserve them.  Please don't take out your irritations with the company with the person least likely to be able to change it.

My job rocks, it rocks so hard.

Because I got a new job, one that I'm going to stay with for quite some time I think.  (No, I know)

I now work at a zoo.  A ZOO.  I go to the ZOO EVERY DAY FOR WORK.  And yes, I do work things like selling and taking tickets that aren't terribly exciting, but I also do work things like driving people with mobility issues around the zoo in golf carts, and working in an aviary and showing people how best to feed birds and breaking up bird fights, and working concerts and getting to listen to the music, and watching out for an escapee from the wildlife show, and hearing the fucking LIONS ROAR, and watching the mountain goats and tigers all day, and I LOVE MY JOB.

And it's simple and largely stress free (though the aviary doors can be stressful since only about 15% of adults will read or listen), and I'm happy.  Just happy with what I'm doing.  Lots of my coworkers are planning on going back to school in the fall or moving on to other things and I am just content.  This is a perfect position for me to enjoy gov work, get paid appropriately for my time, and a great position to raise kids around, because I'm not stressed out of my mind and things like maternity leave can happen.

I started work at the zoo right before my high school reunion and I feel SO SUPERIOR to the rest of my class.

My job sucks, or, why I have a very good reason to say my job sucks

I"m getting really tired of hearing about how my generation (I'm a gapper btw, between Gen X and the Millenials) is lazy and can't commit and complains too much.  I'm especially tired of hearing this from baby boomers who have no idea the working class world they've created in their many years of terrible policy making.

I work retail at the moment.  I have a B.S. in Science and this is in the only job I could find in my city.  That's ok though, I'm willing to work and I typically advance in organizations quickly, so I'll do my best.  In my particular company I have experienced the worst series of trickle down, money saving policies I have ever come across.  To be trained for something, you read a worksheet, write down a few answers to questions and then must sign a form declaring you are an expert on the material.  Then you are expected to perform said task perfectly with little to no supervision, because having extra staff to train would cost more.  Any in person training (registers only) is completed within about 20 minutes and the new person is left to flounder with the remaining hundreds of (very serious) policies they didn't have time to learn while memorizing the process.  Employees are quizzed daily on things like the loss percentage and the yearly trends of loss, but not on standard register policies (guess which one is more useful?).  When policy changes employees are informed at meetings at the beginning of shifts, unless it's too busy for a meeting or you're not there that day, in which case you're screwed.  Employees are castigated at meetings for refusing to come in on days off (which the company is not entitled to and perhaps is a symptom of how awful the job is) and then castigated for working too many hours.  All part time employees have been cut to a maximum of 25 hours per week so the company doesn't have to pay health insurance, despite this making it hell as there are no longer enough people working on any given day to finish all the work when there are stock deliveries.  Raises are given once a year only, despite me having taken on managerial duties I will not make anymore for scheduling breaks and running the front end cash registers.  I will not get a raise related to extra duties until I become an assistant manager, which is two ranks, and a myriad of duties away.  I am at minimum wage and getting ulcers from the stress of my position.

Also consider that productivity has gone up 25% in the last 30 years but minimum wage has stagnated.  So I am doing 25% more work for less pay, while having to have assumed skills in many more areas (computer literacy is a big one), with the crazily heightened expectations of the entitled consumer public.  I get to absorb the blows from customers who are upset with corporate policy and want to feel like a big shot by yelling at someone about it, conveniently forgetting that these policies were made by men who do not care about customer experience.  People are mean to me all day, because I have to repeat that I can't return underwear, because I have to collect ID information to do a return without a receipt, because the store won't allow employees to search for items on the floor when a customer calls asking for it, because the company won't allow us inventory access so customers have to come in and look.  Doing any of these things may result in me getting fired.  When a customer dithers about whether to get something in the middle of a sale this actually harms me.  Most companies track the productivity of their cashiers by measuring how long it takes them to do a specific action.  When someone deliberates or can't find their payment, or refuses to move from the counter to reorganize their wallet so I can call someone else up, they are dropping my productivity scores, with results in lectures from management over things I cannot control.  This is why cashiers hurry you, because their employment may be in jeopardy.

To cap it off I get to spend all day walking on concrete floors and lifting and bending in repetitive ways.  I get backaches, and sore knees and am currently limping on both feet from the cumulative pain of long shifts (and before you start in, yes, there are 'anti-fatigue mats', which in my extensive experience do nothing but create trip hazards.  But I don't deserve health insurance.

When I do my job brilliantly I am beneath notice by the customers and just barely meeting expectations of the company.  When I make a single mistake I am treated as criminally stupid (I had a customer loudly claim that the reason ID was needed for certain returns was because all employees were thieves) and then made to feel by management as though my job is in danger.  Contact with management is limited to being told off about mistakes. This includes being marked down on scores because saying "Hi there!" is not an acceptable substitute for saying "Hello!" when greeting someone approaching the register.

You wonder why store staff act like they don't care?  If they did they'd die from the stress.