My Charity

I was recently asked by one of our guests if the hotel had some sort of charity programme they could donate to. I couldn't come up with an answer and so told them to speak to reception about it. In honesty, there is a pay-roll-deduction programme set up for staff to donate a part of their salary to charity. I don't know anyone who has signed up for it. I don't mean to make excuses, but I'm a student on barely minimum wage who gets tipped about as often as a neurotic squirrel finds a nut; I need all the money I can get.


However, my thoughts drifted to a charitable organisation, which I won't name, that meet at the hotel every week. They dine in the restaurant, and drink in the bar.

Given the numbers of members and the price of dinner, I worked out that excluding drinks they pay the hotel £1000 a week. With drinks included it's between £1100 and £1200. Over the course of the year, they spend a minimum of £57200 at the hotel.

Admittedly, whenever they meet they pull out their cheque books and pay their membership fees. In truth I do not know if this money goes to paying for the dinner, if it covers their admin costs, or if a part of it actually goes to charity. Even if the cheque was aimed solely towards charity, would £57200 not be a nice little 'boost'? What could you do with that money if it was used in the right way?


I discussed the figures with my flatmate and she said she thinks they're all posers. The charitable organisation is just an excuse to meet once a week, eat dinner, get drunk, and be sociable.

A cynical view perhaps, but at £57200 a year I'm inclined to agree.

However, I'm not exactly contributing at all so am I even one to judge?

My FAQ

If I'm chatting to guests at the bar, I'm always asked the same sort of questions. If they seem the friendly sort, I usually answer honestly. With that in mind...


My FAQ:

Q: What is the most tips you've ever made in one night?
A: £65 from a couple of American guests trying to impress 2 Irish girls

Q: What is the best tip you've ever made?
A: £7 for driving to a petrol station at 1am to pick up a pack of 3 condoms

Q: What is the worst tip you've ever made?
A: 10p - The bill was £9.85, so when they paid with a £10 note and were handed 15p change, they made the conscious decision to not just leave their change, but to give 10p of it

Q: What is the longest shift you've ever worked?
A: 15 hours straight - We were short staffed and a party was seriously underestimated (the cleaning alone took 4 hours with 3 of us working at it)

Q: Do you like your job?
A: It really depends on what type of guest we have in the bar. A lot of the time, yes, I do

And finally,

Q: Would you recommend the hotel restaurant? Honestly?
A: ... Um... I think there are many fine restaurants in town and it would be a shame to spend all of your time in the hotel
Q: You didn't answer the question.
A: ... Sorry, you'll have to excuse me, my room service pager just went off, I'm needed in the kitchen


I know I'm missing some of the other questions I'm often asked, but I've just come off shift and I'm finding it hard to think.

If you have any questions you'd like me to answer, please ask!

My Impatient Guests

For some reason, tonight we had some of the most impatient, pain in the arse, irritating, guests I have ever served.


As mentioned previously, after a certain time, I become the maintenance man/porter/chef. This means that it is impossible for me to be on bar, and stay there, for all of my shift.

My first impatient guest, was when I was called to reception to help a lady with a luggage and carry her child to her room. I'd been absent from the bar for 30 seconds, when the receptionist's internal phone rang. It was a guest at the bar, demanding to know what kind of hotel we ran where we left the bar unattended.

My night got worse. It was a busy night, and guests kept ordering food. This meant that I was running back and forth between the bar and the kitchen. At the end of her shift, the receptionist informed me that she had watched me leave the bar, go to the kitchen, and return to the bar with food. During this brief absence, and I do mean BRIEF, she was rung 4 times by people at the bar demanding to know where the bar man was...

4 times?!

Once is impatient, I need to come up with a new word to describe this...

She went on to tell me that over the course of the night, she received 13 calls regarding my whereabouts. On average, we get 2 calls a night. 13 is obscene.

You have to bear in mind that of the people who complain, some of them are people who I have helped carry luggage to their room, delivered room service to, or fixed the shower of.

And yet they expect me to be on bar permanently.


I apologise for the rant, but tonight was really depressing for me. I just find it sad that I was called 4 times during a 2 minute absence...

My Staff Relationships

Having read Andrew's blog 'Working at Food Place', it occurred to me that I haven't really discussed in any depth the relationships staff at the hotel have with each other.

The hotel makes its staff into a family. The problem however, lies in how dysfunctional, and somewhat incestuous, the family is...

There is the staff block, so most of the staff who work at the hotel can live there as well. This means cheap accommodation, free meals, and a very short journey to work. However, staff accommodation also means that you are at the beck and call of the hotel. For example, if you've just come off a 15 hour shift, but someone needs to discuss something with you, they can ring your room and you can't ignore it...

(On top of which, just because you spend 8 hours a day working with people, that does not mean that you 'want' or are going to 'enjoy' seeing them when not working. This has led to several arguments, a few fights, and a lot of 'silent' relationships where staff are refusing to speak to each other)


There are cliques of staff who eat together, work together, and go out together. For example, the Filipino staff who work in house keeping, and the Polish waitresses.


There are members of staff who seem to 'date' the hotel. One receptionist has dated 3 separate members of staff, each from a different department. This has caused a massive problem where 3 separate departments may not talk to each other, depending on who is working the current shift. Additionally, I'm told that a year ago one of the waitresses managed to sleep with almost every chef... The department nearly imploded.


There are also the members of staff who seem to serve as a beacon for hatred. These are not necessarily senior managers, though one is, but can be lower rung workers as well. These members of staff can't help but generate feelings of despair, disgust, and intense rage.


Personally, I think I am maintaining my relationships fairly well... The exception being a porter who I might have to punch the next time I see...

Maybe I should date the receptionist?

My Moral Dilemna

I've run into a situation which I have to deal with on a fairly regular basis, and which leaves me feeling useless and despicable. The entire situation is caused by baby food.


Occasionally, people staying in the hotel bring their children into the bar. I have no problem with this, as long as the child is quiet and doesn't disturb other guests (for example, by running round, screaming, or getting lost and necessitating a hotel-wide 'child hunt'). The problem stems from parents asking if I can heat up their baby food for them in the microwave. I am assured that this will only take ten seconds on high heat.

The first time I was asked I readily agreed, and proceeded to the kitchen to ask the chef to heat it for me. He adamantly refused - I quote:


"When you use a microwave to heat food, it can cause hot spots to form in the food. If the baby is then fed part of the food from a hot spot, it can burn their throat. If I prepare food for someone and they get sick, I'm covered by the hotel. If I heat that for you, and it hurts the baby, I'm liable."


When I asked what I could do about it, the chef said I was welcome to use the microwave and heat the baby's food. That way, he was no longer liable and the blame would shift to me.

I am now left with a moral dilemma. Do I heat the food, and risk getting sued if something goes wrong, or do I refuse outright to heat baby food and let the child go hungry? The reason this situation leaves me feeling useless and despicable is that I always go with the latter.


On that particular occasion, I put the baby food container into a teapot of boiling water and handed it back to the parents saying it was the only way I could heat it.


Is this the only option (short of having parents fill in a disclaimer) that I have to heat baby food? How do other people in the service industry deal with this, or does it just not come up?

My Chef

Q: What do you get when you cross a stag party with a head chef?

A: A bill in excess of £200 charged to the hotel and a fire hazard

Another staff party, another night of serving tedious guests who think they own the place just because 'so-and-so' works there. However, it wasn't the staff's guests who caused the most problems this time; it was the member of staff himself.


I'd never seen the head chef drunk before, but it was entertaining. I especially liked the bit where he called his girlfriend at 4am telling her how drunk he was and asking if he was a bad boyfriend.

Throughout the night, he wouldn't let any of his guests pay for their drinks (even though they kept trying) and instead insisted that he would pay for all of them. However, he would then instruct me to bill it to the hotel. As it was a stag party, this resulted in A LOT of drinks being charged to the hotel.

Additionally, in stag night tradition, the groom-to-be was dressed in drag and had a 'blow-up-love-sheep' handcuffed to his arm. Needless to say, this looks a little strange to other guests staying in the hotel, who are trying to have a quiet drink in the bar.

As the night progressed, a wedding party arrived back at the hotel and mixed with the stag party in the bar. Fearing this may lead to problems, we had several of the largest members of staff standing nearby in case someone needed to be removed. Thankfully, this was not the case, as the stag party managed to scare all other guests out of the bar.

They then decided they were hungry, so the chef ordered us to make up some sandwiches. When he found out what we charged for sandwiches he was apalled... A little strange I think as he's the one responsible for this. He declared that he would prepare something instead. What he meant by this was that he would turn on the deep fat fryer and prepare chips.

The chef's plan made the nightmanager 'uneasy', so he transferred me off the bar and into the kitchen to keep an eye on the chef and ensure he didn't deep fry his hand. However, on my way to the kitchen the chef walked past me and went and sat straight back down in the bar. We thought that maybe he had given up on his plans, but instead found he'd just left the chips unattended sitting in the fryer. This led to a convergence of all staff in the kitchen, hurriedly trying to work out how you cook chips in a fryer as none of us are trained in that respect (or insured - the hotel isn't even insured to have the fryer ON when there's no one trained on duty/sober)... The chef eventually returned and finished his plan...


In the morning, when the chef finally turned up for work, he announced that he felt "sick as a badger's arse" and was then called into the general manager's office to explain his drinking bill...