Even though I’ve only been a housekeeper for about a month and a half now, a lot of problems seem to come up often! For example, I remember the ‘cheerleaders’ week. They are known to be the messiest and most trouble guests in our resort. All the managers encourages us to do last through before the shift starts. All 16 of my rooms were cheerleader rooms! On the day they all checked-out was also the day I had a lot of check-outs too, so it took me longer to finish cleaning rooms. While I was cleaning another room, there was a knock on my door. I thought it would be my manager rushing me to hurry up, but it turned out to be a bigger problem! It was the security guard. He asked if I was in charge of cleaning the room next door. I looked and saw a family with their luggages outside the room. I nodded slowly and he explained to me how they went already checked in and was really shocked their room was not ready yet. At that moment, I really started panicking. I wanted to call my manager and tell him the situation but he wouldn’t pick up from my earlier calls (I wanted to call to let him know I will have to leave late because of so many check-outs but he never picked up) and I didn’t want to hold the time longer. I hurriedly went to greet the guests, told them they can leave their luggages in the room first and take a walk. When they come back within 20 minutes, their room would be all ready for them. I had to talk with as much confidence as I can so the guests wont feel angered or displeased. They seem to be very pleased with what I told them and went to take the walk. As soon as I closed the door, I really did put all my energy into cleaning out the room within 20 minutes, making sure the room is very different from how they first saw it.
Another time, I had a very rude guest. It wasn’t my usual section room, but instead a floating room upstairs. I knocked on their door in the morning around 8:30 a.m to see if the guests were still inside. A man opened the door. I greeted him and told him I was his housekeeper for today. He said no service. So I offered extra towels and he said no. So I said okay and asked if he mind giving me his initials because we had to get guests’ initials if they did not want any service as a proof. He got mad at me, cursed at me and then slammed the door. At that moment, I was really shocked and couldn’t believe how little respect guests have towards housekeepers. I calmed down later though because I realized I would have to face a lot of these situations in the future so it’s better to prepare myself now.
Another time, which happened just yesterday. I have a V.I.P staying in one of my room. On my board, I have two buildings to take care of, and they were both upstairs and downstairs, so I had to run around a lot. The V.I.P room is located in building 25, and I also had building 24. I know the V.I.P has a habit of putting ‘Privacy Please’ sign outside their door every morning until the noon or even later. I finished all my rooms in builidng 25 except for the V.I.P room and went to finish up building 24. I was finished with all my rooms by 3:30 and went to the V.I.P room. When the guest opened the door, she was really mad. I asked her what was wrong and she complained how she asked for service at 1 P.M but nobody cleaned her room until now, which she does not need the service anymore. I was never notified of this, so I felt really bad that without knowing, I had already ruined her vacation here. I apologized and asked if there was anything I could do. She just took some extra towels and closed the door. I told my manager what happened, and she said it was alright because she didn’t know about it too. I still felt bad though…
Even though there seems to be a lot of problems occuring, I DO have some good things that happened! I got closer with my coworkers, which I feel is a huge accomplishment. 70% of my coworkers are from Haiti and 29% of my coworkers are Spanish speaking. 1% is others, like me! Even though we had different cultures and a huge language barrier, we still got very close. My houseperson always save a seat for me next to him. We always greet each other whenever we see each other. Last time, he even offered to help me strip my beds! All the other coworkers are also very nice to me, and helped me whenever they can. They would wait for me to go on break together also. My managers also seem to like me, I think. They always told me to go on breaks and eat more healthier. They recently changed my manager to a Spanish speaking woman. She had been very nice to me and even offered to give me rides back to the cast only buildings whenever I finish late. Everyone here are very nice!
Oh by the way, I also met a graduate of City Tech! Her name is Kisha. She recently graduated last June I believe and is currently doing a management internship for housekeeping here at Walt Disney World.
Great job on thinking through you’re anger when disrespected by that guest. Working in a restaurant, I tend to get some insane characters as well. The best revenge is kindness in their cruelty. They’re never worth any other reaction from us.
Why is it that the front desk assigned a guest to a dirty room? What is the standard in the hotel that the housekeeping department and front desk use to communicate dirty and clean rooms?
As I read your post I notice another problem with communication. How is it that a guest can request service but the housekeeper is not informed of this request? Another question: What is the standard policy for communicating guest requests? What do you think can be done to increase the level of communication so that these errors in service do not happen?
Diversity in the workplace is should be of great interest to us all. I would like to read more about everyone’s experience with their diverse workplaces.
I like your approach to the internship. The challenges you will face over the next few months will not be easy but they will provide many opportunities to test your professional approach to your work.
Finally, Kisha is a great role model for all of us. She has set a goal, worked through difficulties and is on her way to accomplish her career goals. Please make sure to send her my warm regards and that I a happy for her.
It appears that when guests booked rooms, they are already assigned a certain room. Our check-out time is 11 A.M while our check-out time is 3 P.M, but there will still be some guests who checks-in earlier than 3 P.M. There are times when a few guests checks out by 11 A.M and then the new guests will check-in by 12:30 P.M which is impossible for housekeepers to keep up with the cleaning if there are 5 check-outs with early check-ins. I think this is a serious problem. They are not flexible with rooms. Also, there are times when a housekeeper will have their board with a full 16-17 check-out rooms, which they usually finish by 5 P.M so it’s impossible to finish all check-outs by 3 P.M for the new guests. Then the new guests will usually have to leave their luggages inside the room and walk around while the housekeeper tries to clean their room as fast as possible.
Once a housekeeper enters a room, they have to ‘punch in – 665’ which means ‘housekeeper’ in room. When we are done with an occupied right, we punch in ‘664’ and when we are done with a check-out room, we punch in ‘663’. When we punch in, the information is displayed on a system called the Lilo system, where people from front desks and housekeeping managers can keep track of. I did not punch in ‘663’ for the dirty room yet but the guests already arrived so the front desk had no other choice but to still give them the key to the dirty room because they arrived early.
Usually when a guests requires service, on their telephone, they have to call the housekeeping base, and from there, the people from housekeeping base will make a call to the housepersons on their walkie-talkie to execute the order that’s been placed. In this case, the VIP guests didn’t call housekeeping base, but asked a houseperson directly, so the order was not placed in the history/file.
I really think the resort I work in should be more flexible with the check-in rooms. If the room is not ready, they should assign the guest to another vacant room, instead of the room they had been assigned when they first made a reservation because they never know what might happen with the housekeeper’s board. The past guests could also ask for an extention or something might happen preventing the housekeeper from keeping up with the amount of check-out rooms.