Do you have a favorite boss? I was thinking about this question at work the other day. The funny thing is, if you watch TV sitcoms, it seems that everyone has a cranky, crazy boss. But is that the reality? It's not exactly true at my housekeeping job. I have so many "bosses", per say, that it gets a bit ridiculous. I mean, there's the housekeeping managers, then my "boss" who is actually in charge of both the maintenance and housekeeping departments...but after that, there's layers of bosses going higher and higher up the company and pay scale, and so it goes. I guess you could say I'm at the absolute bottom of the hotel hierarchy. Usually, it doesn't bother me. Fortunately, I don't have one of those raging sitcom TV bosses, with the blazing red faces, spittle flying from their mouths as they holler insults your way. And I don't have a workaholic boss who snaps at you the second you take a break. Although I honestly have experienced both of these types over the years, today I can proudly say that I am evil boss-free. The only "boss" that I directly report to every day is a manager, and there's three different ones; not one is especially intimidating. All of them are middle-aged women, usually willing to compromise on scheduling, availability, and your attendance at meetings. One of them is particularly anxiety-ridden, and she can occasionally fly off the coop when it comes to heavy attendance at the hotel or employees not cleaning things "just so". But that's understandable; I know I'll be more than set in my ways when I'm older. I'm already a stubborn, crazy redhead. No, I've definitely had worse bosses.
There was the one who never paid me all the money he owed because his business was in the process of going bankrupt when they hired me (wish they'd told me!) or the one who made poor little 15 year old me cry because I didn't exactly know what bussers were supposed to do when there was only two tables at the restaurant (how did I know you weren't supposed to just walk around looking busy?). The one I remember most distinctly is from my first housekeeping job. I started out at this resort with my best friend, Thea. We liked cleaning, and this was a great gig. The pay rate was higher than I have yet to see again as a housekeeper (even though this was nearly 10 years ago), and the boss was super flexible and welcoming. In the morning we arrived at a little building I called the "Housekeeping Lodge", where we hung out for maybe half an hour at the start of the day (all the while on the clock, of course). We cleaned in teams, carrying little buckets of cleaning supplies and bags of rags around to the various resort buildings. They had a unique set-up at this place, fairly old school and small town in style. It went like this: the "Housekeeping Lodge" would get a call from the front desk the moment a guest checked out. Then the boss would assign a group to go to that room (or suite or cabin). The other groups would wait for the next call. I'm not even sure if the place had a computer when I started there, even though this was 2003. One other nice thing about this hotel is that we had people called "runners" who would race from building to building on little golf carts to remove the soiled towels and linens for us and to leave clean ones for us to arrange, which made our job so much easier.
Once given a destination, we'd wander over there, crank some tunes on the radio, and dance our way through the cleaning. When we finished, we'd call up the Lodge for our next assignment. Usually, they hurried us over to the next place, but often there wouldn't be another check-out yet and we'd have some time to kill. We could watch TV, lounge around, chat, etc. Like I said, we had it good. But, for the most part, this didn't discourage hard work. Because we knew it was a relaxed atmosphere, we took the time to clean and clean well. We enjoyed working for the hotel, and so we treasured our jobs and worked hard. We always received compliments from guests about our great rooms, and people who stayed once always returned. It continued this way for at least two years. My best friend and I (along with a few other friends and acquaintances who came to work with us over the years) worked there in the summers mostly, and occasionally during weekends in the school year. We were only high schoolers, so we didn't need a ton of hours, but we were saving up for our own cars, so work was somewhat of a priority.
Unfortunately, one year the worst possible thing happened. A new owner took the resort over, kicking out most of the previous hierarchy, including our beloved boss. Within a matter of weeks, our hours were cut, our wages were reduced by about $3/hr, and we were no longer allowed to work in teams. Several workers from all areas of the hotel either quit or were kicked out. The relaxed work style of our previous management was, strangely, blamed specifically on the members of the housekeeping team who had been around the longest, which included myself and several friends. Being the young and the lacking in power, we were the easy target. As a result, quite a few of my high school-aged co-workers quit, including by best friend. I was grimly determined to stick it out through the end of the summer, not thinking I would be able to find another job at this point. I wasn't happy about my decision; I only did it out of necessity to save up for college. But the new owner was nasty! The schedule was completely out of whack, with a strange scattered arrangement as far as start times went for employees. Constantly, the schedule called for the freshly-hired middle-aged housekeepers to come in earlier and get more of an advantage as far as hours went. I, as a younger, apparently more dangerous employee, was forced to come in later, although I left at the same time as everyone else, earning only half of my usual hours at a third less pay. It was blatant discrimination against the younger employees, although I didn't know how to put it into words at the time, and all I felt was distressed. One day I dared to come in an hour earlier in protest, and, man, that nasty woman tore me a new one! It was awful! She almost made me cry, too, but by this point I was a high school grad and too proud to cry in public. I just couldn't believe how we were being treated. Every priviledge was being taken away. We used to have free access to the hotel fitness room and pool; now merely asking about the anemities led to our boss glaring down at us in disgust. The new hires didn't understand, but I knew how things used to be, how much happier everyone had been, how much friendlier the atmosphere had been. Even the guests could sense the change; families who used to leave with a smile and a "thank you!" call to us as they drove away now sped off in their SUVs without a second look. And it was all caused by a change in management.
Incredible the kind of impact a boss can have on a place, despite the feelings of the majority of workers below him or her. I guess the hardest thing about this story is that even now I don't know what I should have done differently back then. Should I have quit immediately and risked not finding a replacement job mid-summer? Should I have tried to go higher up? I don't think I could have; this boss was the boss and hotel owner's wife, if my memory serves me correctly. Maybe I should've gathered a gang of housekeepers to protest and we could have walked around waving signs. But they likely would've fired us and hired replacements. I don't know. It doesn't bother me much anymore, but to this day I still feel bad when I think of the more pleasant memories associated with my first two summers at that job paled by the harsh contrast of my final summer there. I hope that if you ever get the chance to be someone's boss, you become a much more positive influence on the place you take over. You'd be surprised by the kind of impact you can make.
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