I have a few questions about the behaviors of hotel guests, and I was wondering if you could help answer them. Of course, I have had my own share of hotel stays, but I would have to say I'm a relatively pleasant guest. I leave things clean because I know first-hand about cleaing up messes. I don't stay too late, and I don't try to check in ridiculously early. I'm a good guest :) But there are those guests who forever leave me pondering. If you know anyone who does any of the following, or if you yourself are a fellow culprit, please put my curiosity to rest: why do hotel guests do these following things (all of which are perpetually annoying to housekeepers)?
1. Rejecting the Privacy signs. Here they are, in your room. They are just waiting to be placed on your door handle. Please use them if you need them. Many guests do; good job! Far too many, however, don't use them. Then they yell all sorts of complaints if we knock on their doors at 9am. (I guess that's early for some people? I wouldn't know...) It can also lead to problematic walk-ins in which we come upon people who are sleeping, in the bathroom, or in other situations where you'd really want privacy. Of course, that means I typically run out of the room wildly embarrased. That embarrassment could have so easily been prevented by the placement of one little sign. Please, tell me why you don't use that Privacy sign. I don't understand!
2. Ignoring knocks. This one goes right along with #1. If someone knocks and calls "housekeeping", why not answer? Why not just call back and let us know you're in there? We do it twice, to allow plenty of time for you to respond. We don't just throw the door open haphazardly. This question also follows up with my last post, involving the naked man incident. These situations are so easily avoided by merely responding to the knock and call. We do yell and knock quite loudly. We are required to do so. The only people exempt from this questioning are the hearing impaired, but as for the rest of you, even those with somewhat poor hearing, you have no excuse: please tell me, what's the deal with this one?
3. Tissue stuffers. Lately, I've been noticing an increasing amount of facial tissue stuffed in the door peep holes. Guests have been stuffing it in those tiny door viewers and then just leaving it there when they leave. I don't understand; it's about a centimeter wide; I'm not sure what the purpose of this is. Can you shed any light on this one?
4. Towels on the shower bottoms. Certainly, plenty of people pile their dirty towels in the showers or on the floors when they check out. That's fine by me; it saves me the time of collecting them, and I appreciate it. The habit that's been bugging me is the people who have trouble regarding where to place a bath mat. Rather than placing the bath mat on the floor in front of the tub where it belongs, they have been putting the mat on the bottom of the tub during their shower, soaking it to oblivion, and leaving me to wring out this disgusting towel covered with their hair and dirty bathwater afterward. Seriously, what is the deal, dude? You don't put bath mats in the shower! I'm completely bewildered by this behavior. Do they think the shower floor is dirty? It's been scrubbed with much more bleach than your home shower, I can guarantee that. Do they think that it's too slippery? Um, it's a shower...I don't know how it could ever not be slippery. I just don't know what to think. I've pondered with one but come up blank.
5. Kid Chaos. This is for the guests that grace us with their children's presence. Now, I love kids. Obviously. I'm a teacher as well as a housekeeper. And most kids are great; friendly, fun, eager to learn; not to mention hilarious. Other kids are trouble; nobody can deny that. Even parents tend to admit when they have difficult children. However, it's the parents who don't even attempt to parent that bother me. I see this in my other job, too. Parents who pretend to themselves that their kids can do no wrong and then ignore when their kid punches another child in the face, or parents who assume it's someone else's fault when their kid doesn't do any homework and starts failing school. These are the anti-responsibility parents, who don't completely ignore their kids but don't take an active role in their lives either. The kids are kind of just there, tagging along. Now, in the hotel business, this leads to ultimate room destruction! Dun, dun, dun. The parents go off to do whatever it is they want to do, leaving the kids in the room to throw garbage around, wipe dirty hands on bedspreads and mirrors, break the occasional lamp, hide the TV remote, rip the curtains, etc., etc. I'm not sure what goes down at the actual homes of these families, but the destruction left behind in the hotel rooms in rather embarrassing. A general rule to follow is to treat the hotel room as you would your own home. Follow that rule, and, for the most part, the rooms won't be as trashed. Although, I guess I should take into account that maybe some of these people don't take good care of their own homes; that's fine, it's their own choice, obviously. But please, please, teach the kids a basic sense of responsibility and respect. Too many children are running around nowadays blaming everything on others and ignoring whatever doesn't personally and immediately impact them. Whoa, this is getting a little intense. It may in fact be evolving into a moral issue, but I really just want people to make sure that their kids don't trash the hotel room.
6. Staying over free-for-all. I guess this goes along with the previous one. Some people, while staying over at the hotel for a day or two, toss their stuff all over the place, leaving it nearly impossible to clean. For those of you who know people who do this, remind them to please, at least pick the stuff up off the bed so that we can make it, and try to clear off places we need to clean, like countertops, etc. Unless, of course, they don't mind us lifting your stuff to clean underneath it.

Well, that's a wrap/rant for now. I'll probably have more to complain about later. Please let me know it you have any explanation for some of these odd behaviors. And thanks for listening.

Wacky

The weather today is amazing. Just thought I'd start with that. It's actually been ridiculously warm lately, for Wisconsin, at least. Highs in the upper sixties, and nice and sunny. Not a cloud in the sky. Gorgeous. Not that we had a real winter to recover from anyway, but still lovely to be outside in this type of weather. Especially when you're not expecting it for another month or two.
The negative side to this amazing weather, however, is that it makes housekeeping somewhat dreadful. Here I am, making beds, dusting dressers, scrubbing toilets...and all the while, the sunlight is beckoning me to come outside. So, I approach the window, open it, and hope that this will help me prevail. But, sure enough, in the park below the window, people are running, families are walking their dogs, children are laughing, teenagers are throwing frisbees, etc. Yes, yes, I am jealous.
Of course, despite the problems with my job, I do count my blessings. Many people don't have windows in their place of work, yet here I am with some fresh air and a view. In a way, I am lucky.
But then, as I continue cleaning, a couple walks by and pops in to say something to me:
"Oh, can you please clean our room next? We're heading out to go boating in this beautiful weather and not sure when we'll return."
Me: "Sure. No problem." What I'm really thinking is, Seriously? Just throw it in my face, why don't ya.
And also, Why do you want me to clean your room next if you're going out boating? It takes me like ten minutes to clean a stay-over room, and you are not seriously going to be back in ten minutes; that's ridiculous; I'll clean it when I get to it. For Pete's sake.

Knock, Call, Repeat

One of the crazy and interesting parts of my housekeeping job is that I never know what I'll find when I open the door to a hotel room. Sometimes, it can be something neat, like a tip or snack the guest left behind for me; other times, it can be something awkward or downright terrifying. Today, a friend at work, let's just call her Em, came across something more on that latter side of possibilities.
Now before I jump in, I'm going to give you a mini lesson from the housekeeper's survival guide. The most important thing to do before you walk into a room is to knock and announce "Housekeeping!" You know what's weird? People who aren't housekeepers do this all the time! I'm serious! I can't begin to tell you how many times I have been at the hotel cleaning away and have seen people knock on doors of friends and family and then say in a goofy voice "Housekeeping!" Then they burst out laughing. Wow. Hey-larious. How original. As if that hasn't been done a gazillion, kabillion, trillion, traquajillion times. Seriously, at least once a day someone does this to a friend or relative; I'm not even exaggerating, though I kinda wish I was.
But either way, regardless of who's doing the knocking and calling out, the typical reaction is to open the door. Sure, some people call out, "Come back later!" or "No thanks!" or "We're fine!" Something to that extent. But people say something or open the door, or at least make some noise...something...
If you're unfamiliar with the experience, think of it this way: It's kind of like you're at a public restroom with one stall and no lock on the door. Someone knocks. You're probably going to call out or say "Just a minute" or something similar. It's highly unlikely that you're not going to say something in an attempt to prevent them from opening that door.
For some odd reason that's not always the case in the housekeeping world. Take Em's story today. She knocks. She calls out. She repeats. (Yep, we're required to repeat the knock-call routine now as one of the hotel rules.) Silence on the other side of the door. So she inserts the key card and pushes the door open only to encounter...an old naked man. Just wandering about his room, you know, reading the paper, drinking coffee, the usual morning routine. Only naked. She stammers an apology and runs out, then refuses to return to 3rd floor for several minutes.
Awkward! Now, there is a moral to this short story, and it goes like this: Please, people, please, answer the knock! I sincerely guarantee that we don't want to see your naked bums in the morning. Or at night. Or any time. Thank you very much.