What My Job Is

The cool thing about hotels is they're always hiring. It's a huge and growing industry. I was in Shanghai last year, and some world-record hotels were there; and the brand-newest of the brandest grandest newest. The Grand Hyatt, occupying both first and second place for the world's highest hotels was there. Holiday Inn was huge. And, of course, the Ritz Carlton where I brought my friend a prophetic cup of Egg Nog for Christmas, but I'll write about that some other time.
Industries may come and go as the world gets smaller and everything gets digitized, but hotels will always be around; you can't e-mail yourself to Shanghai and stay in the in-box.

Nevertheless, I predict that in a couple of decades there will be no more front desk agents.
There will definitely be housekeepers. There might be security guards. There might be day and night auditors.

First of all, we already have self-check-in/out kiosks, so guests can just pop in and out of the hotel vending-machine style. Second of all, in my experience, hotels cross-train employees to do multiple roles. Standing at the front and checking people in and out with a smile ain't cutting it anymore. At my last hotel, I did everything; I was the night auditor, front-desk agent, security guard, concierge, housekeeper and manager-on-duty from 11pm to 7am. At my current hotel, I've added bartender and 24-hour barista to these duties. There are three people on the graveyard shift at the new place: night auditor, security guard, houseman; and there are definitely some grey areas where we do each other's duties. A multi-role position like this might be the hospitality job of the future.

The security guard here recently summed his job up in a few words:

"My job is to keep people from bitching."

That goes for everyone in hospitality; keep guests from bitching, keep coworkers from bitching, keep management from bitching, and most of all, keep yourself from bitching. If the hotel's managed well, then we front-line people just need to keep the guests from bitching, and our supervisors' job would be to keep us from bitching. I've worked with managers who understood this and ones who didn't understand it. There is such a difference.

Thinking about it, to summarize my job, I'd say my job is to un-fuck stuff: un-fuck the previous shifts' oversights, inaccuracies, and general boo-boos; un-fuck the property management system's errors and hiccups; un-fuck noise complaints, maintenance issues and any other random calamities that may rear their head and belch on the hotel at night. It's my job to un-fuck all this and make sure the next day starts out "like a virgin" (to quote one of my favorite songs).

There are smooth nights with lots of downtime. Tonight's one of them, as you can tell. And then there are the "other nights", like the night when 15 drunken women came in at 3am:

"We want nachooooos!!! Pizzaaaa!" which resulted in the security guard and me in the kitchen trying to crank out mulitple orders of nachos and pizza and remembering to hold the jalapenos on one while making sure the antepenultimate order is meat-free; all while the houseman is up at the register trying to figure out which buttons to push on the already overly-complicated touch-screen. What a nightmare.