In a previous Hotel, where I was Accommodation Manager, the room attendants would stand in the doorway of our 'live-in' chefs' room and say 'where do we start?' It was a typical, 'lad away from home' scenario, drink, guitars, girls, more drink, dirty clothes strewn around the room, enough aftershave lotion to sink a battleship, usually spilled all over the dresser, lad mags, used tissues (!!) To add insult to injury, he always left his payslips open on the desk, and the girls would give out for the rest of the day about how much money he was getting, when it was them who had to clean up his shit!! His chefs whites were always in a crumpled heap on the bathroom floor, (his bathroom had no lights for a whole week once, and he didn't report it, so how the hell he washed himself properly I don't know, what am I saying, he's a lad!...but also a chef...eww!)
This was a 4* establishment. But he was a lovely guy, so he kinda got away with it!
Today I was literaly pounced on, on the drive up to the Hotel, I was flagged down in the car by the housekeeping supervisor and one of our cleaners. They were bouncing, mad, boiling with rage, which isn't a pretty sight to arrive at work to...!
'You have to go and have a look at that lodge the guys have used, it's unbelievable!!'
'The guys' being members of staff who have been living in for a couple of months.
Young, unattached males, with Mammys who do everything for them, on a good salary and a very short walk to work, are going to erm, enjoy themselves, use their leisure time to the full.
Unfortunately, their accommodation usually suffers.
The suffering then goes down the line to the cleaners, who, although justified in their complaints, make it their duty to inform anyone and everyone who will listen, that they have just had to clean dried vomit off the bath,(?!!FFS!) dried poo off every toilet, pick used condoms out of the bathroom bins, that have no liners in, scrub caked on grease from pots and pans that were left in the kitchen sink, sand blast the oven, wade their way through bedding that has been stained with 'God knows what' clean every cup, saucer, tea pot, and plate with bleach before putting them in the dishwasher, again. 'Deep cleaning' has taken on a whole new meaning today!
The suffering is then passed onto the Manager, who, has to inspect the damage and make a report, arrange for specialist collection of the soiled duvets, pillows, and bedding, has to arrange for the carpets, mattresses and soft furnishing to be steam cleaned, and calculate the cost. She also has to try to smooth the waters between the lads and the cleaning staff, who are now spitting fire at each other, and field questions from the GM who wants to know 'how bad' the damage is, 'did you take photographs?' and will 'deal with it' himself..
Down the line it goes, around and around, pointless, timewasting exercises which could have been avoided if they had had a tiny bit of potty training from Mammy, if only she had taught them to put their used toilet paper in the toilet, not on the floor. If only she had taught them to USE the toilet. If only she had taught them to cook real food, and made them eat their meals at the table, maybe, just maybe they wouldn't have eaten so many takeaways and wiped their sticky fingers on the wall beside the bed....!
If only we had been allowed to do housekeeping once a week for them, but no, they wouldn't pay, so the crap built up, the cigarette smoke became more and more embedded in the walls, the curtains, the carpets.....if only they had washed their feet more often then the acrid smell of cheese would have been lessened.
To the end of the line...the dirty little bastards themselves. They actually thought that the cleaning would take an hour as 'it's not too bad' in reality it took three ladies four hours to clean it out, without dressing the beds, as they are going to be cleaned later today, and all this will put the lodge 'out of order' until at least Tuesday next.
All this has to be accounted and paid for, the extra man hours, the cleaning materials, the contractors, the loss of revenue from the lodge being OOO, not to mention the now, very bad feeling between the girls and the dirty bastards, as the girls have told everyone how bad it was, and the lads have been blaming each other!
I love my job, I know how lucky I am to be here, and I enjoy looking after such good quality accommodation and facilities, but it never fails to amaze me how anyone can abuse their rooms/lodging, what sort of parents raise these pigs?
I 'lived in' for at least three or four years all told, and I never, ever let my accommodation get in that state, in fact, in some of the staff digs I stayed in I made vast improvements!! I painted, I cleaned, I fixed plumbing, I made curtains....Jesus I sound like the perfect tenant!
Where's me calculator?
