Working Gal: The Three-Star Hotel

I returned home the summer after my sophomore year of college, resolved to never work in food again! Instead, I gained a three-month gig as a hotel housekeeper, which is far less glamorous than being a cook, yet I had high hopes after seeing Blue Crush—those gals made being a maid look cool and fun.

But my housekeeping gig was neither cool nor fun. Maybe it would’ve been better if it was at an island resort and I at least had the knowledge that after work, I was a rad, buff surfer gal who lived on the beach. Instead, it was a three-star hotel in my hometown and it was just down the road from the pizza place, i.e., my former place of employment. I’d never gone surfing in my life. I was incredibly jealous of Twist: While my struggles to find the perfect job for me persisted that summer, she was offered a gig working in a costume shop while she was wearing her pajamas and we were in the middle of trying on weird hats.

At twenty years old, I was easily the youngest housekeeper. The one nearest to me in age was a gloomy, pouty young woman who already had two kids. Most of the housekeepers—all white women—had been locals their entire lives, and I think I was the only housekeeper to have experienced any schooling beyond high school. I had my favorites: Anne, a stout Scottish fireball, and Donna, a thin, pale, freckled woman with powdery gray hair and a perpetually concerned crease to her brow. Also memorable was Dawn, who had an overbite and simian shape to her face. These three were the most helpful to me, the ones who I related to the most, the ones who still had some life behind their eyes.

We all wore the same shapeless scrubs. The frumpy fabric scratched, my shirt was two sizes too big, and I had to roll up the elastic waistband of my plum pants, they were so long.  Before my time, the outfits were green until a guest had a heart attack. The housekeepers were standing around in the hallway as the paramedics rushed in and out of the room, and one of the EMTs approached two of them and asked about the man’s blood pressure. They were like, “What? We’re not doctors; we’re the housekeepers!”

I was warned to watch out for “Skin Guy,” whose room I wound up cleaning my first day on my own after training. (Naturally!) I opened the door and noticed a flaky trail all over the sheets and blankets. It flecked the carpet, speckled the top of the TV, and scattered across the table. It coated the bathroom tile and left a film at the bottom of the tub. I initially thought someone had flicked a cigarette everywhere, but no: It was all bits of dead skin.

Skin Guy was a trucker, and normally a trucker’s room was easy to clean—one of the simplest, in fact. The truckers often slept in one bed, sometimes not even under the sheets. Most didn’t shower and instead stuck to using the bar of facial soap and a hand towel. Not only did Skin Guy help himself to absolutely every amenity available (no judgement there; I’m known for this myself), but his skin disease had turned his flesh into a total body-dandruff situation. I donned latex gloves and set to work. The room took twice as long to clean as any other.

Because any place vastly improves with the presence of a love interest, I decided to half-heartedly crush on Eli, the most eligible, age-appropriate dude at the hotel. He worked in the restaurant kitchen downstairs. I looked forward to having to return room-service trays of cold crab cakes, limp French fries, and empty Heineken bottles—that meant there was a chance I’d see him!

According to Anne, Eli was a jazz musician. Aside from that ever-compelling fact, it really made no sense why I was attracted to him other than boredom. Gypsy was like, “He’s bald and wears glasses? He doesn’t sound like your type at all,” which is completely true: Dudes with long hair has forever been my thing; show me a group of dudes, and I’m always going to be instinctively drawn to the one with the floppiest, moppiest hair.

Still, a pointless crush is spicier than no crush at all, so I concocted fantastical Pear-like plans to get his attention. For example, I “accidentally” dropped my backup name tag badge by the back door of the kitchen in hopes Eli would find, be like, “omg I must return this to its rightful owner,” and then hand deliver it to me, his queen.

(Let it be known I only had a single conversation with him the entire time I worked there: He stunned the hell out of me by walking into the reiki workshop my mom took me to, and we had a brief conversation about it the next day in the hotel lobby, during which I talked too fast. [The reiki practitioner had noted that while giving me reiki, my heart chakra was all “bubbly,” like it was carbonated. Will wonders ever cease?])

Cleaning ten to twelve rooms a day was normal. It always surprised me how frequently guests wanted their rooms cleaned. I grew up thinking housekeeping was a privilege for fancy people because my parents would just slap a “Do Not Disturb” on the doorknob and request extra towels at the front desk. We’d make our own beds, ration the shampoo, and ensure the room didn’t look like a complete shit show upon leaving. Now I understand that’s the entire basis of a hotel’s appeal. I’m such a child of this world.

Every day I hoped a guest would leave a tip, but tips were so rare that I was embarrassed for being grateful when someone would leave me a dollar. (It was somehow worse when they’d personally hand it to underage me while calling me “Ma’am.”) We were on our hands and knees, wiping up the sticky hair on the bathroom floor for six-fifty an hour. We folded your toilet paper into a perfect triangle, so leave some damn money! Place it next to the TV Guide! It’s astoundingly motivating!

Other tips for guests:

1. Do not tip your housekeeper with religion. One time a guest handed me something and I’m like, “Oh, thank you so much!” only to open my hand and realize it was a God-touting pamphlet. On another occasion, a guest sought out my cart, placed a business card on top of my clipboard, and left while saying, “I’ll leave this here for you to figure out what it says.” It was a weird brown card that had lines on it, so I held it away from me and squinted, and it turned out to be an optical illusion that said “JESUS.” And just what am I supposed to do with that? Was I supposed to interpret this message as a sign? Maybe that guy was Jesus in disguise, like in those chain emails in which God was secretly that homeless woman you gave five dollars to.
2. Strip the bed completely when you leave, especially if you don’t leave a tip. This makes life easier for the housekeeper and, admittedly, guarantees a fresh set of sheets. (Fun fact: If the truckers weren’t sleeping under the covers, we’d just change the pillowcase, straighten the comforter, and call it a day.)
3. Don’t ask that your room be vacuumed but then also leave all your shit all over the floor.
4. Avoid approaching the busy housekeeper to tell her that she can do your room now, as though she’s been dying to all day. There’s a system to these things.

I hated taking care of stay-overs, the people who stayed for more than one night. I appreciated the solitary aspect of the job; I often would have a good cry while cleaning rooms, imagining the people I love dying (you know, the usual). The best part about the job was showing up, doing it, and then leaving and not thinking about it. I could go on autopilot and space out, thinking about

• New painting ideas
• All the books I wanted to read
• Ideas for song lyrics
• A trick that would humiliate an ex-friend if I had to
• What I would say for my mom’s eulogy if she died
• JC Chasez’s part in “Tearin’ Up My Heart”

But if a stay-over, well, stayed, I would receive the nonpleasure of changing sheets while they stared at me. I was told that if a stay-over was a dude, I should get another housekeeper to clean the room with me for safety’s sake. But the only creepy encounter I had there was from a hotel handyman (I don’t have much luck with those, do I?). He would pop in to say hi and ask me my age and where my boyfriend was, and I’d be acutely aware of how alone we were and that he was between me and the door. Fortunately, I told Anne, who told the owner that the handyman was “scaring the new girl,” who told the handyman to stay away from me. It was huge relief.

(The owner was often accompanied by an incredibly obedient German Shepard who was voice-trained and never on a leash. I even saw it trailing after an SUV one day while the owner found a new parking spot.)

One time, I opened the door to a suite and was greeted to the sight of rose petals everywhere. It was like Skin Guy but pretty. I immediately cracked up; it was just such a pain in the ass that it was laughable. The manager came in to see for himself and was amused: “Well, this is pure romance…. They’ll be picking rose petals out of their butts for the next three months.” The vacuum bag afterward was essentially a huge sachet of potpourri.

On my last day, the housekeepers had a party for me with cake and gifts. Donna gave me a soft plush monkey as a present, Anne kept saying, “PROMISE ME you’ll write,” and I got a card with everyone bidding me farewell. When I was leaving, everyone who worked at the front desk and all the managers saw me off. I was blown away by the amount of fanfare resulting from my departure. It was like I was about to fly off with the former FLOTUS in a military helicopter.

Michelle, the general manager who’d hired me, even told me pointedly I was welcome to come back if I wanted to work there, “even if it’s not housekeeping.” Still, I never saw any of them ever again.

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