EQ may get her wish

[smileyeagle1021]

the newest rumor is that the new owners are losing patience with the hotel... granted there isn't any talk of closing the hotel in the near future, but they have made it clear that if they can't get it to work they'll just lock the doors and tell us to have a nice life, they won't keep paying us while they lose money if it doesn't work.

and at this point things are looking bad
-housekeeping is still costing us $1.50 a room more than city average... and that average is if you include the high end places like Grand America, Little America, or Hotel Monaco, so that is a skewed number that we are above.
-despite the high cost rooms still aren't getting cleaned properly
- we are desperately short staffed, we have 3 shuttle drivers to cover 21 hours a day 7 days a week, front desk isn't much better, we have 5 people to cover 24 hours a day 7 days a week (6 if you include the person who's last day is thursday).
-oh, did I mention of those front desk employees, one is setting the record for most sick days ever taken in a calendar month
- oh and despite this they are still cutting people's hours, so turnover will probably go up.
- oh stuff is breaking all the time
- despite their best efforts housekeeping can't set up an inventory system... we ran out of shampoo 3 times in august, we ran out of toilet paper once, and the reusable items that wear out (ie, towels, sheets, etc) are being thrown out when they wear out, but are never getting replaced...
- oh and employee moral is pretty low because of all these things

so EQ, you may get your wish to buy a hotel for insanely cheap... you won't even have to worry about firing everyone so you can get the perfect crew off of CS, the previous owners will have taken care of that for you...

and the sick part is that even if the ship is sinking I'll probably stay until the bitter end.

[bainsidhe]

Smiley, you were still looking for a second job, weren't you? How is that going? With your hotel experience, I wish you the best in finding a happier place that also lets you make enough to pay the bills.

I'll be honest with you, this sounds like a sinking ship so it's better to get out now. Once the business closes, it will be hard to get/keep proper references and paperwork is generally thrown out the window (whether it legally should be or not). I worked through a store liquidation once and promised myself I will never ever ever do that again. Doesn't matter how much you like working with people, it isn't worth the pain and the ultimate difficulty in finding other employment while not actively employed. Just my two cents, I wish you luck.

[KhirasHY]

I've never worked with Hotel Monoco, but they have one here as well and a lot of the people there have good things to say about the way they run things (the hoteliers here tend to congregate to the same bars). If the ship sinks, that probably isn't the worst place to go, if you want to stay in hotels.

[smileyeagle1021]

I've never worked with Hotel Monoco, but they have one here as well and a lot of the people there have good things to say about the way they run things (the hoteliers here tend to congregate to the same bars). If the ship sinks, that probably isn't the worst place to go, if you want to stay in hotels.

I had thought about that... but one of my old roommates who I'm not on the best of terms with works there... the one place I've heard never to work at is Embassy Suites...

oh and I'm not too concerned about being without a job... I have enough in savings that I could go over a month without pain... thank God for planning ahead when I worked at the call center.

[Chromatix]

It really sounds like that place needs a manager who has some common sense and a spine.

Given the problems you mention, I would be doing the following ASAP:

- Fire housekeeping, and replace them with halfway competent people. Heck, rank newbies plus on-the-job training would be better by the sound of it. That should fix your per-room expenditure and consumables inventory problems. (BTW, I think $1.50 corresponds to a large fraction of a bottle of detergent. If they're getting through that in every room every night, something is *extremely* fishy.)

- Put the hours up to full-time for anyone who wants (or can be persuaded) to take them. That'll give you a chance to provide some actual customer service. The money saved from fixing housekeeping should pay for the extra hours. This in turn should head off churn and possibly make it easier to hire more help. At the very least, try your best to keep the good people, but in any case keep enough people on enough hours to run the show.

- Don't worry too much about the sick front-desk employee. If she's already taken off that much sick leave, she's probably already run out of PTO and therefore isn't costing you anything. Just tell her to come back when she's better, and not before.

If nobody in the present chain of command has the balls to do the above... perhaps you could suggest it to the owners yourself?

[smileyeagle1021]

- Don't worry too much about the sick front-desk employee. If she's already taken off that much sick leave, she's probably already run out of PTO and therefore isn't costing you anything. Just tell her to come back when she's better, and not before.

normally I'd say yeah that's fine... the problem is that because she is out of PTO she will try to come into work and then have to leave partway through her shift... which is a problem because then we have to either find someone willing to come in for only a few hours or have the person after her come in early... if she were to just call in we just find someone who's willing to do an extra shift.

[Chromatix]

Which is why I suggested telling her not to come back until she's properly better (and therefore has no excuse to leave early so often).

[Evil Queen]

Tell them I'll buy it for a dollar.

[smileyeagle1021]

Tell them I'll buy it for a dollar.

and if you need a place to live I now have a room open (or will by the end of the week... the lurker decided he wants to go back to Texas to finish school rather than going to the U)

btw- he is moving out on good terms, lurker is simply to describe him as someone who reads the site without being a member... no negative connotation is intended.

[blas]

Move up here and work at the Holiday Inn Express. You can work with Sheriff. Oh the stories we'd read in Cursing Out Coworkers!

[Gravekeeper]

Embassy Suites

Ugh, I book for them.

[smileyeagle1021]

Move up here and work at the Holiday Inn Express. You can work with Sheriff. Oh the stories we'd read in Cursing Out Coworkers!

that wouldn't be a bad idea... except I'm on IHG's DNR list... and I don't know how that affects me getting jobs at their franchise locations...

[blas]

DNR = Do Not Rehire?

[smileyeagle1021]

yup, in this case it means Do Not Rehire
(though it can also meen Do Not Rent, or do Not Resussitate, or I'm sure there are others)...