I had just finished my first year at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration in Ithaca, New York and was expected to find a job in the hospitality industry for the summer. One call to my dad, found me working at the Hollenden House on East 6th St. and Superior Ave. in Cleveland Ohio. His job with the Erie Lackawanna Railroad, often saw him putting up guests at the Hollenden House, so he knew the manager and asked for the favor.
I don’t think my dad realized that the job that was open would be the “graveyard” shift at the front desk. This meant arriving at work at 10:30 pm in the evening and returning home after the shift change after 7:00 am in the morning. At that point in time there was no I-77 or 480 that allowed me to travel to work in 19 minutes. Instead, I took Broadway to 9th Street to Superior and pulled into the hotel, taking more like 40 minutes at that time of day. I wasn’t traveling through the best part of town, and the off-duty police who worked as hotel security, warned me to keep my car doors locked with plenty of gas in the car and to not stop if I saw anything unusual on my drive to and from the hotel. Yes, hotel security, my first experience taught me a lot about what can happen at night at a hotel. I was forever thankful for those individuals, as they locked the door at midnight, hung out in the lobby and told stories to keep us all awake during the night. I was hired because I could type. It was before automation and computers, and someone needed to produce the bills for the guests when they were checking out in the morning. There was one other individual assigned to the Front Desk at night to help answer phones and check-in late arrivals. My job was to type the guest bills, so they would be ready in the morning. After my first Saturday night, when 100% of the house was checking out the next morning and it was a long night prepping the bill, I tried, but rarely succeeded in not working on Saturday’s. The best days to work graveyard were Monday through Wednesday nights, when we had mostly business clientele staying for the week in the hotel. Thursday night was as bad as Saturday night, and since I was the ‘summer help” you can guess my schedule was Monday and Tuesday off, so I got both Thursday and Saturday in my five-day work week of Wednesday through Sunday. If any room still needed cleaning, that also became our job at the Front Desk during the graveyard shift. Sure, my mom had taught me to make a bed, vacuum the floor and clean a toilet, but not to the standards expected at the Hollenden House. They marketed “Cleveland’s Finest Downtown Hotel” and cleaning standards were high. I had to go through one day of training in housekeeping, before starting the night shift, just so I could meet the standards. I also had training with two morning shifts and two evening shifts, before I was trained on the graveyard shift. It helped me understand the problems created if the bills were incorrect when the guests were checking out at the desk. But it also gave me an early understanding of the importance of training individuals in the standards asked of any hotel company. Did this experience change my mind about the hotel career I was planning? Absolutely NOT! I loved it, every day was different, never two alike and I loved meeting all sorts of individuals who stayed at the hotel. I was ready to return to the regular hours of life, even though college life is not regular. Most importantly I never forgot to treat those individuals who worked the graveyard shift for me with extra special kindness, as they aid tremendously in the smooth running of a hotel.
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January 2022
About this BlogThis blog has been designed to serve two purposes. The first is to leave the written histories of my ancestors.
The second purpose is to offer some of my own stories, so that my children and grandchildren can learn more about my direct family and my childhood. Categories |