That 2011 Summer - Part 2

All right this post will talk about the working part, our boss Laura and her husband own and manage 5 hotels, a museum and a gas station in Keystone, and that still doesn’t include various shop lots around the town that she rented out. And it is true that these are just a small portion of their family’s total business.
  

For the first two weeks of June, we 5 Malaysians worked as full-time housekeepers over different hotels. Then when more and more international students arrived after middle June, I got promoted transferred from housekeeping to front desk reception as per wish. And I don’t care you believe or not it was because of my stronger command of English compared to the others. I still had to work both housekeeping and front desk reception during the peak season though. And during the last month of my stay when the town received lesser and lesser tourists, and hotels were closing down for the season one by one, I worked as a full time front desk reception, morning and evening shifts.
 

Working as a housekeeper is definitely not as easy as it looks like. Just imagine yourself cleaning the whole room which includes toilet, bath tub, sink, TV, table, chairs, stripping and making 2 Queen beds with new linens, rearranging the amenities and vacuuming the whole room. Oh yea, and I still haven’t take into account the situation where you have to run up and down the stair (because the motel doesn’t have a lift)  to get your amenity supply from the housekeeping cart or sometimes even all the way from the storeroom. Hold on, I am not done yet, then finally you add in the pressure to finish all those tasks within 30 minutes incurred by our boss. That sounds insane right? For the first two week whenever I was cleaning the toilet bowl or making the beds, I would shout at myself (in a monologue way) why am I putting myself into this piece of crap because it was so damn physical demanding. I mean there were plenty other summer jobs out there such as waiter, chef, theme park worker but for some reason I chose resort worker and housekeeping. For the first three weeks, my fragile palms couldn’t get use to the dry cold weather and the cleaning chemicals and literally cracked, I almost thought that it is gonna leave scars on my hands forever.  >.<
   

(well, when I first decided to take up the job I was really hoping that initially after working as a housekeeper for a short while, I would eventually be doing front desk reception due to whatever reason that I can give, and that little wish did really come true in the end.  ^^ )
   

While working as a front desk reception is more towards a less physical demanding task, it is actually more challenging from my point of view because you are at the front line and facing hotel guests all the time, good mood or bad mood. As a housekeeper, the worst scenarios that you can find is either you found leftovers over the toilet bowl or you opened up a room that you thought it was empty but instead found two guests inside lying under the blanket and got mad at you for intruding their privacy. But front desk reception faced situation way worse than that. Just an example, a hotel guest came back from a long tiring day and found their room yet to be cleaned, the first place they would go is the reception desk not the housekeeping room. Another slightly more complicated situation is after you wasted so much time explaining and apologizing to a guest because the ceiling in their room fall down and you were forced to transfer them to another room, moments later they came knocking on your front desk again because this time the hot water in their toilet wasn’t working. Hard luck old couple but true incident. =.=
   

Over in Keystone, we had students from China, Malaysia, Canada, Taiwan and also a few local American students who worked in Laura’s hotels and museum. We also have a few part timers from China, Taiwan, Moldova, Romania, United Kingdom who came down from Mount Rushmore to work as a second job. Our boss Laura also hired us dorm parents form Michigan to take care of us and occasionally they would arranged some leisure activity after our working hours. We had party every Friday evening at their house. They would also fetch us to Walmart in Rapid City twice weekly for grocery shopping. They would further play the role as our parents and took really good care of us during our time over there. Honestly I felt very warm because I could still have some taste of parents love even I was so far away from home. Quote something that they always hang around their speech, “We all are a family and Thanks God for giving us 26 children during the Summer”. You see, aren’t they really cute?
    

The life in Keystone was as beautiful as always. Night stars, quiet lifestyle, wildlife deers, chipmunks, bears, lions around. You hardly see any vehicle or people around after 10pm. Even the pub over there was the classic 60s 70s style with county music playing instead of the sometimes noisy and irritating hip-hop. And the sky was so clear and clean where there was once when the both of us sitting on our usual spot hanging around then suddenly we saw shooting stars flying across the sky. Well, over there I realize that sometimes life can be really that simple yet wonderful. 
    

And after spending 4 years living nearby Kuala Lumpur/Subang/Petaling Jaya, it is always really nice to get back to a small town to live over there for a certain period to clean up your mind. Totally love that place so much.

Part 3 coming up whenever I am available for it again.