21 Things You Only Know If You’ve Worked in Hotels

BY DAN MILES

1) Much like prison it’s far easier to get into than it is to leave.

2) No room service professional ever enters a room without expecting to see someone’s knob.

3) Nothing causes the cold hand of fear to grip your bowels like a phone ringing on your day off.

4) Management’s idea of career progression differs greatly from your own. As does their concept of achievable bonuses, fair working practice and basic human kindness.

5) Your establishment’s restaurant may indeed be five star but the staff food will still taste like it’s been exhaled from the very arse hole of hades and left to rot under a heat lamp for a day or two.

6) It’s amazing how many men in their fifties need to check in with their ‘wife’ around two in the morning, isn’t it?

7) The word ‘budget’ means a random and arbitrarily generated number, created by senior management in a fit of hopeless optimism and alcohol induced pique that all others will then be punished for failing to meet.

8) The only people who enjoy being present for a breakfast buffet are eating it.

9) You are not alone. That feeling you get when you walk through the door is shared by others. These include a cow at the entrance to an abattoir and people at Gitmo prior to a good and thorough waterboarding.

10) Gastro-intestinal illness carries a mandatory two day absence. You will suffer at least two bouts of this a year. If cholera got you three days absence you would suffer two bouts of that. 

11) A range of shifts, shift work or some unsociable hours required are all euphemisms for working the butt f**k shank of the night for the next 500 years. Besides, they can’t use Martyr on the advert.

12) Work in hotels long enough and you will be able to spot a hooker from a hundred paces, maintain a smile longer than anyone except the Joker and know what a dead body smells like when its been swinging from a rafter for a day or two with a ball gag in its mouth.

13) Official complaints procedure means passing it up the chain of command to someone who actually might give a f**k.

14) Drinking to get through a shift is strictly forbidden. Check the paperwork though, they might not have mentioned anything about sniffing glue.

15) The only limits on the s**t people will steal is their imagination and the size of their bag.

16) The further up the chain of command you go the less humanity you will retain. In the future hotel managers will be sent back in time to assassinate the leader of the human resistance.  

17) The only musician to ever truly capture the range of emotions you feel on a daily basis is Morissey, and even he’s a little jaunty.

18) Concierge translates as pimp and ticket tout. Whereas Bar would be Playboy Tip Magnets, Events — temp wranglers, Management — power crazed hellions lacking a beating heart, Room Service — waiters who can use a lift, and Front of House — Bambi eyed bullet catchers.

19) If the job description states ‘individuality and initiative encouraged‘ all this proves is they can lie to you twice in one sentence. Your true personality will still shine through, but only on holidays and only if you are over a thousand miles away.

20) If someone can do something to a room, someone will do something to a room. This is why housekeeping is grumpy. Frankly, you’d be f*****g grumpy if you’d had to clean up the foul f*****g s**t people do to rooms and found a guy swinging with a ball gag in his mother f*****g mouth.

21) G.M stands for General Manager, but only because Soulless Hell Weasel With a Heart of Coal Who Preys on the Weak and Defenceless like the Succubus of Myth, is too confusing to render into an acronym.