Dedicated to those who want to become housekeepers.

After a few days of training under the local veterans of the pickaxe and vacuum cleaner, we started working on our own.

Every new room opens like a chocolate egg with a surprise. Singing: "housekeeeeeping!" - a click of the magnetic card in the door mechanism - a checkmark on the list next to the room number. What's in there? Food? Tips?

Generous tips in rooms with strawberries at the bottom of half-finished champagne glasses and palm prints on the headboard mirrors - and zero tips in rooms with battalions of empty beer cans on every surface, towels soaked in nacho sauce in the jacuzzi, and traces of vomited dinner on the bathroom floor - "I paid for all of this!.."

Working as a housekeeper with a rate of $7.25 and a weekly paycheck of $160 also gives a serious debuff to squeamishness:

-What? A half-eaten cupcake, burnt pizza, forgotten fruit? That's our lunch!

I regularly find tips and food in mini-fridges, Dana and Lera find alcohol. To each according to their needs, which is discouraging.

So, housekeeping is hard work with strictly regulated hours.

Here's the thing: hotel service works in such a way that room service happens strictly from 9:00am to 3:00pm. Before noon, they mainly service Stay-Over rooms, those staying in the hotel for another night. By 12, everyone else must check out - Due-Out. Total - six hours every day, five days a week. You can ask to work in the laundry, but don't think they will give you more hours at the expense of the main staff.

Pros of this job:

+Relatively strict schedule, leaves a lot of free time. If you find a second job (we didn't) - it will be easy to combine schedules.

+Small joys in the form of "Easter eggs" in the rooms - everything left behind by guests who checked out (except for expensive equipment or jewelry). That's how we regularly had breakfast with other people's breakfasts, and Lera got a huge but very cool OBEY t-shirt.

• Useful skills for quickly making beds, cleaning mirrors, and generally making things shine, as well as the opportunity to show off in all subsequent hotels and use a trained eye to look for flaws in the local staff.
• My personal plus - we weren't provided with transport, so I rode my bike to work. And the cuties - on roller skates. That's cool.
• We found our best friend Mike at the hotel.
• Free coffee.

Cons:

• Low pay. To start with, we didn't even get the $8 an hour and 35 hours a week promised in the offer. It's not even the manager's fault, it was just a dead tourist season.
• Small tips. $6 a day at best, seriously?! That's ridiculous. So don't count on a significant bonus to your income from tips.
• Physical exertion, especially on the back - try moving king-sized mattresses, carrying vacuum cleaners, and moving at a trot for six hours. Pretty fun. Especially the first couple of days.
• Working with chemicals. Furniture, mirror, and tile polishes are not very healthy things at all. Everyone gets gloves, but they don't save you, especially if you stop wearing them because of laziness. And that's how it goes.
• No positive motivation. My black boss sent me out into the rain and cold a couple of times to clean rust off door frames. A bonus for weather conditions and no curses directed at her? Forget it. Only a runny nose, only hardcore.

Of course, every case is different, but in our case, our patience lasted for a month. And then we left the beloved (actually not) Williamsville at full speed. This was due not only to the failure with the job, but also to an exciting hormonal-criminal drama involving Jess, Tyler, Mike, and some other odious personalities. But... more on that later ;)