My first day alone at the hotel. I arrived at 10:00 AM, as expected. I was sleepy, but I started working very energetically and quickly. Ammi, the second head housekeeper, gave me a paper with the schedule of another girl (who is off today). I had to take her cart (everyone has their own here, we carry towels, linens, cleaning supplies, a vacuum cleaner – everything that might be needed) and clean her rooms. I had 4 checkouts and 5 service rooms.
That's a lot for the first time, but what can you do. At first, I spent a long time trying to organize the cart and gather everything I needed, wasting a lot of time. Everything would have been fine, but Lis managed to notice, "Olgaaaa, you should hurry up." She just had to put her two cents in.
I started with the checkouts, as required. I tried to do it both well and quickly. After two rooms, Ammi came to check on me, and she liked everything very much! That was nice! On average, I spend an hour per room, sometimes more. By 3:00 PM, I had only finished those rooms, and there was still service to do. Martini and Maria came to help me; apparently, Ammi sent them because, in theory, you need to finish by 3:00. After that, people start returning from the beach. Together, in half an hour, we did the make-up (daily cleaning) in all the remaining rooms without any effort at all.
By the way, in one of the rooms, people left a $40 tip! Just like that, no envelope, nothing. In theory, I can't take someone else's tips; it's unfair and wrong. I wasn't planning to, but what should I do with them? Actually, I even had a thought that maybe Lis and the other workers decided to test my reliability. When Sally was checking my rooms, I asked her what to do with the money. She said very simply, you can split it: 20 for you, and 20 for whoever serviced those rooms during the week. So everything is great! I got 20 bucks – and that's not bad for a hotel!
When I was leaving, I met Vitya, the one who was at the party yesterday. He works here from 4:00 PM. We stood and talked. I found out that we have cameras everywhere in the hotel (I mean in our storage rooms and laundry). So that no one steals anything and to monitor if anyone is hiding from management.
There wasn't much time left before work at the restaurant, and I needed to eat and change. Vitya told me about a cheap Chinese restaurant where you can get a main course starting from $3.50, and the portions are huge. "Panda" is located at the intersection of Maple & Pacific. That's where I went.
Honestly, it's quite a dive. But the attempts to make everything look nice and up to standard are noticeable. Something like our Caucasian bistro. A huge menu, a bunch of different dishes, and it's unclear what is what. I didn't have much time, so I just pointed at random (there are banners with food above) and ended up with shrimp in lobster sauce.
There are only 3 tables in the restaurant; mostly everyone takes food to go. But the walls are decorated very interestingly with photos of visitors from previous years! The Chinese man brought me a huge plate of rice and the lobster sauce in a container. It had 6 huge shrimp floating in it, peas, and that was basically it. The sauce itself is transparent. I mixed it with the rice and started eating – because I was incredibly hungry! I ate the whole plate. I can't say it was very delicious, but it was pretty good! I paid about 7 dollars for this pleasure.
At 6:00 PM, it was still slow at the restaurant. Not comparable to last Saturday, of course. There are three of us bussers today, and there's nothing for even one person to do.
After an almost sleepless night and a heavy lunch, I was terribly sleepy. And there was nothing to do at work. I warned the guys that if Andrew decides to send someone home, let it be me today. By the way, yesterday, out of 4 bussers, he left me alone.
Only by 7:00 PM did people start coming in, and in the end, we served quite a lot of tables. There were 4 waiters, so we (Pat, Matt, and I) hoped to get good tips. Unfortunately, it was as if everyone had conspired! First, Hillary left us $6 each; I didn't even believe it, I thought maybe I lost something. Then Lisa gave us 13 for everyone!!! 13 – often I get that much alone! Then Carol gave us 15... Something is definitely wrong. While waiting for money from Jerret, we decided to split these. To make it easier to count and divide, we threw everything into a pile – including Hillary's money (even though she gave it to each of us personally). I will never do that again!!! Jerret, even though he saw that we were all standing together, gave the tips to each of us personally. The guys put 7 on the table, but I had 10 in my hand from Jerret. Why did we decide to count everything together??? However, without hesitating for a second, I threw those 10 dollars into the pot. Matt said nothing, but Pat, with his terrible voice, remarked, "He gave her ten." Terrible, he should have kept quiet; I didn't say anything, I just silently gave them to the common fund. But that's not the main thing. We ended up with $94 for three. Everyone took 31, and then, attention, there is one miserable dollar left on the table. Everyone looks at it in confusion. How are we supposed to split it! It seems to me that in Russia, there wouldn't even be questions!!! One person would take it, others would take it next time. Or we would have decided how to split a 50-ruble note!
God, how stupid and snobbish they are! It's annoying, I have no words. There are plenty of options: first, I'm a girl, they could have just given it to me. Second, Jerret gave me more, and quite deservedly, so I think I have a right to that dollar? Third, if things are really that bad, we could ask Andrew to change it into cents! In general, I just stood aside and watched what they would come up with. I should have torn it into three parts, let them remember that Russians aren't that petty! In general, Pat guessed a number from 1 to 10. I said 7, Matt said two. Pat gave the dollar to Matt because he guessed 1. How complicated everything is!
