I Have a New Job!

So, for the few of you left that don't know, I have a new job! No this isn't in advertising, as nice as that would be, I'm actually working for a hotel, which, weirdly enough is actually something I've kind of wanted to do since I was a kid. I blame movies like Dunston Checks in and TV shows like The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. :p

I am now working as a night auditor for the Gateway Hotel and Conference center in Ames, Iowa, and I have to say, I kind of love it! Don't get me wrong, this job, like most jobs, is not perfect, but even with the small issues here and there, I am still really enjoying it so far! As a night auditor, I am working overnights, but I actually adjusted to my new schedule pretty easily. I'm already a night owl, so all I had to do was stay up a few extra hours!

Now, I will say, that this job is not at all what I was expecting it to be. I originally applied for just a regular front desk position, day shift of course, and I never heard back from them. I believe that was at the end of last year, so I just assumed I never got it and moved on. I've been job/internship hunting for over a year now, so I'm used to never hearing back from people.

Then at the beginning of March, I got a call! Apparently I'd given up on them too soon, because they wanted to set up an interview! I went in the next week, and somewhere during the interview he brought up the subject of a night position. I had never even considered that as an option. We have a night crew at Hy-Vee, but I would not want their job. Far more manual labor, and zero customer interaction. (Though I suppose in some ways, that could be a positive... :p) But I actually like working registers at the store, most days we have great customers in Ames, and it's the closet thing to 'fun' you can do there. (For me anyway.)

Anyway, the more he talked about the night position, the better the job sounded. Better pay with full-time hours, and it's usually pretty quiet, and you almost never get overrun with customers. All in all, it just seemed like a quiet, low-stress job. After the interview was finished, he told me I definitely passed the first round, and they'd call me once they'd finished all the interviews. A week or two later I had a second interview with HR, which I thought went great as well, but then I didn't hear anything for well over week. They'd told me I'd hear back from them in just a few days, so when I didn't hear back from them by the end of March, I was pretty sure I hadn't gotten it.

I was back at home by then, I had gone on a quick weekend trip with my cousin to see a crane migration in Nebraska, (I'll blog about that eventually!) and I started making tentative plans to move back to Harlan for the summer. Hy-Vee wasn't giving me many hours at all, and I figured I'd have a better shot at hours at the store in Harlan. On my last day home on that trip, I decided I'd call the hotel and get a definitive yes or no. If no, I was going to make plans to come home for the summer, because I have bills to pay! However, when I called, it turned out, the manager had been planning to call me that day! Actually, he had scheduled the call for not even an hour after I'd called him! I got the job!

I've now been working here over a month, and it is very different than anything I expected, and very different than anything I've ever done before. For starters, I kind of expected I'd just be sitting at the desk all night, maybe checking people in for a couple hours, and then out in the morning, and then nothing in between. That's not how it is at all. There is a ton of paperwork, computer work, and audit work, which you may have guessed earlier by the job title.

We have a restaurant in the hotel, and if guests charge things to their room, we get those receipts, and have to enter them into our system, to make sure they are charged. We make sure that direct bill charges line up with the records, and we sort all that paperwork for the "real" auditor who works during the day. We have cash registers around the hotel which we have to count as their respective areas close, as well as a safe which we also have to count, once we've refilled the cash registers (if need be) and all the money around the hotel is accounted for.

After the last guests check in, or 3:00 am, which ever comes first, we "run audit," which is essentially resetting the entire system, causing a ton of paperwork to print, which we have to sort, scan, email and file to all the respective locations and managers.

A bunch of that paperwork is also check-out sheets for guests leaving in the morning. Those all get sorted, and then we have to deliver them all over the hotel. We have 8 floors and almost 200 rooms, so between the walking and the the bending over to slide the papers under doors, that can end up being a decent workout if we have a full house.

Then we have to unlock the kitchen and make coffee for the lobby. That's not too strenuous, until it comes time to carry the coffee downstairs. That's a workout by itself if we have two full restaurant-sized pots. After that we wait for the guests to start getting up, because we usually have some who want to check out first thing.

And all of this doesn't take into account that we'll have guests calling or coming down to the lobby at all hours for lots of different things. More pillows, extra blankets, wake-up calls, toiletries, coffee packets, microwaves, fridges, you name it, if we have it, we'll get asked for it, and if we don't have it, someone will still want it. Thankfully this doesn't happen all the time, but some nights are worse than others.

Some nights, if we have a lot of guests, especially if we have large groups of people here for conferences we'll be busy all night. There's a lot more paperwork, more money, and more checkouts to do. However, on a good night, the bulk of the work will only take up about half the night. Not all at once of course, different things have to happen at different times, but in between jobs, we have downtime that lets us do, sort of whatever we want!

When I first got the job I was planning to bring my laptop and edit videos for my YouTube channel when it was quiet. But then I found out that we were only allowed to use the computers at the front desk, since we have to be up front and available in case anyone shows up or calls. So instead, I've taken to blogging and writing articles for the Rotoscopers, which kind of means, in a roundabout way, I'm actually getting paid to write!

Honestly, this is probably the best part of the job for me. I like most parts of the job, it's definitely a great change of pace from the grocery store, but the fact that I can write while I'm working, is kind of the highlight. I actually wrote this whole blog post and two full articles for the Rotoscopers over the course of two nights at work!

So anyway, those are the highlights for now. I do have one story to tell you about something really weird that happened on my very first night, but I think I'll save that for another post. This one ended up being really long as it is, plus, I need to save something to work on for future nights too. Stay tuned! :)