Refurbishment

Apologies for the lack of posting over the past few weeks, the hotel has been closed for refurbishment and therefore no guests have been staying in the hotel. Let me bring you up to speed with the refurbishment.

The public bar has been renovated, slightly, and the only new things there are the fresh coat of paint on the walls and ceiling and the new fridge behind the bar. The new fridge was a necessity, as the last one exploded, literally, leaving the restaurant staff and the bar staff with no chilled white wines and champagne. Not that we sell much of it anyway, but when you get about ten people complaining about the warm white wine, then the management feel obliged to actually do something about it.

All the corridors have been painted, the damp patches have had several coats of paint to hide them from public view and the fire extinguishers have all had individual cabinets made for them. Thus making it extremely hard to locate them in the event of any emergency which may arise.

The hotel is due to re-open on the first of July, so you can expect normal posting to resume then. Meanwhile, I’ll sit here and play around with the internet until it’s time to go home. I do have plenty of maintenance jobs to be getting on with, I just lack any motivation to do them.

Blood on the Restaurant floor

When I arrived at the hotel, I parked the car in the usual place and walked in through the kitchen door. I noticed the lights had been left on in the kitchen, so I walked in to make sure that nobody was in stealing food - trust me, this does happen - when I noticed that the main deep-freeze had been left wide open. Normally, I’d close it over but I was feeling a bit devil-may-care last night, so I left the door wide open. If the kitchen staff can’t make an effort to ensure their workplace is secure before heading home, then I sure as hell won’t. There was no one in the kitchen, so I turned off the lights and headed into the restaurant.

I checked the windows to make sure they were closed properly, when I noticed our young goth waitress, Ashley, sitting at one of the tables crying. I walked over to her, but stopped short of approaching her. Even in the darkened restaurant, I noticed the slight glimmer of a steak knife in her hand and the small pool of blood on the floor. “Ash” I whispered gently. “I didn’t do it” was her denied response. “Ash put the knife down on the floor.” At this point I could tell she had injured herself in some way, but I wasn’t sure where from a distance. She slowly dropped the knife onto the floor and kicked it gently under the radiator. “Ash, I’m going to come closer to you now, if that’s OK; I want you to nod your head.” She nodded slowly. I walked slowly towards her, as I approached, I couldn’t see where the blood was coming from. My initial thought of a slashed wrist was incorrect. “They said I couldn’t do anything right. I’m useless.” she said through the tears. “Don’t listen to them, Ash. You’re one of the best waitress’ we have.” I said, still trying to work out where the blood was coming from. She looked up at me with her bloodshot, puppy-dog eyes, “Really?” “Yeah, of course you are.” She gave a very slight smile, and then looked away quickly. “Ash, do you want my help?” I offered. “Yes.” “OK, can you tell me where you cut yourself?” I knelt down, slowly, in front of her as she slowly slid her skirt and apron up to her thigh. I looked at the cut, which was no more than an inch in width, but the amount of blood on the knife suggested it was pretty deep. I took off my tie and wrapped it around her thigh, after I had tied it fairly tightly, I placed my hand on her shoulder and looked her straight in the eye and said, “Don’t worry, Ash. No one will ever know.” She smiled at me and mouthed “Thank you.”

I called for an ambulance and waited with her, making small talk about the night and the hotel, until they arrived. They put her in the back of the ambulance, one of the crew asked if I wanted to go with her, I said no. “Ash, don’t worry about the morning shift, I’ll cover it for you. You’ve got my number if you need me.” She smiled again and the ambulance crew closed the doors and headed off in the direction of the hospital.

I went back into the restaurant and switched on the lights, apart from the small pool of blood on the floor, the chair she was sitting in was saturated with blood. I took the knife out from under the radiator and slid it under the chair cushion, before throwing both of them into the skip at the back door.

Life’s Little Gamble

You may recall that over the past few years the government has brought in a nationwide smoking ban in all public places. Would somebody like to enlighten me as to why the staffroom is the designated smoking area for the staff in the hotel? Not being a smoker myself, I’m not one of the many frequent visitors to the staffroom, if it can be avoided, but I know that several members of the ’so-called management team’ are. At the end of every shift, they retire to the room to smoke before heading home to smoke themselves into an early grave.

Last night the bar float was down by £40, I checked the rota and my suspicions were correct. Donna was working last night. I balanced up before putting the register in the safe for the night. There was a severe lack of pound coins in the hotel, so I immediately knew that Christine (one of the management team) had been on shift as well. When she’s not moaning about her deranged husband, she can often be found in the public bar feeding the fruit machine. She has never won anything out of it, but I have won plenty. It’s not uncommon to walk in there at night and notice her pushing pound coins into the slot, pressing a few buttons and then repeating the process. I usually ask the barman/woman to write a code into my book if she has been playing and if she won. It’s a simple method which keeps my minimum wage, when it does get paid, topped up.

Last night I checked my diary and sure enough, the regular barman had left a message to say that Christine had been throwing gold coins into the machine all night and hadn’t won anything. This made me smile for two reasons. The first reason being; Tuesday night is deathly quiet and no one uses the public bar. The second being the jackpot hadn’t paid out for quite some time. At £250, this isn’t surprising. According to my rough calculations, tonight was going to be payday.

After the two residents had retired to bed, I locked the front door and did a quick check on all the fire doors. Everything was secure. I grabbed a ‘free’ can of Red Bull from the bar fridge and made my way through to the public bar. Standing on the patch of stained, threadbare carpet in front of the machine, I opened the can of ice cold Red Bull and took a long drink. I cleared my throat and slid my crisp five pound note into the slot. The light which told me that it was about to pay out big time, flashed intermittently; I let out a small, evil-sounding chuckle, cracked my knuckles and hit the start button.

The first few turns yielded no success. Until I only had around £2 left in the play side. Straight off, it let me onto the board; one nudge took me to the top board. Again the win light flashed briefly and my smile broadened. I struck it lucky with a ‘no lose’ on a slowed down bonus round, then immediately afterwards I got an ‘extra life’. This was to be of no use to me tonight, as I repeatedly knocked the start button confidently. The boards kept spinning until I got to the top of the money trail. I’d also, unaware, managed to get a repeated chance with the option of slowing down the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ options. I could have carried on, but there was no point. I had won. I slowed down the yes and no’s and managed to land on a yes. Jackpot repeated.

A grand total of £500. Not bad for a night’s work.

Bus Drivers

For the past few weeks, we have had the pleasure of looking after a group of bus drivers. They work long hours and like to relax in the bar until four in the morning before heading back out to drive a bus two hours later. Remember that the next time you consider using public transport as an alternative method of getting to work.

One of the drivers, Malcolm, has an exceptional fondness for his beer. I have observed him on several occasions drinking until the early hours, having a half hour sleep in the bar, then going in for a full breakfast then heading straight back out the door to work. It should be noted that the drivers aren’t actually served by me; they are given a free run of the bar. So technically, we’re not flouting any licensing laws . . . sort of.

Malcolm arrived back at eleven thirty last night, which was fairly early for him on a Saturday of all nights. I set him up with a few drinks before counting the register and putting it away in the safe for the night. After about an hour, he went to bed. This was very unusual for one who places alcohol first in his life. I enquired as to what was wrong with him and he told me that he had had several complaints from passengers that whenever they got on his bus the first thing they could smell was stale drink. The passengers had then complained to the bus company and he had been given an official warning from the depot manager. This was enough to shock him into staying clear of the demon drink for a while, or at least until the depot manager goes on holiday in two weeks.

In the hotel today, I heard the ’sad news’ that our maintenance man, Derek, had walked out. When I started my shift, the management had left a letter in my diary asking me if I would take care of any maintenance jobs during the night until such time as they had employed a new maintenance person for the hotel. I sighed loudly, scrunched up the letter and threw it in the bin. I sat down in the receptionist’s chair and opened the maintenance folder to see which jobs were requiring my attention for the night. After reading through the very long list of items which needed attention, I settled for some DIY to keep me from going insane during the night. So I’d like to apologise to anyone who was awoken during the night by me banging, loudly, whilst listening to Radio 2 at four o’clock this morning. I say I’d like to, but the reality is that those bedside cabinets needed assembling and I decided that four in the morning was the ideal time to start work. If you did try and call down to reception and complain, then your call was diverted to the kitchen, where it was left to ring out.

After I set my personal best of six cabinets in two hours, bearing in mind they had been bought ‘on the cheap’ and all the instructions, without pictorial help, was in Chinese, I decided to go through and check the fuses in the electric box. The electric box is a room at the back of the hotel, where all the main electricity is supplied from. Usually you will find that several fuses have tripped out, for no evident reason, and need to be reset. It doesn’t help matters when a fuse blows and needs to be replaced with a rapidly declining stock of fuses which were purchased in the mid-1960s. The electric system itself is a lot older. So old, in fact, that any new equipment that is purchased by the hotel (computers, fax machines, et al) has to have the plug changed to an older style slim plug.

It was then that I noticed the main power switch for the fire alarm was switched to the off position and that the main control board (which tells you the location of the fire if there ever is one) was also showing as ‘ERROR’. I switched the fire alarm power switch back to the ‘ON’ position, which also turned the siren for the fire alarm on. I quickly switched it off again and wondered how long the fire alarm had been off for. I am presuming it would cost money, which the hotel has a distinct lack of, to call out an engineer to reset the machine. Whoever had the bright idea to switch off the main fire alarm in the hotel, endangering both the lives of staff and guests should be up for this year’s Darwin Award.

Please leave the bar

When I took over from Pedro, the barman, last night he warned me that the group of bus drivers we have staying had gone into town to ‘mingle with the locals’. The bar till was down again last night, which is nothing unusual, so I made a note of the total loss in the float book at the start of my shift. Everyone knows that it is the sticky-fingered young waitress, Donna, who has been taking the money, yet management is too scared to pull her up about it. She was working last night and the till float was showing as correct before she started her shift. There was only her and one other waitress on last night. A skinny little goth girl, who responds to the name of Ashley.

When I arrived at the hotel last night, I parked my car in the usual place, under the overhang, and entered by the kitchen door to the hotel, slamming it firmly closed behind me. It was sticky underfoot, and there was a half-empty bottle of gin placed behind the permanently open fire door. Immediately I knew that Mike was tonight’s chef. As I passed by the back bar, the public bar which could be a thriving haven of money but is generally closed unless there is a football game on, I noticed one of our non-residents asleep in his chair. Everyone knows that it’s Del’s chair and nobody dares to sit on it, the last person who tried ended up in hospital. Mind you, Del was sitting in it at the time. He’s vomited, pissed and filled his pants more times than I care to imagine while sitting in that chair, yet when we had the refurbishment recently, he refused point-blank to allow us to throw it out.

I walked into the back bar and closed all the windows and locked the main door. There is a trick to getting Del awake without being injured as he lashes out when he is awoken from his wheezy slumber. His chair is positioned directly under the remotely operated big-screen TV. At the base of the TV, there is a long metal weight, which when brought down at the correct angle, can knock anyone unconscious. This seems to awaken our esteemed guest, so I slowly brought down the TV screen and, just before dropping it the final few inches, made sure it was aligned correctly.

There was a dull thud as the metal weight made contact with the thick skull of Del. He stirred slightly, “Come on, Del. Time for bed.” I shouted across to him. “OK, OK!” was his slurred response. He lifted his pint glass to his lips and took a long swig from his pint, which he appeared to have been drooling into when he slept, and walked towards the bar. He brought the pint glass over to the bar and slammed it down, “Same again compadre” he said, as I was turning off the lights, “Oh . . . are you closed?” “Yes, Del. We’re closed, time to go home. Do you want me to call you a taxi or do you just want to stagger home and hopefully fall off the bridge?” I said, staring across at him. “I’ll walk.” He sheepishly replied. Most of the taxi drivers refuse to take him, as he usually ends up treating their shiny Skoda Octavia’s with the same care and thoughtfulness of his chair in the pub. As he staggered out of the door into the main hotel, I turned off the rest of the lights and locked the door behind me.

I walked through the hotel to the reception desk, where Pedro was standing. “Evening Ped” said I. “Evening chief” Pedro replied, “The bus drivers are out probably won’t be back till later. Two in the bar, residents, heading to bed after this drink and your favourite manager is on in the morning.” As they are all my ‘favourites‘, I enquired as to which manager he was referring to. “Claire, of course!” was Pedro’s twisted response.

Claire is the self-promoting, squeaky voiced, annoying ‘Front of House Manager’. When in reality she is no more than a receptionist with a ‘Duty Manager’ badge (which, incidentally, she made herself and she changes it when the real management is around.)

“Pedro, who is in charge tomorrow morning?” I enquired when I sensed he was joking. “Oh, umm. . .” came his reply.”Oh . . . Nobody then?” I asked. “Yeah, Pretty much.” When there is no one in charge of a morning, it is usually down to me to stay, unpaid, and cover the reception until the morning receptionist comes in. It does mean that I get to boost staff morale in the restaurant by asking them to do mundane tasks which they never usually have to do. But usually it just means that I get to stand in the restaurant and frown upon anyone who enters, staff and guests alike. Then when, and if, they complain I am backed up by the waiting staff that I wasn’t there and the guests are lying to get a discount off their already over-inflated room rates.

Welcome to the blog!

What with everyone else jumping onto the proverbial ‘blog bandwagon’, I’ve decided to take the plunge myself and start my own blog. Unlike most work-blogs, who are afraid of the mighty wrath of their employer and the looming prospect of a P45, I don’t fear them. My senses have been somewhat numbed by the sights I have seen as a Night Porter in the not-so-average UK hotel.

Each night brings a new adventure, I’m almost certain that something will go wrong due to the sheer incompetence of the management who run this ‘fine establishment‘. I have been expecting a health and safety inspector to arrive one day and close the hotel down. So far, he hasn’t shown up. It’s actually very surprising, the amount of times I have heard our esteemed guests checking out of a morning and informing us that they are going to report us to the relevant authorities. Those are just empty threats; the most you can do is sending us a complaint letter. We certainly love them, if you have a spare five minutes; I’ll take you through to the ’staff room’ and show you an entire wall full of various complaints.

From the alcoholic head chef to the goth waitress, we have them all. The hotel is a utopia of freaks, miscreants and deviants and that’s only the staff. The guests are another kettle of fish. I have no qualms about writing about ‘interesting’ guests that I encounter when I’m being paid to keep an eye on the hotel at night.

I hope that you will find this blog informative, witty and that you will come back time and time again. Remember, the next time you book a hotel for the night; it could be my hotel. . .