My first job ever was a Houseman at the largest hotel in my area (not that large...one of the only 8 floor buildings in my "city" or the neighboring ones, actually) and it was part of a work-study internship. Let me explain: When I transfered to Florida, most of my critical class credits didn't transfer over ("Trigonometry? we don't offer trig...besides, you still haven't taken your Algebra II course yet" me: what the hell?) so in order for me to graduate when I was scheduled to before moving from NY, I had to take extra classes, abuse the summer school system to take extra classes, and enroll in as many "work at your own speed" courses as possible to make up all the credit lost in transferring. Last simester of my senior year, I had every required credit I needed but was lacking in vocational courses so I signed up for an experimental work study internship that would give me a full credit in one semester. Ok. Now that that's in order:
When I applied for the internship (which was really just a full paying part time position where I had to give weekly reports to the coordinator at my high school) I was the only one, out of 4 applicants, who had computer experience and was top in line for a cushy desk job designing posters for weekly in-building activities.
The First Day at the Job: The manager for the linen department walks up to me and introduces herself as my manager and tells me how I was reassigned at the last minute to her department, takes me aside and tells me that because I was black and in shape I would work better than any of the other white applicants in the entirely minority department. Ok. Thanks lady. Relaxing desk job is now out of the picture...she walks me into the laundry room and tells me that I'll be working with the laundry woman. Right.
First day at the job I meet the laundry woman and in five minutes I'm standing right near this printing press sized drying machine (which spouts off a fair share of heat and noise) and have a large stack of white linen in front of me...they tell me to fold them and walk away on a smoke break. When they get back they get all the linen I took care of and unfold them telling me I didn't fold them right then show me the proper way of folding them. I'm thinking "thanks" right now and fold up the linen/towels with all of them standing near me. When I finish they take the linen and mention how I'm the fastest folder they've ever seen. So they stack a large pile near me again and begin working on piles half the size of mine. I see a radio nearby and tune it to listen to some music and they stare at me like I just commited some huge crime but don't say anything. Several piles of linen are folded, several piles are restocked.
Lunch starts I grab a plate of what looks like runny meatloaf look at it for 3 seconds and throw it out. I fill up a plate with salad and eat that. I watch the Price is Right on a TV screen hanging up on the wall. After 10 or so minutes, some tall houseman named Will walks up to me and tells me to finish eating he has some work for me. I look up and him and ask if I should clock in and he tells me not to worry...that my manager will take care of that at for me. I throw out my plate and follow him back to the laundry room and he points to a large yellow bin on wheels and tells me to follow. He grabs another one and pushes it out of the room so I follow him while pushing the one he pointed out for me. He leads me to an elevator and we go up to the second floor. Righ outside the elevator is a locked door, he hands me a keycard and tells me to unlock the door and inside I see a large closet. He shows me where the wash clothes, hand towels, towels, and pillow cases are to be stocked then tells me to put them in their places. He takes the keycard and walks off. I stack the two bins of linen and walk back to the elevator...which requires a keycard to open. Great. I walk down the stairs back to the lunch room and watch the winner of the Price is Right jumping up and down like they just conquered a nation.
Several days pass. During those days I folded linen, learned to opperate the printing press sized dryer, and worked during all of my lunch breaks, off the clock. The ladies ask me to hlp them with putting some bins of dirty linen into the washing machines. I walk up to them, notice they're all slipping thick yellow cleaning gloves onto their hands, and ask them if they have any gloves I can wear. They look at me like I just asked the dumbest question on Earth and tell me I should have brought my own with me and that they don't have any left. I want a smoke break right now and I don't smoke. I help them load one bin of clothes into a washer and begin working on the next. I put my hands into the bin to grab a hold of a load of clothes and cringe. My hands...are in something...gooey. I take my hands out and I have a hershey's like substance covering my hands up to my wrists. In one second the most aweful stench eminates from my hands...like the worst baby diaper imaginable. I gag but hold it in. My hands are covered in a liquid pool of feces...mingled in the human waste is a grey thick substance. Sperm. I don't want to know...I take my hands to a sink and tell them to run hot water and get some bleach. They're looking at me without moving and I tell them again. I pour bleach, that smells like Irish Spring soap, over my hands and run my hands under the scolding hot water. After Ican no longer feel anything but pain in my hands, they slowly walk away from me and one of them walks near a box bolted to the wall. She opens the box and takes out one of FOUR boxes. Opens the box and tosses a pair of yellow scrubbing gloves on the floor in front of me and tells me to wear those for the rest of the clothes...unless of course I want to take an early break which I can, she says. I take a break...a full break. For the last hour of that day I work in silence and at the end of the day the lady who tossed me the gloves that didn't exist tells me that my face scared them all and that I shouldn't take the job so seriously. I wait for my ride to come and contemplate quitting like I've never done before. I can't though...or I won't graduate. After the third week I get my first paycheck. Something's not right about this...my paycheck shows that I've only worked 23 hours when I put in over 40. Even with that considered, my paycheck is STILL short. I'm getting waiter pay which is half the pay I should be getting.
I almost quit again...but NEED that credit. I don't quit, but I talk to the H.R. department about it, then manager at the front office positions. Then to mine. She's pissed at me for going over her head without consulting her first. I really want to quit now...but don't.
Regarding the credit, I had the choice of either graduating on time or not meeting the requirement. No other full-credit vocational classes had openings and this was my last chance to graduate on time. Throughout all of this I was meeting with the coordinator over at my high school and complaining regularly. The rest of my time there wasn't so bad...I never did get paid for my overtime and my time sheets always showed up as 39 hours (just short of full time hours) but I was able to gain my lunch breaks and my full pay per hour which was just (around $.50) over minimum wage.
One guy from my school was working in their presentation department...setting up their dining hall and displays and arranging the hall for ceremonies...nice guy he quit the job the day he got his half credit and his replacement was a cool guy...kinda big. We used to talk during any spare time we had. A girl from my school was working as a housekeeper, cleaning the rooms when the guests checked out...she quit within a week. The cushy desk job that I was lined up for was taken by a tall white guy...this guy never talked to anyone other than the older women in his department. Whenever I was called to deliver supplies to them I would make a point of talking to him. He was breaking at his seams, talking about loosing his mind over how stressful the job was. All the while I would agree with him and harbor a bit of--was it envy?--at how simple tasks like Designing a Word document to display an upcoming event where the peak of his work. The guy stuck with the job past the last day though...for all I know he's still working there.
Right after I complained and 'went over' my manager's head over my treatment and paycheck, the Will guy got pissed at me and asked me why I'm not doing my job. Turns out my responsibilities where outside of the laundry department and I was to work with him, as a houseman. I told him how he knew I was in the laundry room the entire time, he would deliver dirty linen to me and I would give him the bins of clean folded lined. My manager never told me to work outside of the laundry room and if I were to be working with him then my job was never explained to me. I ask him what he wants me to do and he tells me to make runs with the linen for him so I go on the elevator and start stacking the closets. During my time working there, I often had to deliver towels and chairs to rooms. One particular time I was to deliver 5 chairs to a guy staying on the "suite" floor (the 8th) and received my first tip. The guy was elderly and took some time to reach into his pocket. He tipped me 25 cents and told me to keep up the hard work. So yeah...that was my first tip.
This Will guy was a slow worker...he would often take an hour to stack the closets while it only took me 10 or so minutes...and I always wondered what it was that the guy did in those closets. I was told to stack the closets for him while he, two of the laundry ladies, and my manger took a cooler of beers up to an empty room on the 8th floor to do God knows what. Around this time I only had a few weeks to go before I was done with this program and was not in a particularly good mood, either. I was stacking one of the closets when I noticed the *tip* of a magazine exposed...hidden above the corner of where the washcloths where stored. I took the magazine down and looked at the front cover and was greeted by a fully nude woman with her legs spread. Dirty magazines...a whole stack of them...hidden in this closet. Now that I knew what kept Will back whenever he was doing this work, I tossed the magazines back on top...then took them down again. Now, inside each of these closets was a laundry chute...I tossed the books down behind the chute and heard them land somewhere on the second floor (which had no laundry chute so they were now stuck between the walls). Feeling a bit relieved I then went to each other floor and proceeded to throw stacks and stacks of magazines behind the chute...after a cursory examination of each, naturally. At any rate, when I was done with that I took a break and waited for 15 minutes then walked back into the laundry room, turned the radio on and started folding linen. Will and the 2 women eventually made their way back into the laundry room and Will went out to collect laundry from the housekeepers.
After 10 minutes he walks back into the laundry room looking like he wants to murder me and asks me (loudly) where is his stuff...I play ignorant and ignore the guy as he gives me some speech about respect...I busy myself with folding hand towels. The manager walks in and asks what the yelling was and I tell her that Will thinks I messed around with his stuff...but I have no idea what he's talking about and he wont even tell me what's missing. Eventually, he just walks off saying he's going to finish stacking the closets and I didn't see him for the rest of that day. Following that, my duties in the laundry room and being a houseman were cut short and I found myself spending most of my days talking to other workers and watching TV in the lunch room. Bored, I walk around aimlessly and help people with small tasks ... asking my manager (who seems very stressed out now) if she has any work for me and always she would tell me no so one day I ask the HR lady if she needs any help and help her file some paperwork...she commends me and gives me a bath robe for my help. Pretty nice robe, but too short for me. Helping some people setting up for a ceremony in the dance hall and I see a display fall on the tall guy that replaced the student from my school. He never showed up again, but I did see him some years later and he was missing an eye...which is, I guess, due to what happened that day but I never asked.
After that I filled in for him setting up displays and received a dollar or so raise for every hour I helped out with that department. Working there was like heaven compared to where I was supposed to work, but it didn't last long as I was called back into working as a Houseman. Will hurt his back, it seems, and I had to take his place. I gathered clothes from the housekeepers and threw they down the chute, gathered clothes from the laundry ladies and stacked them in the closet and that was it. Boring uneventful days like that marked my last week of my internship. During the graduation ceremony my manager showed up and offered to shake my hand, smile on her face and everything, but I ignored her. During a ceremony afterward, at the hotel, I was to give a speech and I thanked my Principal for giving me the chance to graduate on time, but casually forgot to thank my manager and the coordinator between my school and my internship. The next day I filed a complaint with the principal against the coordinator detailing how I wasn't initially being paid fully and never received overtime. I detailed how I was able to resolve the first through the job but was unable, despite her knowledge, to fix the overtime pay. I worked two more weeks at the job, just long enough to save up for the upcomming PS2 and a copy of Summoner and SSX as well as some DVDs.
I then went on vacation and didn't return for 2 months. When my manager saw me again she was relieved and asked me when I could start working again. I ltold her that I quit then asked where the HR department was moved to. I got my W-4 from the HR department and began walking out when I saw Will sitting by a loading truck smoking. I walked back inside, took a box of Kleenex, and tossed it to him. Never stepped foot there again and if I could have my way I would never look at that building again. Also, the coordinator filed for an early resignation that year...hopefully before she was eligible for retirement. That chapter in my life is closed and I would be glad to never experience anything like that again.
I never want to see a Hilton hotel again.
