Maybe People Aren't That Bad After All

I am still more or less in the "honeymoon" stage of my job - as in, I don't hate humanity yet... well...  some of the time. There's been days.  I've heard that working in Hospitality really makes you hate people, and I can believe it.  I could tell you about some guests that we've had... yeah.  I don't completely hate humanity yet, but I'm well on my way.

To be fair though, the majority of our guests are really awesome people.  They are friendly, kind, easy to please.  The ones who come back for multiple visits get to know us, and it's always a pleasure to look up and see a familiar face walking through the doors.  We've made some good friends from our guests, and it's usually these guests that remind us that warm, wonderful human beings aren't mythical creatures after all.

My example for you today...

Last night, one of our frequent guests checked back in for his last visit before Christmas.  As I was getting the keys for his room, he pulled out a small stack of envelopes and handed them to me, asking if I would mind giving them to our sales manager and assistant general manager, and the staff.  And then he handed me my own envelope and one for the girl that I had been working with earlier that night.

Inside, I found a $10 gift card to Starbucks and just the sweetest note.  It said:

Thank you for your warm and inviting welcome each week to my second home for the past 6 months.  You have truly made these trips more enjoyable. You and others on this staff are one of the only things I look forward to when travelling here each week. Keep flashing me that beautiful smile and I will be sure to continue having wonderful stays. Thank you very much.  Wishing you a warm and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from my house to yours.

It's guests like that who make dealing with the problem guests all worth it, and really make me love my job.

Maybe people aren't that bad after all. =]

And Now I Belong

I don't think I've made it much of a secret that leaving the four year college I attended for a year and a half was very, very difficult, and that I struggled with that for a long time.  It was tough moving on.  I floundered for about a year and a half - trying to figure out what I wanted to do, not really wanting to do anything or go anywhere with my life and having no motivation to move out of the job that I did enjoy, but was basically a dead end thing.

It got to the point where my mom and dad told me that I had to do something with my life - get a new job, go back to school, whatever.  Just, something.  They suggested classes at the local community college, and my younger sister had decided to go there so I figured I might as well try it and two weeks before the start of the fall semester, we applied and signed up for classes.  I'd finished all my gen eds at the first school, so I knew I should pick out a major going in.  Again, there wasn't really anything I wanted to do with my life so I scrolled through the list of majors on the website to see what my options were.

I came across the title "Meeting and Special Event Planning" and thought "well this looks cool".  I clicked on it, skimmed the titles of the classes I would need to take and what I saw sparked my interest, so I signed up.  Whenever people asked me why I picked that, I made up some story about my family always having parties, but honestly the truth is that it looked a lot more interesting than any of the other options out there so I figured, what the heck, I'll do that.

I went through my first year there... and I quickly found that I really liked my classes.  My teacher was super laid back, our classes were very informal and fun, and I learned a lot.  Even still.... I kept myself detached from the school and couldn't help but make comparisons between that and my first school.  I went there for classes, and that was it, and I had zero interest in being a part of any kind of community and I was a little embarrassed when people asked where I went to school and I answered with "just the community college" - followed up by a quick explanation as to why I was there, and not a four year school.

And then, this May, the class I would have been in graduated from my first college, and I found I was able to start letting it go.  Going back to visit the town where that school is got easier, I was able to stop making comparisons, and when this school year came around, I was really excited to get back to my classes.

Over the summer, I started working at a hotel and going back into class it was awesome to learn about something and then go to work and see it in action.  The teacher I've had my classes with this year has been the best teacher I think I have ever had (except of course for you, mom!), and she has made me want to work hard and pulled me fully into the hospitality industry to where I never want to leave it.  I know my classmates in my program a little better now, and I feel more experienced, more at home.

I was walking to class last week and looking out our huge floor to ceiling windows at the snow as it was falling in the little wooded area at the center of campus, and I was surprised with the thought "I love this school."

This past Monday, I helped to staff "The Festival of the Vines" at our local theater, an honor the hospitality students get every year.  It was an absolute blast, and afterwards we all went out to a sports bar for food and drinks and I enjoyed fantastic, interesting and deep conversation with my teachers and classmates and as I left, I realized that I felt more a part of this community of students than I ever had with any group I'd been a part of back at my old school.  It felt like home.

Somehow, without realizing it, I'd slipped from feeling detached to feeling I belonged.

Confessions of a GSA/Hospitality Student: An Inauguration

I'm in my second year as a double major in Hospitality Management and Meeting and Special Events at a junior college, and should be graduating next December.  Yay!  For six months now, I've been working as a Guest Service Agent, GSA at an awesome hotel and let me tell you, both things have been an adventure!

So consider this a trial run of an ongoing, sporadic series I'm thinking of starting up.  The hospitality industry is full of people and stories and adventures, and I'm thinking that I'll have a lot of things to share with you.  Not a single day is ever the same, and you can never predict what is going to happen - either in the workplace, or in my classroom!

Does this sound like something you, my dear readers, would be interested in?  If you have any questions, and curiosity about the world of hospitality feel free to ask me and I'll do my best to give you a blog post answering your questions.

While this is meant to be an inaugural post for my series, I feel like I should share at least something with you... so... my first confession.

Being a Hospitality major isn't a life long dream I've had, or even something I thought about doing prior to starting school.  After I had to leave my first college because of financial issues, I was pretty much done with school, and done with figuring out what I wanted to do with my life.  My parents let me flounder around for about a year and before they started pushing me to do something other than the little dead end part time job I had.

I resisted for a while, but the idea of going back to school grew on me and then it was two weeks before the start of the fall semester at my junior college when I found myself scurrying to apply and sign up for classes.

I needed to figure out what the heck I was going to be even studying, and none of the areas that I could think of off the top of my head were very appealing.  So I went to the junior college website and scrolled through their list of majors.  The one that struck my eye was the Hospitality Management and Meeting and Special Events Majors.  Hmm.... Meeting and Special Events sounded like it could be fun.  I checked out the required classes and liked what I saw, so I thought "Why not? Sounds more interesting than anything else I've checked out."  So I did. And I fell in love.

And that, dear readers, is how I became a Hospitality Student.