Maintenance

Hi it's Caleb here reporting on my week in maintenance. Myself and Meadhbh took a break from the front desk and have moved to the backstage part of the hospitality world. I worked in maintenance while Meadhbh worked in housekeeping.

My week started early on a Friday. I've always enjoyed fixing things with my hands so I was excited to start the week. Our property, The Hampton Inn, has a pool so that was our first task of every day. We needed to clean it, test the chemicals and make sure all the safety equipment was in good working order. It was a tough job, even at 8am it was about 27 degrees out so water was a must for this job.

The daily task of the maintenance staff in The Hampton inn is called "PMing". It is basically taking out some unoccupied rooms and doing work on them. So we would paint the room, check the furniture, fill holes, check the A/C units and fix anything in the bathroom. Each room took at least an hour and a half to complete depending on the condition. The hotel was recently renovated so most of the room were in good working order.

These were the daily tasks. We were always getting calls from the front desk with guests needing help with something, or housekeeping telling us there was a problem in a room which we needed to fix. During this week the maintenance shop needed to be re-fitted also. This room is HOT, let me tell you. I spent almost a day in it, moving things in and setting up the work place. It was like being in the hull of a ship with all the machinery whizzing and boilers making noise and fan and sprinkler systems all humming. I must have lost a lot of weight working there but I really enjoyed it.

Maintenance is a tough yet enjoyable job. I went home tired, but it was a good feeling. I had the feeling I accomplished something and I made peoples stay better.