IN this thread, there was a mention that the overnight staff at a hotel would be happy to get you hot water at 3 am.
I’m sure that would happen at the Ritz-Carlton, but I doubt most overnight staff at a hotel would accommodate this request.
Anyway, so tell me about your experiences with the overnight staff at hotels or motels?
I’m sure working the overnight desk at a big Vegas resort lends itself to some very entertaining adventures with drunks and prostitutes. Working the overnight shift at a motel along a freeway is probably pure boredom with most of the time spent doing paperwork.
I’ve had a few interesting encounters with the night staff including a couple of quick sexual escapades. There was also one embarrassing time when I completely forgot what room I was in. I had checked in and had to immediately run to an appointment. I had one of the new card keys which doesn’t have the room number on it. I’m sure I’m not the only one, but it made me feel like an idiot.
27 years ago at larger hotels the majority of the night desk staff were “night auditors” who reconciled the cash and cards with the guest roster and did other accounting related stuff. Not sure who does that these days as I’m sure most acct balancing is automatic via software and computers.
I was merrily taking the interstate from north of Boston to the airport at 4 in the morning when much to my surprise I started noticing construction signs and the fact that I would be forced to get off right into downtown. There weren’t a lot of savory characters about at 4 to ask directions and I was starting to get rather anxious, so I stopped at this hotel in desperation. The clerk was very nice and grabbed me a map and drew me out a route. This was the day after a very frustrating, somewhat humiliating full-day interview process, so I could of kissed the guy I was so thankful.
I’ve worked in both large and small hotels. In the small hotels, my position was Night Audit, although I did everything else from Front Desk to Reservations to Housekeeping. I ran the balancing reports, usually around 2-3am: it was pretty much automated after I plugged in the numbers. I also had to do the nightly balancing of the credit card terminal. This was after the mad rush of late check-ins and before the mad rush of early check-outs. People would call for reservations at all hours of the night, and plenty of times I would have to lock up the front office and go deliver a rollaway to a room. If they wanted towels, sheets, etc, they had to come down and get them.
The large hotel was completely different. I worked on PBX: I answered phones, transferred to rooms, did wake up calls, and updated the reader board (that TV in the lobby that annonces what’s going on that day). Our owner insisted that the wake-up calls be done by a live human, so we didn’t do automated. I had a 10 minute window: if someone wanted a call at 5am, I had anywhere from 4:55-5:05 to do it. If I had a ton of calls, then Night Audit would take part of the list and help.
We had a Manager on Duty, a front desk clerk, a PBX operator, three auditors, three housekeepers, one engineer, and two security guards. Our hotel also had a restaurant, a bar, and a concierge level: all three kept the auditors busy! This was a 367 room hotel, BTW.
My brother worked the night shift at two hotels in the early 00s, and his experience was pretty much like Juliana’s. Only I don’t think he did any housekeeping.
A lot of the time he was by himself and just read books and did crosswords. He’s a gregarious dude and would chat with whomever wanted to chat with him at those hours.
The big hotel was pretty cool, actually. I got to meet a lot of neat celebrities, including Susan Lucci, Jim Varney, Ozzy, Bad Company, and Loretta Swit. The first two were very sweet, down to earth people: Ozzy was… well, Ozzy: Bad Company came down to meet ME after I gave them a wake-up call (they liked my voice - swoon!), and Loretta Swit was downright mean.
The weirdest thing was one night when we had all four codes called one night. We had a bride’s father have a heart attack at the reception (code 2 - medical emergency): a smoke alarm go off (code 1) followed by an actual fire (code red: it was limited to a trash can on the 14th floor): and then I had a bomb threat (code 3). During all codes, PBX became command central: I was responsible for calling fire/police/ambulance, keeping communication lines open with all the employees who had radios and pagers, keeping the guests calm when they called about alarms, and calling end of code when the situation was resolved. We had an emergency number that rang a phone on the wall located right next to my left ear. Talk about an adrenaline rush! When that thing rang, I’d jump right out of my chair!
I have a mental image of all of this happening at the same time. Susan Lucci and Jim Varney are at the wedding reception performing CPR, Ozzy starts the fire in the trash can…
I love this! Believe it or not, Ozzy and his entourage were some of the best hotel guests we’d had. No trashing the room, like some might think: they just went to sleep. They got in from the concert after 1am and left after 7am. Not a problem at all.
And the concert was freaking awesome. I won tickets while at a company awards program. They did a raffle: everybody had their name in, and they drew names to win tickets. They announced the Ozzy tickets, and I heard myself scream. They just said, “Do the rest of you mind if we just give these to her?” So they did. Great seats, too.
Dunno if this counts as “overnight,” but we arrived at a Mariott in Louisville at about 9:30 PM back in May with our then four-month-old in tow, and they asked if we needed a crib. “Nope,” said my husband, “but can we use a fridge?”
So they brought me up a mini-fridge that I could use for pumped breastmilk for the whole weekend. It was awesome.
On my recent road trip, I was in northern North Carolina at a Best Western. Had eaten a piece of cheesecake out of a styrofoam container. Unthinkingly I left it on the nightstand (nightplatform really) next to my bed. I wake up at 2 am hearing a <rustling> sound coming from said nightstand. Turned on the light, and nothing was there. Convinced I was dreaming things, turned lights off and went to bed. As soon as the lights were off, heard something moving underneath the dresser. Turned light back on, only then noticing rodent raisin on nightstand next to cheesecake container. Not really afraid, I called the night desk guy, who was almost apolopletic in getting me a new room, free of charge. Should have trapped the little bugger and brought him with me to the next hotel and gotten another free night.
Hahaha, automatic balancing, if only. Though computers help a lot (I’ve read our N/A manual from 15 years ago and there was a lot more manual work) there still is a fair bit of manual balancing work to do (mostly fixing mistakes from the day shifts).
Night auditors at the hotel I work at (I was one once, now I’m in A/R and oversee the auditor’s work) have about 1.5 - 3 hours worth of balancing to do each night assuming nothing has gone horribly wrong. The rest of the night is taken up by front desk, switch board and managerial duties; plus a good bit of slacking off. They have 1 cleaner and at least 1 porter/cleaner on duty for room service, luggage and housekeeping issues. There are also 1-3 kitchen staff on duty depending on how much prep work is needed.
In general the overnight staff are all there to provided the minimal guest support that’s needed (ie. plenty from 11pm ~ 1am and after 6am, not much in between) and do the cleaning/prep work that is hard to do with guests walking around (floor polishing etc). It can be an interesting shift.
A couple weeks ago, after my canyon hike, I hobbled into a Marriott at 4:00 a.m., barely able to move. I told the clerk that if I left the “do not disturb” sign out all day and they couldn’t clean the room not to worry about it.
Yup. Honeymooners are bad about that. They’ll call for a DND block on their phone, put the sign out, and ask the front desk to not let anyone bother them. Happened all the time.
Didn’t have many canyons in downtown Lexington, though.
Well, 4am is a little odd. But IME about 2-5% of rooms refuse (housekeeping) service and it’s fairly unremarkable. It’s only even been an issue once, when a guy staying for a month didn’t want any housekeeping at all. We insisted on at least some.
A friend of mine works at the W hotel in NYC. She now works the concierge desk overnight but they don’t call it that. It is officially called ‘Whatever Whenever’. I guess playing on the W theme.
Part of her interview for the job included being asked how she may react if a guest requested at 3 AM to have their bath tub filled with hot chocolate.
They didn’t just pull that idea out of their hinders, it was something that happened.
I worked overnighs in hotels for 10 years and it’s very different each place. One of my first jobs was night audit at Red Roof Inn, then night audit at a Days Inn. They were both under 150 rooms, but it seems a little unnerving to know that an 18 year old kid is the sole employee at the place from 11pm-7am.
Even in larger hotels up to 700 rooms, often times if someone called in sick I’d be the only one there. It was usually just me and a security guard. I had to do front desk, PBX, clean a room if the day houskeeping overlooked it, fix whatever I could, (I usually just moved the guest to another room if possible.)
It was usually just me and a security guy or another clerk. There was little time for fun, 'cause in those days Night Audit ran through accounting NOT the front desk. Now most hotels the night shift just runs report. We had to produce Daily Sheets, balance income, A/R, A/P, handle chargebacks, process credit cards, in a few hotels I even did the bank deposits for the next day. Yes I had access to the safe at night. Pretty much from 1am - 5am it’s fairly quiet (except Saturdays) so you can get your work done if you have a routine.
When I first worked hotels in 1981 we had plug boards. All calls had to be placed by the hotel front desk then the operator would call you back with charge and you had to post it to the room. Of course in all fairness, the phone wasn’t used like it is now.
The easiest hotel I worked at was on an island near Naples, Florida. It was a resort so everyone who came to stay was happy. The flights out of the SW Florida Regional Airport we’re pretty much in by 9pm so by the time I got there at 11pm all the guests were checked in. I lived on property, with the owners of the resort and it was only 100 rooms, but I could do a slew of work and finish by 2am or before. And since it was a resort, people never got up before 8am.
