Capital Hotel Internship: Week 1: Re-learning Housekeeping

Now to provide some background, before interning at the Capital Hotel, I first spent 8 months working as a housekeeping supervisor. I also spent roughly two months in the maintenance department, 3 months at front desk; with around 12 float shifts where I'd fill in at the front desk since I was Hilton certified throughout my time there at the Homewood Suites.

So my main objective for my first few days was to legitimize myself as a hard worker. I feel that even though it's only been roughly 5 days that my supervisor's understand that I'm ready and willing to work.

My second objective was to meet and remember 15 people's names in the first week. However, I'd like to keep these employees names anonymous. I believe I've met my goal.

During my time in housekeeping I learned that each floor, above the first, had guest rooms. Each floor has a different amount of rooms and there are different features throughout the rooms. No two rooms on one floor are alike and the furniture, windows, and bathrooms are set up differently based upon its location on that particular floor. At the Capital, the ladies are the housekeepers and the men are housemen. The duties of the housemen are to disburse the baskets prepared for specific room types to the outside of the doorway. The next thing housemen will do is get a list of rooms from the detail report which will tell whether the room is a stay over, due out, or if it is due out with a known arrival. With the information they now have they check to see who, if anyone has already vacated their rooms. Then they'll go to strip it of linen and carry out the trash in preparation for cleaning of the room. This process will take hours. If it is a slower day they will clean the globes that hang in the bedroom of most rooms. Also, whenever they can, they will make beds to help out the ladies and replenish the baskets in the storage room. While going through the hallways the housemen will see the baskets that have been used and will proceed to pick them up and take them back to the storage closet. Towards the end of the day the halls get vacuumed and if anything else needs to be done these men will be sure to get it taken care of.

I found it hard to remember to stop working and snap a picture of what I was doing at the time. In fact none of these pictures will depict the work that I performed. I spent more time doing than observing. However, in my down time I managed to take these...