on the workfront

Over the last two weeks I have been having training as a house porter. It is not the same as being a porter and carrying guests' luggage. We don't have porters at our hotel (guests have to lug and wheel their belongings). A house porter is basically backup and support and part of the housekeeping department.

I'm glad I will only be doing this position a few days a week. As room attendants we probably only see 20 per cent of the job done by the porters. Sometimes the job is relatively easy, but often it is as difficult as cleaning rooms with similar ridiculously short time expectations.

It is a higher profile job with a lot of movement throughout the hotel, so I get a real sense of the whole picture and am in contact with more workers in other departments. This is the part I enjoy the best. Also, for the first time since I've been here, I get paid eight hours for eight hours work! Actually, this is the part I enjoy the best! To get paid for eight hours as a room attendant I would have to clean sixteen rooms a day, half an hour for each room, time not included for stacking trolleys, waiting for elevators, department meetings. Some people are able to clean sixteen rooms regularly, but most of us do twelve to fourteen rooms a day.

What I don't enjoy: having a phone attached to me and having to drop what I'm doing to do something else and hourly checks on the public toilets. Uggh.

Very often the house porters are male, though only some of the work requires heavier lifting than that done by room attendants. This is a step to broaden my horizons, so it is a very well-timed gift from my supervisors, though I have been stressed out about the training over the last week or so. Some days I work a full porter shift of eight hours from 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. I have to find a way to eat properly on this shift. I still expend a lot of energy on the job and meals in the canteen are quite later in the day. Other days I work as a porter for a couple of hours and do eight rooms to equal my usual six hour shift. Other days I do rooms only.