Part 1: Dealing with unexpected situations:
I’ve experienced one situation that was totally unexpected, that I had to deal with, personally, and I witnessed another unexpected situation.
At the end of my internship, in December, I joined the housekeeping service at the Marriott Champs-Elysées. For three weeks I have been doing the evening shift, from 3 pm until 11 pm.
The hotel uses a cleaning company to hire cleaning ladies and valets, the housekeeping service has to communicate with the front desk, and wich receives requests from the guests concerning the time or their observations for the cleaning service. In the end of the afternoon, around 6:00 pm, the general housekeeper receives a call from the reception saying that an important guest, who had left the room the entire afternoon and are coming back in a half hour. The guest had warned the front office that they wanted their rooms tidy and clean by the time they would be back around 6:30pm. The guests had made several complaints about the housekeeping. As all the cleaning ladies were having dinner the housekeeper and I had to do two rooms in three minutes with the help of a valet. As we went out of the room, we met the guests whom asked me why their room wasn’t ready yet, as they requested earlier that day.
In order to solve the problem, I apologized to the lady who had started to yell at me first, explaining to her that the information was given to us very late and we did the best we could to satisfy their request in time. I wanted to ask my manager, but as I turned around, she was gone. So I said to the guest that I was really sorry, and that it wasn’t normal for them to wait for their room as they left it four hours ago, as I was apologizing again, the lady understood that I had no responsibility in the incident. I took them to the lobby as they were going to the front office, and the guest told me that she understood that we did our best, but that the organization of the hotel was really poor, she