Day Jobs and Duvets by Jane Tolbert

When I heard Eleanor Beardsley review Tribulations of a Cashier by Anna Sam, a liberal arts graduate, on NPR (7/23/09), memories of my day job as a hotel maid came flooding back. Could I blame my choice of jobs on the economy or the red shoes in the store window? Hotel work in the South of France accounts for a heafty 25 percent of jobs in tourism. With more than 10 million tourists coming to the Riviera annually, I knew I would find a job.

But my confidence in the ease of getting a job in hotel work waned. No jobs in communications or public relations. I did not have the skills to manage a reservation system. Only housekeeping would take me, and that job involved a three-day training period. What could I possibly need to learn that required three days?

Many things, as it turned out. My day began in the laundry room where I was issued gray pants and shirt, a coded checklist for each of the eight rooms assigned and a supply box, holding bottles of sprays and polish, but no gloves. On my assigned floor, a large storage area contained the vacuum cleaners and laundry carts, which we loaded in the morning with clean towels and sheets, rolls of toilet paper and the countless bottles of shampoo and body wash.

Given a recent change in hotel ownership, the maids no longer worked in teams of two, but alone. Twenty-nine minutes to clean a room! I wrestled heavy furniture in a cramped space, wiped windows of sea spray and rain, rubbed those marble bathroom counters to a shine and folded the end of the toilet paper to a point. But the most difficult task was the duvet cover. My assignment consisted of rooms with the extra-large beds, the lit à l’italien, but only extra-small duvets remained, forcing me to piece them together and squeeze them into the large cover. I tugged and tugged, but lumps remained. Most often, my room failed inspection.

The neatest clients were those nice men or couples who came for conferences at Sophia Antipolis. They left their room impeccable—toothbrushes and hairbrushes neatly aligned, clothes hung in the closet, bed linen pulled tight to military perfection. I wanted to flop on one of those beds and sink into a duvet with the client’s paperback--a Nelson DeMille I had not read. But I only had one such room. The next suite was occupied by an American family, among the messiest of international clients. Sandy towels and shoes, canned drinks and bags of snacks littered the floor. Finally, at the end of my day, my cart piled high with the debris of many overnight stays, I waited for the client in my last room to leave. He had requested a late checkout (usually 3 p.m.). He finally left an hour later.

Two days of work enabled me to buy my red shoes. After five days I quit, but the experience has been invaluable. Like the cashier Anna Sam pointed out, you learn a lot about human nature.