Little Helpers

Yesterday one of the housekeeping managers was called into work on her day off.  She had no where to bring her daughters so she brought them to the hotel and left them in the care of the hostess at the restaurant.  After pizza, french fries a couple sliders and an hour or so of coloring in their coloring book, the young girls started to get restless and run around the restaurant with reckless abandon. The restaurant was closed for lunch so the children's energy wasn't affecting any of the guests. Who it was affecting was the hostess who still had the task of taking room service orders and setting up the complimentary iced tea that the hotel offers for free during the summer time.

Mallory, the hostess, was starting to get a little too busy and she couldn't keep up with the girls for much longer. It was about 1:30, one of the slowest times of day, so I decided that I would intervene. I like kids and I enjoy playing with them so long as I don't have to make them feel better when they start crying.  I started out by offering the 3 and 5 year olds rides on the bell cart around the lobby. They soon grew tired of these and wanted to ride on the cart in the elevator.  I needed to deliver bags to one of the rooms of our regulars who was still at the office so I figured they could come with me.

I loaded up our regular's bags on the cart and told them to hop on. We got off the elevator and I dragged the cart full of luggage and children towards the suite. As soon as I opened the door the kids hopped off the cart and went running around the suite. I unloaded the bags and set them up on luggage racks in the room. The girls tried to help but the bags were way to heavy for them and couldn't even lift them off the cart.

As we left the 5 year old says "Boy your job sure is fun. Do you have fun doing your job?"

"No, not really." I replied. "But it's fun sometimes."

"Well I had a lot of fun and I wish I could do it all the time." She responded

"Well it's a lot more fun when you're the one getting pulled around than when you are doing the pulling, but I'm glad you had a good time."

"Yeah, I had a great time" chimed in the 3 year old.

The whole scenario struck me as funny as we descended in the elevator and I dropped them back off in the restaurant.  Maybe my job really is fun. Maybe it only seems like work because I think of it as fun, as something I have to do and not because I want to do it.  But that's just like any job right? All in all, two little girls spent 5 minutes helping me do my job and they thought it was pretty damn cool.  I think that's more than a lot of people can say and that alone puts a nice big smile on my face.