The room attendant - the navy SEAL in a hotel
Naval Admiral William H. McRaven when delivering the keynote speech at the University of Texas on May 17, 2014, walked the audience through Ten (10) lessons he learned from basic SEAL training. Basic SEAL training is six months of long torturous runs in the soft sand, midnight swims in the cold water off San Diego, obstacles courses, unending calisthenics, days without sleep and always being cold, wet and miserable. It is six months of being constantly harassed by professionally trained warriors who seek to find the weak of mind and body and eliminate them from ever becoming a Navy SEAL. But, the training also seeks to find those who can lead in an environment of constant stress, chaos, failure and hardships. To him basic SEAL training was a lifetime of challenges crammed into six months.
According to the Admiral, one of the 10 lessons he learned from basic SEAL training was that they were required to make their bed to perfection. His instructors – all veterans who fought in Vietnam, would show up at their barracks each morning, to inspect everyone’s bed. It had to be done right, where the corners would have to be squared (mitering the bed in the language of hotel housekeeping), the covers pulled tight, the pillows precisely centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack (Navy talk for bed). Invariably, the instructors would point out some minor infringement. To him at that time, it seemed a little ridiculous, particularly since they were aspiring to be tough battle-hardened real warriors, but the wisdom of this mundane task has been proven to him many times. One of the ten lessons he learned was that if you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day.
If bed making every morning is de rigueur at basic SEAL training, to me, having spent decades in the hotel industry, the rigueur of cleaning a guestroom is the beginning of a typical tough day for a hotel room attendant. Despite sticking to a tried, tested and scripted operating standard that spells out how to clean a guest room to appear near brand new, it is verily one of the toughest jobs to have to do in a star class hotel.
The room attendant has to instantly track what needs to be done and if things were used. The remotes are left in exactly the same location, so guests know where to look for them. The glasses, water bottles, tea cups, wardrobe items, everything has a place. And that's one of the secrets of cleaning; everything has a "home" and has to return to that home. And when attendants walk into a room, they should spot what isn't in its home.
Cleaning a room is from the back to the front. This strategy allows staff to move through the room without tracking dirt and germs back into the areas they've already cleaned. Since the bathroom is in the far corner, cleaning starts there – but not before stripping the bed, collecting dirty towels, bath rugs to send to the laundry, emptying trash and pulling out fresh linen from the cart to make the bed/s. Bathroom cleaning involves washing, disinfecting and drying the bathtub, shower cubicle, fixtures, fittings and mirror, whilst ensuring proper sanitising with use of colour-coded cloths. Then comes refilling / replacing of amenities, placing fresh folded towels, followed by mop-drying the floor. Making the bed is next, followed by dusting (top to bottom), refreshing / refilling the tea / coffee maker, and finally vacuuming, before exiting their way out of the room.
By itself, this is hard work, but wait…there’s more. Room attendants are expected to clean 14 rooms during an 8-hour shift, spending an average 30 minutes in each room. They have to “hope for the best and prepare for the worst”, as they have no idea who occupied the room the previous night. It could have been someone who partied all night, a family of four who shifted furniture around or a corporate guest who merely slept in, barely using anything. All of this pressure with speed and efficiency is then coupled with the fact that the next guest is right around the corner.
A room attendant changes body position every three seconds while cleaning a room. If we assume that the average cleaning time for each room is thirty minutes, we can estimate that a room attendant assumes over 8,000 different body postures every shift. The demand by management for spotless cleanliness and hygiene often requires staff to spend extra time and effort cleaning by kneeling, leaning, twisting, squatting, crouching, stooping, slouching and stretching. These postures will in time contribute to new musculoskeletal injuries and aggravate old ones.
An US Army General once emphatically stated “it’s not glamorous, it’s not typically high scoring, it can be plain boring at times, but I’m going to go so far as to say that the infantry is the most important role in the Army”. In the hospitality industry the housekeeping department must surely be the most important.
Shafeek Wahab - Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Customer Service Trainer and Ex-Hotelier
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