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Opinion
‘Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?’ My astonishing summer as a hotel maid
Michelle Griffin
Federal Bureau ChiefI was a terrible maid.
In my first year at university, I had already been exposed as a clueless barista who operated the espresso machine by guesswork and as a clumsy waitress guaranteed to spill something every time I set down a plate.
But of all the jobs, it is most astonishing that anyone let me be a maid.Credit: iStock
But of all the jobs, it is most astonishing that anyone let me be a maid. The signs were obvious from the first day, when a good-natured manager showed me how to fold hospital corners, but she gave me a chance.
At the time I was renting a tiny room, almost an airing cupboard, on the stairwell landing of a once-grand Parkville terrace.
I never made my bed, which was a mattress on the floor. I just shoved the books and clothes out the way whenever I got home. The people in the house occasionally washed the dishes to find a saucepan, or threw away the pizza boxes, but the bathroom was, well, a terrible place. Most of us showered at uni.
Cleaning the guest rooms of the Grand Hotel in the city was demanding physical labour and most of the maid squadron were older women with strong hands, sturdy builds and excellent muscle memory.
I weighed maybe 45 kilos and struggled to yank the starched white sheets off the beds, let alone to wrangle the Numatic, a squat industrial-strength vacuum with the wayward wheels of a shopping trolley.
I absolutely cut corners on the hospital corners to make up my quota in the allotted time, figuring nobody would see them under the coverlets, or skipped the dust bunnies behind the bureaus. Sometimes, if the room looked tidy when I entered, I’d flop down on the bed for five minutes to catch my breath.
The job was made more challenging by the uniforms, designed in keeping with the hotel’s storied reputation. We wore white blouses with puffy leg-of-mutton sleeves under black pinafores with a skirt slit at the back. We had to wear nude tights and kitten heels, and pinned our tiny bonnets to our hairlines like stray napkins.
Mostly, the manager rostered me for the evening turndown service, which was not as physically taxing or as skilled.
The turndown service involved knocking on guests’ doors in the evening to bring them the complementary port and cheese and “turn down” their beds.
This involved fluffing the pillows and turning back the coverlet, blankets and sheets in a neat little triangle on both sides, so guests could easily slide into the sheets.
If the rooms were empty, this was an easy job, topped up with a little light bin emptying.
But if the room was occupied and the guests let you in, you had to ask if there was anything else you could do for them. They smirked sometimes – who wouldn’t? – but usually just asked for more towels.
Once, though, when I knocked on the door of one of the fancier suites, I was ushered into the room with a theatrical flourish to discover a party inside, champagne on ice and a crowd clinking glasses.
It was bad enough when everyone started giggling as I folded down the sheets. This was last century when nobody knew you could get offended. But the room had a catty, drunken vibe – I wouldn’t get out of there so easily.
“Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?” I asked the man who had booked the room.
“Well,” he said, looking at the others with a cocked eyebrow, “you could scrub the bath”.
Sigh. I collected the wipes, the rubber gloves and the Ajax from the trolley and headed for the ensuite’s vast white bath.
I was on my knees, leaning over the rim to swipe at the enamel, when the guests trooped in to watch me from behind.
There was laughter, whispering and then someone gasped: “Oh, naughty!” I heard a cough and a man said: “Do you enjoy your work?”
I craned my neck, attempting a polite smile, but I’ve never had a poker face. One woman, moved by either pity or irritation, said something through gritted teeth about wrapping it up.
“That’s fine,” said the host. “You can go.”
This is not how this job ended. I didn’t hand in my mobcap and storm out. No, some weeks later, the manager followed me around on my shift and then called me to the office. I hadn’t cleaned enough bedrooms; I’d left dust on the furniture; my hospital corners bunched like falafel wraps.
Sorry, I said. But I was relieved to be fired. I was moving back home anyway.
Many years later, I was back at the hotel interviewing an author in one of the suites when another maid entered. I swivelled around to look, and she was in a simple blue polyester uniform with black sneakers on her feet.
“I used to work here as a maid,” I told the man I was interviewing.
“Must have been fun,” he said.
I couldn’t afford to waste our 30-minute time slot, so after a brief pause, I said: “Oh yes. It was great fun.”
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