Service Entrance

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I work in a hotel in New York City.  I love working in hospitality.  Love love love.  It's where I was meant to be and it ONLY took 4 years of college and 3 years working in unrelated fields to figure it out!  I consider myself lucky.

Now though the field is mostly fresh roses for me, sometimes the building I am in is not.  This is something I've noticed several times and I want to take the time to note it here for anyone interested in designing hotels or venues of any kind that offer good customer service.  GOOD mind you.  If you're looking to provide terrible or mediocre service at best, then feel free to ignore this note.  This is also a note to myself as I continue along my career in hospitality.

Anyway, back to what I was saying...  Ehem.  One thing our building lacks is a service elevator to ALL floors.

One of the things that make civilization amazing

I'm here to say this is a HUGE oversight on the part of the planners.  I understand that sometimes there just isn't the space for these things.  But darn it!  I studied architecture and you can MAKE space.  This perhaps small matter originally makes it really hard to do our jobs.

The staff interferes with the flow of traffic of the guests and there can be several awkward encounters A DAY where your hands are full of laundry or garbage or something and the doors open to a high level guest who is in a hurry.  You're both embarrassed as they edge into a corner in a nice outfit under your load of stuff and reach to press their floor.  No this hasn’t happened to me.  Yet.

Uhm... could you just move to the... never mind

What I'm saying here is that back-routes to places are a MUST to provide OPTIMAL service for guests and staff alike.  There are service entrances, back stage, back doors, alleys, and if we reach a little back in history, servant quarters and servant stairs.  All for the purpose of providing an efficient way for staff to get around and do their jobs better.

I’m not arguing about classist issues.  I work at the Front Desk of a hotel and I don’t believe I’m any less than the people I service on a daily basis and I’m sure most of them don’t have that attitude toward me.  BUT as a guest, people don’t really want see that it takes to make your stay/event/whatever run.

Perhaps that’s a human psychological thing.  We as guests want to see things that we want appear before us like magic.  And truly amazing people in hospitality and event planning want to provide just that for you.

So please.  Keep staff areas in mind when planning buildings and events.  Have them readily available and easily accessible for your colleges and the staff that are the life blood of any production.  Thank you.