No Place Like Here

Monday, February 13, 2012

My Beginning at the Hotel

I created my first blog in the year 2007. Since then, I have created 12 blogs, most of which have only one post. This is why I have chosen to start putting all these postings together. This is still a work in progress - Anita, February 13th, 2012

First posted on Thursday, September 9th, 2010

I was 26 years old when I moved away from home. Since my parents and brother all had different visas, I returned to Chile on my own to start my independent, adult life. With two thousand dollars in my account saved up, I moved in with my childhood friend, Lorena, who, along with her husband, made room for me in their apartment temporarily.

Upon my arrival, I knew the first thing I had to do was get a job. I was a little desperate for normalcy, so I tried to get a phone and a bank account almost immediately. Funny thing is, even though I was Chilean, in Chile I was a nobody. No one would give me a bank account or a phone plan or anything at all. They had no reason to trust this person who had been gone for six and a half years and hadn't even visited once during that time. Why would they give me anything at all. They wouldn't, not without me having a job. However, they would give things to Lorena. A great business woman, Lorena had contacts everywhere and it took her no time to get my new life as an adult in Chile started, which is something I will always be grateful for.

Living with Lorena did make things easier for me at first, but it also made me want to have a place to myself as soon as possible. The thing about Lorena is that she is the successful person that she is because she believes in going after what you want. She has done it and she thinks everyone around her can and should do it. She wanted me to be proactive and aggressive about this job thing, not because she wanted me out of her apartment, but because she knew I could get something great and much faster if I immediately put myself out there. Yet I couldn't quite bring myself to leave the apartment. I felt like a baby bird that had fallen from its nest and suddenly was supposed to know how to fly. I certainly was no baby anymore, but the change had been drastic and I needed time to adjust. After all, I hadn't just moved out of my parents place, I had moved out of their place, out the country and out of my life as I knew it. I felt awkward, and alone, and just needed time to settle in. So job hunting for me became all about the internet. I found a site where companies would post jobs regularly and I sent my resume to anything and everything that sounded like something I could possibly know or had a chance to learn how to do. Never mind my past experience! I may not have been plastering my resume all over the city, but I was trying hard to get anything at all before I completely ran out of money.

Another incentive worth mentioning was that my Swedish boyfriend, Alex, who was still living in California, was also moving to Chile within a month and I was hoping I could avoid having us both sleeping on a twin bed glued to a thin wall that separated my room from Lorena and her husband's room. Lorena, being the great friend that she was, offered to have Alex stay at her apartment as well, but I knew we had to avoid that at all costs. See, having someone stay with you is hard enough. Having the boyfriend you have never met come stay with you as well is just too much. It would've been too much for them and it would've been too much for us, so I kept applying to all sorts of jobs.

However, a whole month went by without any callbacks and I was starting to consider lowering my salary expectations when I finally got the call. Yes, it was the call. The one and only call that came on a cold winter evening when the sun was beginning to set. It was Augusta from Holiday Inn calling me for an interview. "Holiday Inn?" I thought... "Did I apply there?" "Is that the hotel that is a few blocks away from Lorena's apartment?" "What job did I apply for?"Many questions without clear answers, but the important thing is that I had an interview!!! Later on I realized that the posting was not very specific, it did not mention the company and the duties were very ambiguous, which is probably why, after applying for so many jobs, I could not remember much about it when I got the call.

Anyway, the meeting was set for the next day at noon. They sure didn't waste any time, I thought. They called me at around 6 p.m. one day, and expected me to be there at noon the next. So be it. I was almost done talking to Augusta when she mentioned the job was at the airport hotel. Without a car, the airport was about an hour away from where I lived! I knew then that it wouldn't work out. It couldn't work out because, even though I had commuted for an hour back and forth every day when I lived in California, at least I had a car there. Taking the subway, the bus and walking a few blocks was less than ideal. Yet I agreed to go to the interview because it was the very first callback and I had to at least see what it was about.

When arrived, I remember crossing the small street the separates the airport from the hotel. It was a clear, sunny day, and while I crossed the wide pale concrete bridge that went over the large fountain at the entrance, the reflection of the sun on the concrete was so blinding, I could not see what the hotel looked like behind the glass doors until I was there. Everything was white and minimalistic. It was a small hall separated from the lobby by decorative concrete bars. I was inside and I still couldn't see what the hotel actually looked like, which was kind of unnerving. I approached the receptionists that were happily talking to each other and they asked me to have a seat on a cold, backless, metallic bench that was in the same entrance hall. I had an interview with someone and even then I could not go inside until someone came to get me.

After a few minutes, a blue-eyed woman (uncommon in this part of the world) came from out of nowhere and introduced herself as Augusta. I greeted her and smiling she told me she had called me for a different position than the one I had applied to, but that they had changed their minds and they would interview me for the position I was interested in. At that point, I still wondered what that position was, but again, it didn't matter, this job probably was not gonna work out anyway since I knew nothing about hotels. So when Augusta said that the Manager would come out to get me in a few minutes, I just smiled and thanked her.   A few minutes came and went and there was no Manager. My back was starting to hurt from sitting on that horrible metallic bench without a place to lean on, trying to look professional, looking at the boring, black and white photographs on the wall as if I was at a gallery. To top it all off, I was feeling extremely self conscious with the receptionists facing me, analyzing me, talking about me... Many months later I realized that so many people come to interviews at this place that no one cares. You even forget there is someone waiting there because they make people wait so long that they become as unnoticeable as the boring photographs.

At last, after a good twenty something minutes, Gigliola Muratti came to greet me and led me into her office. The interview was pretty standard. She asked me about my life in California, my previous work experience, my point of view on a variety of things, and then told me a bit about the job. I was to become a Guest Service Manager, which was a new position that none of the other Holiday Inns in Chile had because they were all Express and this one was Full Service. She told me there were another two Guest Service Managers and the three of us would all work on nine-hour shifts. The idea was to have someone in charge of the hotel throughout most of the day. Unlike most hotels, this one did not offer any food service to the staff, which I was okay with because I had never worked at a hotel and therefore I had never had that advantage. What I found a bit more unusual was that Gigliola said that by law she had to give me at least 30 minutes to have lunch or dinner, but she also made it clear that none of the other girls ever took that long, clearly implying I should either.   To be honest, I don't like to be difficult, so I was not about to ask questions that didn't seem relevant at the moment.

Surprisingly, the interview went overall really well. I was as honest as I could be because I really didn't think they were going to want me in the end. When Gigliola asked me if I had any experience working at a hotel, I said none. When she asked me if I had ever been in charge of anyone, I said no. When she asked me what my plans were for the future, I said I planned to move to England within a year or two, and when she asked if I would leave if I found something better within a couple of months, I said "It depends on how it's going here." In spite of all of these unusual replies, she gave me her card and said she'd call me again. A week later I was at a second interview with Mrs. Mariana Burgos, then Manager of the first Holiday Inn from the franchise that opened in Chile over ten years earlier, and who soon after was promoted into Staff and Service Manager of the whole chain.

The woman was blunt and to the point. So blunt, in fact, that she said things that in the US would undeniably lead to a lawsuit and that would have gotten her fired before she could even finish the following sentence. But I guess she liked me and she considered me someone of "class" and therefore not someone who would take offense by her comments and strong opinions since they were clearly not meant to offend me.    So when she said that she wouldn't have the hotel staffed with low-class people, I chose to take it as a compliment, after all, I was being considered for a managerial position regardless of my absolute lack of experience. And when she said this hotel was not one of those hotels where the porter becomes a manager, I just nodded knowing that she said it with pride. I knew this was Chile, and the rules here were just not the same.

Mrs. Burgos' only concern was that I would not be committed to this job because I was just coming from the US and I was already planning to move to England. Yet Gigliola seemed keen on hiring me, and before I knew it, the meeting was over, and I was the newest Guest Service Manager at Holiday Inn Santiago Airport. The job was only supposed to be a temp job since the woman who occupied the position at the moment was going on maternal leave. In Chile women can take up to six months off work when they are having a baby and a lot of them, in fact, take longer, so it makes sense to hire someone else for the position. This, in fact, is partly why I was so honest about my intentions to move to England. Mrs. Burgos and Gigliola seemed certain that Antonia, the pregnant woman, wouldn't return to work and assured me that it was more than likely that the position would be mine for good. Later on, I found out that Gigliola didn't really like Antonia, and that Mrs. Burgos did not think much of her either. I don't know if Antonia ever considered not coming back, but I know Gigliola and Mrs. Burgos certainly hoped she wouldn't.

Antonia did come back but I also got to keep my job. Now that she had a baby Antonia could not work the same hours she was working before so I ended up doing the 9-hour shifts and she ended up working normal office hours. Antonia left within a year, though, which was sad because I liked her but also because by the time she found a new job I too was desperate to leave! This was partly because Gigliola had left the hotel and things were just not working they way they used to but also, and more importantly, I really wanted to move to England and kept having to delay my trip in order to get the money. On Antonia's last day at the hotel she had the biggest grin and kept repeating with a mocking tone: "You get to keep the job!" And I did. I stayed for three years in the end, but that's another story.

A Hotel or a Circus?

Now, in case you are wondering, I don't work at a shabby motel right off the highway. I actually work at a new Holiday Inn across the airport that, if anything, looks nicer than any other Holiday Inn I've ever been too. What you should know, is that no matter how nice the hotel is, they all have things breaking down and failing constantly. The trick is to train your staff well enough to fool the guest into thinking that it is all under control. Now the difference between big, fancy hotels like the Hyatt and smaller hotels like mine is the amount of people you have to take care of a problem. At my hotel, after 6 p.m., that person is me. I make the decisions, I deal with the issues, and, if I'm lucky, I get the help of the bellboy every once in a while. But not tonight. Tonight I'm on my own, because the bellboy is dedicating all his time and effort to the Koreans in the hopes that he will get a nice tip, which is understandable since it is his job after all.

So as I say goodbye to the occupants of room 309, who are happy they finally know where to turn on the lamp next to their bed, I start heading towards room 505 as fast my high heals and "flight attendant" uniform will allow me to go, to check out the "flood" that I'm sure is just a small leak in the closet (yes, it has happened before). When I finally get up there, however, I see a woman standing outside of room 505. The door is open and I can hear someone is inside talking to her, but there is as much water as you would expect to come from the shower blocking the entrance so I can't really see the person inside. So I guess it's a little more water than I had expected.

I stop where I am, before they can see me, and I review all the possible scenarios and my reaction to them in less than five seconds. Why do I do this? I don't know, but I do it every time. In this particular situation, however, it seems more pointless since there is only one thing I need to do first and foremost; I need to get the guest out of the room. Now the first approach is the most difficult part. What do I say? Do I apologize right away? Do I ask what happened? Do I just pull her out? I don't know so I decide to play it by ear.

"As far as I know, this room does not come with a waterfall, " I say attempting to be funny. No laughs. Definitely not that right approach. The woman inside looks at me indignant. "Yes, well I'm afraid to come out because there is water touching the ceiling lamp and I don't want to get electrocuted!" Yep, that certainly would make this situation worse. I look up and see most of the water is coming from the air vent and is indeed touching the lamp, but I figure there is no real danger so I encourage her to come out quickly and she does. Then comes the next awkward moment, but I make it quick by apologizing and telling her that I have never seen anything like this before and I will switch her to another room immediately. I look apologetic enough that she doesn't make much of a fuzz about this whole debacle and ends up going to her friend's room right across the hall.

The first part of the problem is solved. Now I need to figure out what is going on and how to stop it so that the water doesn't start leaking down to the room below and I need to change the lady to another room. This, of course, involves several steps that normally the receptionist would help with but she is not even answering the radio when I call her. So I have to go downstairs, go to the computer, check for another room available, change her to that room in the system, make another key at the front desk and go back upstairs to give her the key. As I'm heading down the stairs to do this I run into one of the security guards and give him my master key. I tell him to get all the trash cans he can find from the room next door and take them to room 505. In the mean time, as I'm reaching the first floor, Marcia calls me on the radio to tell me the waiters at the restaurant need me to come as soon as possible because the system is down. Of course, I am the only one who can fix this and I have to do it quickly because the restaurant is full and they cannot process any orders or payments without it.

I go to the back office and make the room move in the system, make the key, and I put it in my pocket. Then I continue walking fast towards the restaurant, stop to walk with dignity through the restaurant, then run down to the underground floor, start the computer and bring the system back up. As soon as I know it's working, I go up the stairs and run into a Korean guy that wants information about a tour. I look at the Front Desk hoping Marcia can help me, but I see she is holding two phones at once and talking to someone at the desk. The Barbie-looking girl she was when she first started her shift is long gone and has been replaced by 1980s Tina Turner. I turn to the Korean man and tell him that I can't get him the information at this time but I'll be happy to find him as soon as I'm available. He gets annoyed and insists that I help him, so I go into the back office, bring him a map, smile as nicely as I can and promise him I'll be back soon.

At this point, I go up the stairs to the fifth floor and I'm sweating and I'm as red as a ripe tomato. When I get there, the security guard is soaking wet, the trashcans are filled to the top. I ask him to please call the person in charge of maintenance, who at this time is at home, and figure out how to fix this. He does this and about half an hour later the problem is solved. During that time I give the lady her new key, I talk to the Korean man about his tour, and Marcia and I make it seem like everything is running smoothly.

By the end of the night I am exhausted and I can barely walk, but I feel happy. I'm happy because I know two years ago I wouldn't have been able to deal with all this. Two years ago I had just come back to Chile after living in the U.S. for almost seven years. I was no one in this country and just needed a job. I had no experience working in hotels. I had even less experience being a manager. But now here I am. Guest Service Manager at Holiday Inn. Same title I had when I first got the job, but at least now I don't feel like I am wearing my mother's clothes when I wear my uniform. This uniform and this job are who I have become. It all just seems to fit.

The Night of the Earthquake

First posted on Saturday, April 3rd, 2010

It was a Friday

night and I had invited some people from work over to my place, which I never do. We ate, drank, smoked and talked until Saturday at 3:00 in the morning, when the last few people left. Because it was a nice summer night, we had spent most of the evening outside in my small back yard surrounded by neighboring buildings. I remember being concerned about upsetting the neighbors with the noise, but then thought I never did anything like this and some of them had had plenty of noisy parties in the past. Even then, a little voice in my head was telling me people would be angry and complain in the morning. Little did I know that our noise would be the last thing on their minds the next day.

So at 3:00 everyone left, and I debated whether to bring all the plates and things inside right away or wait until the morning. Alex decided it would be best to bring them in right away and so we did. We went to bed at 3:15, and I fell asleep in less than a minute. Suddenly I felt the bed moving, and my first thought was that Alex was shaking his leg, the way he often does when he wants to fall asleep. See, this little habit of his used to scare the hell out of me when we first started sleeping in the same bed. But now, three and a half years later it has become part of our routine, which is why I did not pay much attention to it. Alex, however, kept trying to wake me up, saying that the ground was shaking. Could it be another tremor? If it was, I was also not interested in getting up. In Chile we get plenty of tremors and in a life time, just three or four may become earthquakes. More often than not, chances are that it will stop within 30 seconds and we will be able to continue with our lives.

So I complained a little, and tried to keep on sleeping in spite of the movement, but I quickly realized that it was becoming stronger and it was lasting longer than they usually do. Alex, who up to this point had experienced a situation like this only once when we were living in California, was getting very nervous and insisted we should do something. At that moment I got out of bed, and thought about many things all at once. When you live in a country that has deadly earthquakes every 15 years, you always hear about what you are supposed to do, how you are supposed to react, and in many occasions, especially during little tremors, you picture the situation and think about the first thing you think you should do. I guess at some point I thought about this scenario happening in the middle of the night, and in my mind the most important thing was to put on pants, and so that is what I did first. I got up and put on my jeans.

Then I thought about where to stand. I always knew this was a sturdy apartment building and never really worried much about it surviving an earthquake, yet when you are going through a situation like that, it’s hard to just stay in bed and think you will be safe. You look for a door frame, and stand under it, which is something people always say you should do. Alex, however insisted that we should go outside, but I told him not to, since the earth would be shaking just as hard out there as it was on the first floor of this apartment building. So Alex leaned on the door frame, and I stood behind him, grabbing on to him as tight as I could, not because the ground was moving that much, but because I wanted him to feel safe and calm. I had been through many tremors before, and this to me was just one more, long, strong tremor. Then we waited. The car alarms went off outside our building, and you could see all their lights blinking in sink with their individual alarms. The little clock on my night table with the little light that comes on when you push it back was swinging back and forth, the light coming on and off.

“It’ll stop soon,” I repeated over and over again, feeling Alex’s heart beating fast. But I said it to calm us both, because all I could think was “let it end, already!” but it wouldn’t. “Now the power will go out,” I thought, and though I couldn’t exactly tell because it was dark in the room before the earthquake started, I knew it had. “If the windows break, then we are in trouble,” I told myself, but they didn’t. Not even one. Then finally the shaking was becoming lighter, and the first thought on my mind was my friend MariaJose, who lives alone on the fifth floor of a building three blocks from here. “She must be scared to death,” I thought, and I went for my cellphone immediately because I knew for sure that if I waited even a second, the lines would be jammed and it would be impossible to reach her. So I called and she picked up in a shock. She was calm, and yet she wasn’t. I said I’d go to her place and pick her up so she could come to mine and stay with us overnight. She agreed as if she had just been hypnotized.

I put on my sneakers and waited for Alex to get ready and we left the apartment. Outside everything was dark and fairly quiet. The only sound you could hear were the car alarms going on and on everywhere in the city. I bumped into a couple of people on my way out of the apartment complex because I couldn’t see them until they were right in front of me. I dodged them and kept going, quietly. No one said a word. Not me, not them, not Alex. Then outside we walked down the street and saw a few more people standing outside. Everyone, to my surprise was calm. Everyone except the few drivers that had taken over the street and were now driving like mad people, probably trying to get to their homes to check on their loved ones. At this point cellphones were only useful as flashlights. No one could make or receive a call of any kind. So we kept walking and doing our best to cross streets without traffic lights.

We finally found MariaJose and went back home. Alex took out a radio/flash light/alarm that he bought once for situations like these. It’s one of those you charge by using a little handle and moving it in a circular motion, causing friction that somehow creates energy. It didn’t work. He tried many times because he could not believe such a brilliant instrument was useless. But it was, and since we were all safe and sound and without having anything else to do, we decided to go to bed and wait until the next day to figure out what had really happened.

Just like that, this strange night ended, and by the time I woke up in the morning, our electricity was back and we were able to watch the news. Then we learned about the real damage this had caused in other parts of the country and it was not pretty.

Saturday, March 1, 2008

North Carolina: More Cows than People

My name is Anita and I am 25 years old. I was born and raised in Santiago, Chile, but moved to the U.S. for the first time at the age of 15. I hated it. I hated everything about it. I was a teenager in desperate need to fit in, to be like everyone else in a world where everything and everyone was different.

In what seemed like an overnight decision, my life was changed forever when my dad got a job as a teacher in Youngsville, North Carolina. In a little more than a month I was forced to pack my life in a couple of suitcases, and begin my journey to the unknown along with my little brother and my mom. My life would never be the same again.

Youngsville was a tiny town of 400 people that at the time did not even appear on the map. My school was about a million cows and 40 miles of nothing away from where I lived, in a slightly bigger town called Franklinton.

I still remember that first day of school as if it were yesterday. It was a foggy, dark day. I was nervous. I was so nervous thinking about what I would find, what it would look like, how I was going to communicate... What the hell was I doing there?

I went to the same high school where my dad worked, so we arrived much earlier than other students. When I got there the school was still practically empty, which made me feel a little bit better.

"When you meet the counselor, you have to say 'nice to meet you'" my dad said to me.

Back in Chile I had been exposed to the English language mainly through movies and television. If you went to the movies or watched cable, everything was subtitled so you inevitably learned something. Other than that I had taken about a year of English classes, but let's face it, how much can you really learn from a year of random English classes... So when I got to North Carolina, my level of English was basic to say the least. Therefore, my dad, who was an English teacher in Chile, was attempting to teach me basic sentences to get me through my first day.

The good thing about having your father with you on your first day of school at a foreign country is that you feel a little bit safer. What sucks about it is that the moment he leaves you behind, you feel more lonely and vulnerable than a preschooler.

After having a short meeting with the counselor, and now with my new schedule at hand, the three of us headed towards my first class of the day. By that time, most students were at the school, going to and coming from their lockers, laughing out loud and talking to their friends. However, as the minutes went by the crowd started becoming smaller and smaller. I particularly remember noticing that as soon as the bell rang anyone who was still in the hallway rushed to their respective classrooms. It was as if this bell indicated a nuclear bomb had just been released and anyone who was still in the hallway would be killed. In a matter of seconds everyone disappeared, and suddenly, just as it had been earlier that morning, it was only me, my father and the counselor.

The school was a big, square, brick building built in 1923. It looked like the typical school you would see in the movies on the outside. Inside, however, it looked old, dirty and gray. There were lots of glass doors at the entrance but only a few of them actually worked. As soon as you came in, the first thing you saw were the stairs, that were wide and split to the left and to the right halfway up. On the first floor, under the stairs, there was the library in the middle. To the left and to the right of the library there were two hallways with classrooms. Somewhere in between, I can't quite remember anymore, there was a door, a big metallic door. The counselor opened it, and as we went through it, I felt as if everything else was a poorly-kept stage, and I was now walking into the backstage area, which was a humid, gray, small area with another metallic door that lead us outside the building.

Now we were in the back of the building, outside for sure, though there was no green to be found. Instead, on my left side there was a brick wall that belonged to the library. On my right side, there was another brick wall that belonged to the right hallway with the classrooms. Ahead, there was another brick building. This one looked newer and had only one floor. As soon as we walked inside this building I knew for sure it had been built much after the building we had just left behind. It smelled better, and it just overall looked better. Suddenly I found myself wondering how many generations of people had gone to this school and had attended classes in that other building.

My thought was interrupted when we stopped in front of a door. This was it. The last door in the building before going outside again. My heart started pounding fast, so hard and so fast that I thought it would come out of my chest. As the counselor knocked on the door, I truly felt like this was my second day of preschool, when I already knew that my dad was going to leave me there, with a bunch of strangers.

A full-figured, blond lady with very deep eyes open the door. When she saw us, she stepped outside for a moment and closed the door behind her. From what I could infer, the counselor and my dad explained my situation to her. What happened after that is no longer clear to me. All I know is that from one moment to the next, I was standing inside that classroom with this woman, in front of a class full of high school kids staring at me. The woman was explaining to them who I was, what I was doing there and asking for someone to translate things to me. She sat me next to a blond girl who was taking Spanish II at the moment. Her Spanish was so basic and broken, that actually it was better to have her talk to me in English. As she struggled to finish a sentence, Spanish book in hand, laughing with the other students sitting in the vicinity, I knew that it would be a loooong couple of years.