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.