greg in ohio: November 2019

Hello from a wet and wild Cleveland Ohio. I am up bright and early today thanks to the council who have decided that 7AM is the best time to collect all the leaves from the sidewalks using some heavy and extremely noisy machinery! Anyway, being up so early is a good thing as I have had a exciting job development to tell you about ! I have left retail behind and I am embarking on a new career in the same hotel as a bellman ! After doing the same job for 5 years a change was due so I jumped at the opportunity as a Bell-person is without doubt the best job in the hotel. In the past I have spent many days casting jealous glances towards them thinking... 'if only'. Well 'if only' is now here and I couldn't be happier! You may be asking yourself what is a Bell-Person and why is it so great? In a nutshell we make sure the guest gets what they want... whatever they want (or let them down gently)... Whether that be getting luggage up to the room, delicately transporting the cake topper or refusing to accomodate a guests request regarding where they may find a lady (You are correct Uncle David!). As my coworker put it you can't realy do any wrong as a bellperson uou just fix the issue or pass them onto to someone to say no! The shifts are much nicer than before so I get to spend more time with my dearly beloved (and writing my blog also), and after adding up my sack of tips at the end of the week it is working out as a profitable endeavour as well!

I have of course made some classic Bell-person mistakes and here are some lessons in what nor to do!

Lesson #1 - While loading luggage it is of vital importance that you prop the cart against something, you can imagine my surprise after depositing all of a guests belongings on to my luggage cart it was gone! I had turned around for a second to grab his coat and to my horror when I spun back around the cart, along with all his boxes of paperwork was racing down the pavement towards the street! All of his fine suits I had hung from the top were acting like sails in the wind causing it to really fly away and it took all of my cunning to make it seem like this was of course intentional and anyway I am sure his clothes could have done with the blow dry!

Lesson #2 - Another little lesson in the bell arts is that it is extremely important not to keep your tips where you keep your keys. Imagine my horror when after escorting a distinguished guest to his room I went to pull my keys out of my pocket only for a whole bunch of notes to come out with them which duly separated and started slowly floating back towards the ground with me chasing after them all around the corridor mumbling lots of 'sorry, sorry sorry's' to myself and the guest! Trying to catch a falling dollar bill is like trying to catch a leaf - much harder than it looks, I think I must have looked and sounded a lot like Mr. Bean! Luckily for me my rather pathetic display had the guest in stitches, maybe inspiring him to reach deeper into his pocket than he would otherwise have done so all is well that ends well!

Anyway this blog is not supposed to be about me perfecting the fine arts of the bellman. This blog is supposed to be about Alaska! As it is quite long already and I do have some errands to run I'll publish this as it is and add some pictures of Alaska as a teaser of what is to come when I have a little more time, I may even throw in another Bell-person lesson as well!