Thoughts about work, changes in job titles/duties, and more

COVID can go away any time now, I swear!

So, the province is pretty much locked down for the next couple of week because our infection rates started climbing, due in part to a volleyball tournament and a huge party full of high schoolers, at least on of which was infected.

At first the metro region was under locked down for two weeks, but then it expanded to the entire province. Or at least the island portion of it.

Right before Valentine's Day - one of the hotel's busiest periods. This lead to a lot of cancellations this past weekend, and more during the rest of the month as well. There goes our expected revenue down the tubes. Mind you, it's not too horrible considering we've been down two bodies at work for over a week now.

Now we're down a housekeeper because she needs to isolate due to her spouse exhibiting symptoms, and we're stretched pretty thin. It's a damn good thing that I'm able to help with the housekeeping side of things or we'd be screwed. But I can't be a dedicated housekeeper because I'm needed on the front desk! Thankfully one of the three housekeepers at our other property is willing to help out when she's able to at the hotel. I can strip beds and do laundry, but that takes a lot out of me just do to that! I'm also able to turn-over rooms in a pinch and have it look damn good, but I can't do the entire hotel on my own!

The past two weeks with the necessary schedule changes has seen me doing up those schedules. I don't mind as I do have experience with scheduling, especially with a very small number of employees available. I've also been doing the ordering for last week and this week, which I don't mind at all.

My boss' boss loves that I am capable of doing so much because it takes a LOT off of her plate as she tries to do her job as well as my boss' job. While I don't know everything I do know enough and I am adaptable enough that I can pretty much get stuff done that absolutely needs to be done. And if it's not perfect, I don't bother to stress about it - and that is something that my big boss appreciates. Me staying calm helps those around me stay calm, meanwhile in my head I'm close to freaking out at times. But I know that freaking out doesn't do anybody any good.

I have a gut feeling that the management structure may change if things ever get back to something approaching normal for our properties. Since my boss stepped up into the position of properties manager instead of just being the hotel manager she has been getting more and more stressed. It doesn't help that we are limited to the number of staff we can have right now working between the short term and long term accommodation sites, and we're all expected to stretch ourselves thin to help cover where necessary. I already know that I can handle managing one of our short term accommodation sites on my own if it comes down to it, and that does include the hotel.

If I end up getting a property management job with the company I can see at least one person feeling that I've stepped on their toes. They have much more hotel and accommodations experience than I do, plus they've taken the diploma program that many hotels looks for when they hire (not that any piece of paper means much more than they've got more education - they likely haven't a clue how to actually put any of it to practical use), and is more than a bit on the abrasive side. I don't care how much education or experience she has because she's comes across very fake and I don't trust her for a second.

Here's the thing - no amount of training or education can provide a person with the actual brains to do certain jobs. I proved that when a former employer gave my fast food store to a missus with a business management degree - inside of the first week that idiot had my old store she spectacularly failed a food safety inspection, still couldn't do any of the paperwork, and forget expecting her to do the deposits at the end of her shift because she couldn't do any of that work. Yet she had a degree so they figured she'd be a better fit than the person - ME - who got that store cleaned up after the previous manager let it go to shit, and ran a pretty tight crew where all my staff respected me. Even the Russian dude who never respected anybody before or since.

I've got a lot of previous experience that tides me over well in this job - pretty much every job I've had over the years, from dishwasher to security to call center agent, has left me with skills that work quite nicely with my current job. The management experience I've got is already serving me well because I've been doing scheduling for the past couple of weeks. Supplies ordering is something I've done at other jobs in the past so that's old hat as well.

I'll just play it by ear for now and go with the flow for the time being. I've got a job I enjoy, where my skills are truly appreciated, and a plan to work my way up or at least stay there until I'm old enough to draw CPP. I'm done bouncing around from job to job, and at my age that is probably a good thing. You'd never know that I'm only a couple years off of 50! But as I get older my age could become a barrier to finding other employment should the worst happen.

Yet in this era of pandemic and economic instability I'm just glad to have a job, any job. That it happens to be one I enjoy is a bonus. My hours will be restricted for the next little while due to the provincial shut down, but I am still receiving CRB payments for the time being. When those stop is when I will panic, but until then I'm doing okay.