After a stressful few days at work, things have quieted down thankfully.
Thursday night things had blown up after some of our senior estheticians found out what the newest esthetician makes per hour, and I thought for sure that I was going to walk into work Friday to there not being anybody showing up to work. Only two call-outs though, but only one was legit. Oh well, such is life.
After that, things settled into an even keel for the most part. Which is the way I like it. Sure, I had a couple of really long shifts on Friday and Saturday due to a front desk person calling out sick. But it means more money for me when payday rolls around.
My boss was back today after taking a few days of vacation off to get away from the stress that work has been for her. And she was very pleased with the decisions I made in terms of having our esthetician student shadow one of our girls during a pedicure and then having her do one as part of a group appointment - it helped us save three appointments, and it gave her some experience with our spa as well. And that I made the decision to schedule my friend in to start training to help us p/t - my boss had half-jokingly offered my friend a job, and after doing the wedding my friend decided that she really did want to work with us.
And I heard back that the RMT supervisor loves that I have no issues doing sick calls for her - she asked me yesterday morning if I'd go through and cancel the appointments for one of the RMTs as she'd called out sick, and I said 'Yep, no problem!' and off I went!
And today, while we had the other front desk girl on and working on training the newest guest services agent, I tackled something that really needed to be done - inventory of the products we sell. It's not completely done, but it mostly done and I can finish it tomorrow while I am in. Then I can make the corrections as needed in our inventory system, and we can order what we need to get in. Woo!
I was also told today by my boss that there is a very good chance that the official spa manager will not be coming back, not necessarily due to any choice of her own. Over the past few months that my boss has been running the spa, a lot of issues have made themselves known...all of which can be laid at the spa manager's feet. Basically, letting one of the guest services agents essentially run the spa herself when the manager has gone off somewhere, not to be found, and let the staff basically do what they want is NOT the way to run a business.
I had already figured out that the spa manager didn't know what she was doing when she thought it was fine to have a single spa attendant work 10.5 hour days despite pretty much breaking one to the point that the attendant went on medical leave and cannot come back, and breaking me as well. I'd always said that if the shifts were a reasonable length and we had more than one person on during the main part of the day, that I would never have quit the spa attendant job when I did. Her excuse was always "but I'm not allowed to break up the shifts and hire somebody else"...personally, I would have fought long and hard for that because it's not exactly legal to put that expectation on any employee, especially when you have two that ended up injured or aggravating previous injuries as a result of the job.
I know there has been some kick-back from some of the girls who have commented about how my boss doesn't work at the front desk like the spa manager did. What those girls don't realize is that my boss and the spa manager were only working the front desk when they did was because they had no choice! Once they were able to start hiring more people and get them trained in, the managers went back to the job of running things. Well, that's what my boss did, but I have a feeling that the spa manager faced a fair bit of backlash from it, especially as she was routinely pulling one of the estheticians to help with the desk so she could get some ordering and stuff done.
Either way, during the day at the spa there are two guest service agents at the desk, and the manager is doing paperwork and whatever else in the office. Yet there is staff that complains about how they never see my boss at the front desk while the spa manager was out there daily. What they are not seeing is that after the first hour the spa manager would essentially go missing. And the staff doing the loudest complaining are the people who are routinely not even there.
Right now, I very much am the guest services manager and I am training the staff for the spa and hotel desks in pretty much the same way. And when the dust settles, it is quite likely that I will be in the spa most of the time. And I pretty much confirmed with my boss today that if it comes down to it that she will shift back to her old accommodations responsibilities and I will step into the spa responsibilities that she's been dealing with. As things stand right now, we are a team and I have been trusted with some big decision-making choices when it comes to getting things done.
In time we will have the right team again, and I will take pride in being a part of building it. Even if it means that we have to close the spa for the time being to get things set right again.
Changes will be coming down the line over the next few weeks, so all I can do now is roll with the punches and see what ends up happening when all is said and done.
Comments
Post a Comment