With no access and nothing to do in my office, I started poking around. After all, I was the boss. Who was going to stop me?Apart from Nyah... well, just let her try.
My security pass still worked, and walking up the stairs from the top office floor, I found myself in a corridor outside some guest rooms.
“Good morning, sir!”
It was a housekeeper in the middle of her cleaning routine.
“What’s this?” I picked up a clipboard from the top of her cleaning trolley.
“My checklist, sir.”
There were maybe a hundred entries on the list, split into three columns, each with a checkbox next to it.
“You have to doallthese things?” I scanned down the list. “For every room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This must take forever.”
There were five different entries for dusting. And another ten for positioning things on the desk and coffee table.
Wastefulness. Unnecessary expenditure.“You know how to clean a room, right?”
“Sir?” A worried look crossed the housekeeper’s brow.
“Change the towels, wipe the surfaces, and make the bed.”
“Yes, sir. But?—”
“From now on,” I said. “Just make up the room. When it’s done, write down the room number and move to the next one. How much time will that save you?”
The woman blanched. “But sir, in the SOP?—”
“I don’t care what’s in the SOP. It’s inefficient. Inform the others.”
I walked away, taking the checklist with me. On another floor, I found more inefficiencies and rectified them as well.
Things were looking up. This was much more like what I’d expected. I declared the morning a success and went out to lunch.
Nyah was waitingwhen I returned to my office.
“You cannot change SOPs on a whim,” she growled, marching towards me with sweeping hand gestures.
“What are SOPs?” I asked innocently, knowing exactly what they were but wanting time to get a handle on whatever had gotten her so worked up.
“Standard Operating Procedures,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Have youseenthe Standard Operating Procedures?” I put my hands in my pockets, resisting the urge to gesticulate wildly in return. “We could probably halve our housekeeping staff if they were more sensible.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” she said in an exasperated tone. “Whether they’re right or wrong, you can’t just change things whenever you feel like it. There’s a protocol to follow.”
“And why is that?”
“Well, for starters, quality control. One housekeeper’s definition of clean might be different from the next. Their SOPs ensure everything gets doneconsistently—every time and in every room, because guests notice. Even if we make the tiniest change to procedures, we review it with everyone, twice if we have to, or risk getting drowned in one-star Yelp reviews from guests whose pillow-mint was upside down.”
I paused to consider. The one-star Yelp review had hit home; they’d gotten a couple at the club, and I’d obsessed over them. Club patrons were fussy—if they had to wait too long at the bar, or they found lipstick on their glass, or the bathroom mirror was streaky—one-star review! Hotel guests were probably no different. Maybe she had a point. On the other hand, it didn’t seem to matter whether my ideas were good or bad because unless I had some autonomy, I’d never get to prove myself.
“In that case,” I said, hoping to find a middle ground without capitulating completely, “I’d like to launch a review of Housekeeping’s checklist. Itisinefficient, and if you’d made the effort to go and look like I did, you’d see that. We can start tomorr?—”
