2005-03-21 - 1:31 p.m.

Some days, I really love my job. Not only do I get to catalog books written by people with names like "Elana Dykewomon" and listen to all the Nick Cave I want to during working hours [side note: today, I misheard, "so take that coat, babe, and throw it on the floor," a lyric I've known for *years*, as, "so take that copay, and throw it on the floor"], but as a Tech Services monkey, I don't have to deal with the public. Also, as a Master of Science, even if I *did* have to deal with the public, they wouldn't be as condescending to me as in other jobs.

Working as a chambermaid (which I did for six years) engenders certain assumptions in the minds of customers. Those assumptions all fall along the lines of, "This person is chambermaiding because she (or, very rarely, he) is too stupid to get a "real" job," which somehow entitles the customer to treat the chambermaid like a gibbering moron.

Once, I was quietly dusting a room when a guest came up behind me and yelled, "DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH??!?!??!" This was in Maine, mind you, one of the least diverse states in the country. "Er... yes?" I answered. "I... NEED... THREE... HAND... TOWELS," she said, in the time-honored tradition of Them Furriners Can Understand English If You Speak it Loudly and Slowly Enough. I gave her the towels, in the time-honored tradition of This Person is Insane, Smile and Nod.

Actually, that's more of an assumption of The Cleaning Staff Never Speaks English. I mean, cleaning is a good job if you're still learning the language, because the warning labels on the chemicals are usually multilingual, and that's all the language you need, really. But, I mean... Maine. I also had some guests try to give me christian tracts in Spanish (despite my nametag, with my English/German name). They realized their mistake and said, "Oh, *you* don't speak Spanish!!!!" in a But-All-Other-Chambermaids-Do tone of voice. "Actualamente, si, yo hablo y comprendo," I said.

Okay, a *real* instance of Chambermaids are Stupid thinking came from a guest with a late checkout time. He had called down for a checkout of 1 PM (normal checkout was noon), and it was, at that point, 2:30. Now, that checkout time was in place because checkin time was at 3 PM, and MY GOSH THE ROOM NEEDS TO BE CLEAN WHEN A GUEST CHECKS INTO IT. But the Do Not Disturb sign was on the doorknob still, and that overrides any checkout time.

One of my pet peeves as a chambermaid was people who left the DND sign on the door even after they had checked out, because that meant I had to go down to the front desk and see if the patron had checked out/have them call the room to see if the patron was gone. Which is what I did in that case. The front desk called the room; there was no answer; I assumed they had left and went up to clean it.

Of course, the guest was still there. I hit the safety latch when I opened the door and approximately a nanosecond later, the guest was in the hallway screaming at me. "CAN'T YOU READ?"

"Er..." I've been reading even longer than I can remember, "I'm sorry. Often people will leave up the..."

"IT SAYS: DO." He used his finger to underline the words and sound it out for me, "NOT. DISTURB."

"You had called for a checkout at one and no one..."

"That's what the sign SAYS. It MEANS not to disturb me."

The thing is, I don't think he was being snarky. I think he really thought I couldn't read. But geez, the illiterate mentally disabled woman who made beds for us understood that when the sign was up, she wasn't to disturb the room. It's not a difficult concept to grasp. Though apparantly, "CHECK OUT TIME" *is* a Fermat's Last Theorem of a conundrum.

SUMMARY: I like my current job.