Today was a busy, crazy, long, stressful sort of day.
My job as a housekeeper at the Krossing Hotel is usually pretty simple: make the beds, clean the bathrooms, vacuum the rooms, repeat. And then after both wings of the hotel are done (usually around 2 or 3:00) there might be a little bit of laundry to fold. And then we put away the fresh sheets, fill the spray bottles with cleaner, and sign out around 3:30. Sometimes, we are done very early, with only a few rooms that need a thorough cleaning, and we leave around 2:00, satisfied with our easy shift. We always hope for those days.
Today was not one of those days.
When I woke up, my first thought was, Wow, morning came way too soon! I made myself get up, even though the house was freezing, and my boyfriend was curled up in a big sleepy ball of warmth that I didn't want to let go of. I stretched and recited Psalms 118:24 inside my head a couple of times.
This is the day that the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it!
I had to pray for a little extra joy this morning.
Work started an hour later than when I showed up, and the news that there would be sixteen Housekeeping rooms (rooms that needed a thorough cleaning from top to bottom, brand new bedding, the whole works), and the fact that there were only three people on to handle this sort of thing, was not amusing. Not at 8:00 in the morning. My friend told me that we would not be done the work until 5:00 that evening.
Now, upon hearing this, I had two options. I could have:
A) Freaked right out, blamed the manager for not scheduling more people on, and bitched and complained the whole day, or
B) Remembered what I had learned from pastor Joyce Meyer's teachings on handling feelings and shitty situations, which have made a considerable difference in my life in a short period of time.
I could feel the familiar sensation of hopelessness rising up in my head, like a bathtub filling with frigid water. I knew too well that if I had let that seed take root in my mind, the only fruit that I would get from it was a bad attitude, which would mean a bad mood. And my day had just started. Psalms 118:24 echoed somewhere in the back of my brain, and instantly, I stopped myself from thinking poor thoughts before I could even start.
"I'm not impressed," I told myself. "but oh well. The sooner I get working, the better."
The other two girls agreed. We ended up missing our 9:00 coffee break, and cutting out most of lunch break. By the time lunch did roll around, we were finally able to start cleaning up the Housekeeping rooms, which is pretty late, considering we could be done one entire wing of the hotel by lunch. Checkout is at 11:00 every morning, and since there was a big wedding party the night before, a lot of the guests slept in and had to check out at the last minute. We had worked for three hours, and we were already exhausted. The rest of the day went like this, and at one point, my coworkers had called in a few of their family members to come help with the cleaning, as they could not get a hold of any of the other housekeepers employed. Four hours' worth of work was completed in nearly two and a half, and by 4:30, the mountain of sheets in the laundry room had a dent in it.
I had the feeling that my attitude was also helping.
Sure, we complained a bit about how sore our legs and feet were, and how it hurt to keep bending over to clean and pick things up, but I knew that the more optimistic I was, the lighter the work seemed. But I also understood that realistically, even with the help we finally got, we still wouldn't be done at a decent time. Somehow, I just felt okay with that.
It was 5:45 when we finally signed out and left. I have to do it all again tomorrow, but Front Desk told us that our day tomorrow would not be nearly as busy as today was.
So now it's time for a hot bath and an early night, which I've decided is my reward for keeping my cool all day.
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