Learning to Drive Standard

In the hospitality industry you get an interesting mix of people. For some this is their career. For others (like myself), it’s a stepping stone that allows them to pay the bills while going to school or move on to something else.

Because of this, you tend to see a core of older more seasoned employees interspersed with a younger group. And particularly among the younger group, employee turnover tends to be high.

When I started at the hotel, the team of Bellmen I joined was all seasoned vets. In any team continuity is important, and I was lucky enough to work largely with the same group of guys the whole time I was there.

The front desk staff on the other hand was a bit different.

 

Turnover at the front desk was very high, and I can’t even begin to keep track of the names and faces that went through that role while I was there.

When I started, there was an opening for a manager of the front desk staff. It remained empty for many months so one of the more experienced front desk staff was “acting” front desk manager while the role was vacant. That was Steve, who was all of about 21-22 years old at the time.

Taken on his own Steve was a pretty good guy, but he was promoted to a role that he probably wasn’t ready for.

In his defense, it’s a difficult dynamic when you have friendly working relationships with your co-workers and suddenly you are “the boss”. Whether that was part of it or it was just a power play, Steve started being a bit of a jerk. He was the boss now, and when you had to deal with him he made it pretty clear that you knew it.

 

Anyhow, one weekend I’m working, and we were the host hotel for a convention. I can’t recall what it was (something religious I believe), but there were a lot of young families staying at the hotel.

When you book a room, often hotels have a number of “add-ons” that you can request (for an extra cost of course). And one of those add-ons is a crib. The problem is, you hotels only have so many of these add-ons available, and on this weekend the demand exceeded our supply.

I’m standing at the Belldesk with another Bellman (Peter), and Steve comes by. Steve tells us we are out of cribs and he has made arrangements for us to borrow some from another downtown hotel; so he needs one of us to go pick them up. As Bellmen, I’m not sure how it was really our responsibility to go get these cribs. But hey, Steve was the boss, right?

Peter and I look at each other, then ask Steve how we are supposed to get them (Peter biked to work, and I walked). The hotel was about a 10 min walk, so I suppose we could roll them down the street. But this is downtown – so it’s *probably* not the best idea.

Steve gives us his car keys, tells us we should be able to get them in a couple of trips and walks away. Peter looked at the keys, then turned to me and said “I can’t drive standard, so you’ll have to go pick them up”.

 

Hmmmm. As it turned out, I couldn’t drive standard either.

I guess it was time to learn.

 

As a Bellman, parking cars was one of my duties. Sounds great right? Well, most cars were rentals. In the early 90’s that meant I drove a lot of Chevy Cavaliers, Pontiac Sunfires and Ford Tauruses.

Occasionally a REALLY nice car would pull in – and of course it would be a standard, so I would have to find someone else (usually security) to park it. After all, I sure as hell wasn’t going to learn to drive standard on a guest’s sports car.

Steve’s though? Yeah, I could do that.

I mean, intellectually I knew how to drive a standard (grind em till you find em, right?) – I had just never done it.

 

Steve, if you ever happen to come across this you’ll be happy to know that I didn’t grind the gears.

Much.

Or stall it.

Much.

 

I took the car for a spin around downtown for long enough to get the feel for driving a standard. Once I felt I “got it”, I went and picked up the cribs.

It worked out well for all of us. Steve got his cribs, and I learned how to drive standard. I like to think of my little excursion as on the job training. After all, it did benefit the hotel as I no longer had to call someone else to park the car when a standard pulled up.

And a few months later when a red convertible BMW M3 pulled up?

Oh hell yeah.