the long strange tale of an Irish receptionist

The Magic Valley - the Irish hotel where I worked and lived for a while - seemed to be made up of many worlds. I was in one world in the hotel, in another when I walked the mountain paths nearby, in a completely different one in the village two miles away where I bought groceries, spent an hour in the internet centre, had lunch or a Bailey's coffee in the pub.

The hotel itself consisted of different worlds. There was the summer: chock-full of tourists, seasonal workers, babbling in foreign languages, drama on every level. There was the winter: silence, a sweet smell of turf fires and a certain melancholy, but also the entertaining presence of the locals who - in the longed-for absence of tourists - came out of hiding and gathered in the hotel pub for company and shelter from the cold. There was the brainy reception world, the steamy kitchen world, the cut-throat bar world. And even the bar itself felt different if I was there on or off duty.

I enjoyed working in reception. It felt like the nerve centre of the hotel - we kept track of guests, events, the menu in the restaurant, the tills in the bar and the housekeeping schedule, and performed ten different tasks simultaneously. We also took messages for the boss, made business statistics, fixed the computers, received deliveries, helped with the booking of functions, counted money, fetched extra pillows, found out why the damn fire alarm was going off, tried to answer questions from the other staff regarding wages, accommodation, work permits and why some guy was sleeping with some other guy's girlfriend. We dealt with fussy guests, panicked brides, cranky celebrities and flirty drunks, not to mention impossible-to-please bosses and coworkers having nervous breakdowns.

The receptionists were a small bunch of likable people - the job requires a certain amount of people skills and intelligence after all. Still, I envied the other departments sometimes. I loved the kitchen with its constant noise and people running around. The atmosphere was hot, humid and spicy - also because of the chef that everyone was in love with, the tension during peak hours and the cultural clashes. The chefs, mostly male, safe behind the hot plate and counters in their own little kingdom where no one else was allowed to enter, were of a higher caste than the foreign kitchen porters washing dishes, the waitresses running around and the receptionist coming to enquire about today's menu. They levelled their all-knowing eyes on you with a threatening smile and let you know that they knew all the latest gossip about you, really approved of that short receptionist's skirt and that you were at their mercy. It was sexist and insulting  - and made you feel as if you were the most beautiful and desirable woman in the building. It didn't help that the head chef was a man of mystery, rarely seen outside the kitchen - aloof and adorable, a tyrant and an idol and humble at heart, loving and loved and completely unattainable to all the girls who fell in love with him.

Everyone pretended that the surly hotel owner was the sovereign ruler. But everyone also knew that the hotel would fall without its soft-spoken chef. It would also crumble without the tiny little woman who ruled the bar and lounge, the busiest department. When she issued an order, everyone rushed to obey. When she flew into a rage and quit her job, the hotel owner went after her and begged on his knees until she agreed to come back. She could break up a bar fight single-handedly. She was the scariest person in the building, but she was also a mother to those who needed a shoulder to cry on and defended her staff fiercely. The bar staff knew that they were under her protection and took orders from nobody else. A receptionist needing their assistance with something had to ask very humbly and swallow all their not-so-subtle remarks about lazy receptionists sitting on their asses all day. If you worked hard and earned their favour, you were allowed the honour to share a drink with them late at night after the bar was closed.

The housekeeping staff, a.k.a. the foreigners with the lowest English skills who could not be employed in any other department, were mostly ignored by other staff ( except when they were envied for their day-time only working hours ). They formed their own clique in the corridors upstairs, whispering in linen closets. They were impossible to reach by any means, so a receptionist with a question had to prowl the corridors and rooms, looking for invisible housekeepers.

And then there were the restaurant staff, oddly low in the hierarchy - probably because their department was an under-privileged rival to the powerful bar/lounge. And the office staff and souvenir shop staff who kept a distance to the rest of the ( mostly foreign ) staff as they were all Irish and not living in staff accommodation. The managers had their own, complicated pecking order and the angriest one was the one most loved by the staff.

And there was me. The mellow one, sometimes quiet observer of all the drama, sometimes peacemaker, at times loved by everyone, at other times moody and distant. Blending into the grey background, then exploding in a supernova of colour as the queen of all drama and the centre of attention. The Good Girl, then the Meltdown Disaster, then the One Who Stole The Chef's Heart and the one who played a game of pool with Matthew McConaughey.