Question to other front desk workers, do you guys bring things up to guests rooms and also fulfill maintenance type requests? Or do you have a policy of not leaving the desk as well?
So for my hotel specifically it’s a discounted 2 star hotel. And I work mids alone most of the time. We had an incident a few years back with a new front desk agent.
She got a call during her morning shift from this guest asking for something in his room to be fixed and she went up. She made him open the door and stand out. While she was doing it, he snuck up behind her and tried to kill her! She got away thank god.
He was charged and is serving time and she of course did not return. I wouldn’t either.
Well since then, we have a rule that front desk agents do not leave the desk for guest requests. We can leave the desk to grab things from the housekeeping room for guests, and to do any small things like putting up wet floor signs etc. but we are not allowed to do room service even knock and drop service.
I do “break” this policy because I have to sometimes. I’m 20f but I’m also 5 foot. 1015
And the only protection I carry is pepper spray and a thing that will go off loudly if pulled. I usually trust myself and I feel fine assessing situations but since I heard that incident (I wasn’t working there when it happened) I don’t feel 100%.
MOST, like 95% of guests are totally reasonable and usually planned on picking up whatever they asked for at the desk anyway. However, it does get tricky when someone for example is having trouble opening their door.
You’d think if we have this policy we’d have a security or maintenance on shift round the clock. But it’s only me. So if a guests room won’t open because of a key or battery issue, I do have to solve it with our master key.
If I could I’d find a safer hotel, but it’s not an option yet. I’ve been applying with no luck. I worked at another hotel who had a procedure in place for this. Which was hired staff of evening housekeepers who we communicated with through a message thing for any requests for extra towels or whatever to run up. And always at least two housekeepers doing runs together.
The front desk did laundry during downtime so night housekeeping wasn’t constantly being pulled away. So I wanna ask, do you guys do requests like plunging guest toilets, tv issues etc or does your hotel have a similar “don’t leave the desk” policy? And if not, do you just play it by ear? 1015