What it's like working at a hotel in New Mexico

So American Legion decided to host some sort of event at the hotel and let me tell you, it was a ride.

So my lovely grandmother had rented out rooms for 50 a night. 50$ a Night. No other hotel in Albuquerque does this. And I can understand why most of them are grumpy. You know they had to come on a long trip here and they were probably tired. So I can understand that and not get mad. But boy were most of them eger to leave as soon as they got here. And I really don't know what they were expecting when they signed up for a hotel that's charging them 50$ a night ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but yeah.

So the first day, my sister came to work with me. But this time she didn't. So early 7:00 my grandma wants to show me C building and it's pretty small, only 10 rooms. Two beds, a tv, bathroom, microwave, coffee maker, and those strangely nice hotel air-conditioners. Pretty standard rooms but it smells like mold and ass. Every room smelt like something had possibly died in their :/

So we look around each of the rooms and take note of the ones with broken utilities and what not but we didn't find anything. Which is worrying cause that possibly means that their could be mold or a dead thing in the vents or walls. Not fun at all for us to deal with :l (Even as I write this we still have no clue of what the hell it is.)

Ah but once that's done she shows me where it is American Legion is going to hold whatever it is they were going to do. For context there is this. Giant room that the hotel rents out for things like weddings or events including balls and other stuff. But it's a big room with cement flooring and ugly tan walls. There's random assortments of tables and miss matching chairs everywhere. It looks like shit. And I don't know about you, but if I worked as hard as the people who work for American Legion and I got put in a room that looked as bad as this I would probably be disappointed. (But at least I wouldn't take out my frustrations on the staff who didn't get a say in this :l)

And the rest of the time is chill, we get the folders for all the guests who will be staying for the event ready with key cards for the rooms. No one really shows up until 12:00, and It was like twenty people show up at once. It was stressful but to be fair, when has anything gone right for one day?

Once we get some people situated and things start to calm down my grandma leaves me to run front desk alone to grab us lunch real quick. And of course with my luck I get people coming in for the event. *Insert sudden performance anxiety* these two obviously confused people come in and walk up to front desk and ask for the rooms. And guess what, the computer which we use decided to give me the middle finger and tell me to screw myself. You know it really wasn't that much of a deal but I don't know how to fix it cause it was my second day and wasn't taught how to do it. But so I have to make some sort of Small talk to pass the time but I'm a anxiety ridden teen with nothing to talk about with these people. Like what do I say? "Hey did ya know there's been homicides here?'' The answer is no. So I just try to find something to go off with here eventually they just give up and go out to eat until the system decides to either fix itself somehow or just die.

I'm also getting calls from lost people needing directions to the hotel and people wanting to talk to my grandmother, aka yell at her cause they can't yell at me for the horrible room conditions. People ask me questions I don't have answers to and I'm super hungry. My heart was racing faster than it probably should be and I was getting stressed to the point of wanting to just leave. And all of this happening at once.

In ten minutes she's finally back, and I want to curl up in a ball and pass the hell out. But I don't cause I didn't want to leave her with all the angry guests. Now there is one guest that yelled at us before I had left and again was understandable. But they were going to get free breakfast in the morning and who doesn't like hotel breakfast, that stuff is somehow 100% better when early in the morning at a hotel.

So to American Legion and the veterans that had decided to power through the rooms that smelled awful and probably didn't have either a tv or working air-conditioners sorry you had to honestly deal with that. Unfortunately when I left my grandma had gotten yelled at by half of the people who stayed and I couldn't do anything to stop it :/ though the next day they were much nicer and enjoyed their breakfast so they were really cool overall. I wish I had gotten to help with the next day and do the breakfast but oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Honestly if you ask to be moved to a new room, unless something is severely broken or messed up you probably gonna get a "Sorry :/ we don't have any available rooms for you at this time." And it's not cause we hate you it's just that most of the time when a guest wants a room it's because they broke something or did something they shouldn't have. So we get in trouble if we give you a new room :(

The first few hours were smooth sailing, my grandmother showed my sister and I how to work the phone and computer to check guests in and out while welcoming people into the front door. I got to meet some of her coworkers who can be described as.... Unprofessional and borderline lazy.

How she puts up with them I have no clue. Seriously, you know that your grandma has to put up with some major bullshit when only two if them bother to show up and one of them is in their pajamas. Did I also mention that they decided to bring in their giant pit bull? Not that I really care about it, infact I enjoyed having the dog around the hotel but still...

But yeah only one of the house keepers decided to put in the effort to show up .-. .But still the hotel goes on, the hotel has some sort of specialty thing for locals and business people who stay for more than a few days, we call them our "weekly guests" cause they stay for a few months typically. They're pretty surprised to see two unusually well dressed and professional looking teens behind the desk and are pretty polite overall but then comes in Barbie.

That's what we call her anyways, imagine if Barbie had a tan and did meth. She's one of the mentioned "Weekly guests". She also has schizophrenia. Before we had come into the hotel my grandmother warned us to never tell her our names because she'll probably start stalking us on any media possible and I have to say, it is 100% accurate. You see, she comes in multiple times a day just to annoy any and all of the people she can. On purpose.

.She emidately singles us out recognizing my sister as my grandmothers grandchild and me as possibly related (She is the spiting image of her trust me.) And tries nit picking anything and everything we do :\. My grandmother being the absolute saint she is just sighs and mumbles half answers to anything she talks about and brushed her off. But as soon as she goes to the back of the front desk to her little office area she leaves us alone with her. And that's when she looks at us and smiles.

She does everything she can to get us upset in someway, she starts talking about politics, other guest, she made some comment about me not using "Yes mam" instead of just saying a simple yes. But still I have never been one to explode easily so I just smile and nod along, this makes her bored and as she starts to leave she I realize just how much dignity this person has as she lifts her arms up and says something along the lines of "sorry I stink, I don't use deodorant." In the most dramatic way possible. I keep myself from making a joke and just sit there in silence while making eye contact with my sister pretty much confirming that she was seeing this too.

The next few hours went by smoothly, Barbie would come in and complain about something and leave a few times but overall good. Now the hotel is in an area known for its drug addicts, those people aren't allowed in the hotel for obvious reasons. My sister had gotten bored with work after the first two hours but she's never been one to like things that include well... working. But then we hear one of our older guests outside honking the horn of his car as if he'd never seen one before. We could hear it from the front desk, he's yelling at some lady who's holding a probably stolen potted plant above her head as if it were the holy grail as she's standing in front of his car. She then tries to enter the lobby and as soon as my grandmother sees this she grabs her little can of mace and runs around the counter to get her out.

.the plant lady sees her running towards her and books it out back to the front of the hotel while she parades herself around with her plant above her head. My grandmother sends me and my sister to get more key cards from her office and we both just nod and carry on still processing what had just happened.

It is an understatement to say how much of a badass my grandmother is. She has had to *Mace* people who have tried coming into the hotel, she has been attacked (I say that lightly as in she got slapped by again, drug addicts for trying to force them out.of the hotel), she has had to break up fights, report three murders in the past two months alone and she is still as graceful and hardworking as she can be. She honestly amazes me every day.

But anyways, the police arive (we assume one of the guests called them in, as this also has happened a lot. The swat team has come in while my grandmother was working the front desk once but that's a story possibly for later.) The police are pretty useless here, they have one of the guys come in and ask my grandmother is she knows where the plant lady ran off to and called it a day. ._. After that we decide to have our lunch break.

There's a small breakfast area in the lobby where we can have our break, my favorite part is the chillies tables and chairs that randomly appeared one day in the hotel with no explanation and they just decided screw it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ well just use these I guess. But so we're eating our hillshire adult lunch ables and pocky when I look up to see the plant lady, with her pants down right in front of the window. Of course we didn't stop eating we just laughed it off and continued to snack until she left.

One of my family members how ever works pretty much every day from 6:00am to 3:00pm. I come over to help her anytime she can really allow me over there. She has it way harder and has more interesting stories as she's worked there longer, about one or two years now.

I will answer questions to the best of my ability and will try to post as much as I can, I usually only work about one or two days a month but I can always tell some of the stories from my family that has worked here.