A Morning in the Life of the General Manager

I wake up at about 6:30am, though not sure why as I wasn’t planning on going in until 9am today – must be conditioned into not needing much sleep.

In the hotel for about 8am, walk through the Reservations office and empty my tray, it looks like the Reservationist is still asleep, as when I say good morning I get no response, I guess it’s still early

On through the Conference office (empty and awaiting arrival of the team) so I just have a quick look at the day’s business to see if there are any last minute changes. At times function sheets would be better off being blank pieces of paper that the operations team fill in as they go (no, seriously our events team are extremely good with their information). Onto Reception and as always they are “full of beans” I guess that goes with the territory for that type of job.

Next stop I switch the lights on in the bar as it appears the early Duty Manager has forgotten. As I approach the bar I hear the northern twang of Suey who is for some reason always in at about 7:45am even though her shift doesn’t start until 9am. She’s just trying to make sure that she has enough teaspoons and cups to get her through the morning coffees – she mentions that the restaurant staff have taken them all again as they are having a busy breakfast and that she will go through and give them a hand. That’s typical of Suey, always helping everyone else – probably why she got the Employee of the Year Award!!!

Next into the Restaurant, my old hunting ground, there is no-one on the door but a few staff buzzing around, I go through to the kitchen to find the Restaurant Team Leader having a chat with the Duty Manager while he’s eating in cooked breakfast. I ask the Team Leader politely to go back into the Restaurant and look after his guests, he tells me was just asking a question about this evening.

I then have a brief chat with the Duty Manager who tells me we have run out of mushrooms and two staff from Housekeeping are off sick. I ask who’s getting the mushrooms and he tells me the early Porter. I’ve only been in 10 minutes and haven’t got near my desk yet or had a cup of tea!!!!!

Up to my office to find one of our Marketing team sat in the office to tell me about our marketing stats – something that I always struggle to understand (my background is in food and beverage management, and marketing has never been my strong point). At least there’s good news on that front.

By 8:30 the office staff are starting to arrive and with that comes the gossiping about the previous night’s TV and what everyone has done. I’ll check my e-mails and respond where necessary. My PA comes in for 9am and with her comes the first cup of tea of the day (the first of many I may add!) and everything suddenly starts to seem better.

I then get bombarded with telephone calls and if I dare to walk around the ground floor I know that I’ll get bombarded with questions from every member of staff I come across. I made the grave mistake of walking through the conference office yesterday and got stuck in there for nearly an hour – when will I ever learn!!!!!

The rest of the morning is taken up with forecasting sales and wages, then it’s off to the morning meeting to brighten everyone else’s day, or not dependent on the outcome at the end of business the previous day!!!!!

Soon it will be lunch time – a light bite or proper tucker – given my required energy levels, I’ll have some of everything!