Effect of long hours on efficiency
The hotel which installed a relief night shift for chambermaids as an economy measure, was wise. After observing the overtired, listless maids skimp their work the day following a long night watch, one cannot but conclude that long hours of work for women are a bad business policy. The tired worker not only does poor work herself, but she demoralizes the other more alert workers on the force. “Just make up the beds with the sheets that’s on ’em. Those people aren’t going out today anyway. Give the rooms a lick and a promise, I say. I’m tired today,” is often heard while the maids are eating lunch. A feeling of resentment against long hours tends to make the workers dissatisfied and careless about their work. All feeling of responsibility for good work is diminished accordingly. In order to mollify maids, housekeepers allow them to leave their stations as soon as they have covered the work on their daily shift. This makes for hastily finished work and a further unstandardized day. It means that, instead of all maids getting a regular number of hours off duty, clever and unscrupulous individuals steal time at the expense of others. The effect of long hours on attendance is marked. Maids frequently take days off without pay. Some make a practice of turning up for Sunday work several times a month only. And after the continued strain of some months of night watches and seven-day week work, maids feel they “need a vacation and a change” and leave their jobs.
Effect of long hours on recreation
Maids who live in a hotel go out little unless they are very young. After working hours they lie on their beds and sleep or gossip. When they do leave the hotel it is either to go to mass or to find some exciting form of amusement. The younger girls made “dates” casually with guests and other men to go to the movies and Coney Island. Girls who are more backward had often been nowhere outside the hotel, except to church. A Danish girl, who was working in a large New York City hotel, said she knew no one in New York City and had not been anywhere except to go to church with another maid one Sunday and she wouldn’t go there again because they all laughed at her when she took off her hat. She said she was too tired to go to the movies at night because these night watches were “fierce”—she was just tired all the time. She worked in one of the hotels which had an extra watch every day. Another worker, a young Polish bathmaid, complained, “I am too tired to ever go home and see my people any more at night. I used to go every other night and I get awful lonesome for them now, but I just can’t get cleaned up and dress.” This girl was sixteen and had been working as a bathmaid for three months. Another young bathmaid said, “I am too tired to ever go to dances. I just want to rest at night. I can’t stand it anyway, it’s too hard.”
Dining Room, Kitchen and Pantry Departments
Waitresses’ Hours
The work of the waitress in a hotel reaches its peak at meal hours and slackens between times. For this reason waitresses work “broken shifts.” The daily and weekly hours of the waitresses interviewed were not as unstandardized or as excessive in length as hours for chambermaids. They worked a six-day week in all cases. But the distribution of hours of work in broken shifts caused great inconvenience to the workers. Those who lived in were apathetic but those who lived out and wished to return home after hours of work complained bitterly. If the worker lives any distance from the hotel it is impossible for her to change her clothes twice, allow time for street car ride, and return to work in the rest period allowed between the morning and the evening shift. There is, besides, the expense of extra carfare to be considered.
In one New York City hotel, according to a woman worker’s statement, she reported for work at 11 A.M. and worked till 4 P.M. She then left her station for 1½ hours’ rest and returned at 5.30 to work until 9 P.M. She ate her meals and changed her clothes upon her own time. She complained that she could not go home in the afternoon because she lived too far away to change to street clothes twice and allow for car rides. The hotel had a rest room where she stayed for the 1½-hour rest period. “Of course,” she said, “it is wasted time.” She worked no overtime, but the work was heavy during the hours in which she worked so that she was often too tired and nervous to eat her meals.
In another hotel a worker stated that she worked broken shifts one week in the day time and straight shifts the next week when she was on night work. One week she worked from 6 A.M. to 11 A.M., had a rest period from 11 A.M. to 6 P.M., and worked 6 P.M. to 9 P.M. The next week she worked from 5.30 P.M. until 12 P.M. She ate her meals on her own time, but changed her clothes on working time. Overtime varied from 1 to 1½ hours a day.