If a bell-boy is caught doing something detrimental to the success of the management, the housekeeper should write a note to the clerk, or the captain of the watch, and inform him of the bell-boy's misdeeds. This will be sufficient from the housekeeper.
On assuming the duties of a new field, the housekeeper may remember merely a few important duties; for instance, she must carefully scrutinize the time-book and learn all the maids' names and stations. Next learn the location of rooms and become familiarized with every piece of furniture in them. Then, step by step, she should build up the general cleanliness of the house. This is by far the most important of all the requisites pertaining to hotel housekeeping. Guarding against difficulties encountered with the employes and with the managers' wives is secondary.
A housekeeper that can not take orders is not fit to give them; if the manager asks for the removal of an offensive employe, the housekeeper should immediately get rid of the objectionable person. If the housekeeper fails in deference to the manager's wishes, is not that good evidence that she is not a good soldier? She should be eager to maintain the dignity of her position—must maintain it in fact—and do as high service as possible for the management. Yet she can not always carry out her own ideas. The manager has his ideas about matters, which right or wrong, must be respected. The housekeeper carries out the manager's orders. If the hotel fails to bring a profit or give satisfaction, the manager alone is held accountable.
About Hiring Help.
To dismiss a maid is a very easy matter; to obtain a substitute that will perform the duties assigned her in a manner that will prove more effectual, is not so easy.
To fire or not to fire, that is the question
Whether 'tis easier on the impulse of the moment
To suffer the terrors and exactions of the haughty maids,
Or take up arms against their impudence
And with pen and ink end them.
To lie, to sleep—
Worry no more, and by good management to dispatch
The cares and thousand little details
Housekeepers are heir to—'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.
The employment-agency is the housekeeper's recruiting station. She gets most of her help from this place. The housekeeper should always consult the manager when other help is to be hired. Everyone knows that old employes are always best, even if they do spoil the new ones. The housekeeper endeavors to keep the help as long as she can, using persuasion, kindness, and forbearance, striving to teach them the best and easiest way to do their work, bearing with their imperfections, overlooking a great deal that is actually repulsive, not expecting to find in the hard-working individual the graces of a Marie Antoinette, or the inherent qualities of a Lady Jane Gray.
The housekeeper should not only be scrupulously honest herself, but should insist that the maids be honest. It is true that almost irresistible temptations and opportunities to steal are constantly thrown in the way of the maids; and those that are steadfastly honest deserve great credit.
If a maid is neat and clean in appearance and does her work well—these qualities cover a multitude of sins. From the standpoint of many housekeepers, too much curiosity and gossiping are the chiefest and quickest causes—next to the neglect of work—for a maid's dismissal. A housekeeper is usually disliked by the maids that do not want to do their work, just as a stepmother is hated by some stepchildren, regardless of her kindness and her consideration for their welfare. Employes in any business prefer to take their orders from the person that pays them their money. For this, they are not to be blamed; but if the proprietor or the proprietor's wife wishes to retain the services of a good housekeeper, and be relieved of the trying ordeal of training the help, he or she will not encourage tattling from the housekeeper's inferiors.