Eight Twenty Four

It's quite strange how all of the posts about the hotel have begun from the end and this one seems to be heading that way as well. Although, as this seems to be a conclusion to life at Fairmont Jaipur let me take you back to the very start...

Third and the final year at the IHM Mumbai. Semesters passing by and campus recruitments had jumped on all of us aspiring students. I had never heard anything about Fairmont till I sat in the presentation that the two gentlemen coaxing us to join their property introduced it. It's a very vivid memory where I was sitting amongst quite a few students and there came a slide with the beautiful properties Fairmont boasted of around the world. "We do not just build glass buildings, it's a culture and a tradition that we proudly follow", said the HR Director. I was sold. January 2017, a very distressing time period in my life with very few things to look forward to. Self-belief was at its all-time low... enthusiasm and motivation were in negative figures. The personal interview began and yet another factor which played into my hands... The interviewers were least interested in my technical bookish knowledge (which was pretty negligible, to be honest) but rather focused on my attitude towards people in general.  The entire interview went well and it was time for the final question...

"How have you prepared for the interview?"

"Being very completely honest, Sir, I have not."

A quick skeptical glance later,  I was thanked and asked to wait for the result.

"The last answer might have cost me the job", I apologetically said as I got up from my seat.

Like sheep waiting for their fates to be decided, we all stood there with bated breath.

"Jay Ranade", he announced. "We really like your confidence but there is a thin line between confidence and overconfidence. We'll see you in Jaipur for the final round"

I could not believe what I had just heard. Not a person to weep around people, the tears just started rolling down in front of everyone. It meant that much to me... My first ever interview, amidst a constant air of self-doubt and two strangers, had the faith to hire me for a very prestigious job.  After all the results were announced, there were about a dozen of us out of the sixty to seventy students to be selected to go to Jaipur and give their final interviews at the hotel. I silently got out and walked to the terrace to let out a big scream of 'Yes!' just to vent out. (I went out to vent out!) It was the first positive thing I had heard being said about me in a long time and the feeling of validation at that point of time was unparalleled.

February 2017, Jaipur beckoned. A city I had never ever imagined myself to be in but destiny is a strange damsel. 'Jay' had to spend some time in 'Jai'pur! The hotel or rather the palace fulfilled the claim made in the presentation. 'Not just a glass building'. Spread around eight acres, the Fairmont Jaipur is a marvel even just to look at. Anyone seeing it for the first time is forgiven to mistake it for an actual palace being converted into a hotel... But it isn't so. It is just a very thoughtfully planned and built hotel with aesthetic beauty in all directions. The little details are what make the difference, I believe. Anyway, love stories later, work first. It was the generic scene, aspirants silently perspiring in trepidation and experiencing extreme bouts of anxiety before facing the Head of Department till your name being called out, puts an end to the misery. I walked into the Front Office Manager's office... shakily confident. Another factor playing in my favour. Even this gentleman was looking for a personality than technical knowledge. The forty-five-minute interview had its highlights but one particular answer will stay with me for a lifetime.

"Tell me any difficult situation which you have overcome in your life."

I took my time to think, not wanting to rush into any answer...

"Okay... Not more than 3 months prior to today, I was sitting in a dark and damp room playing video games for nine to ten hours a day because I was scared and afraid of facing whatever personal problems I had. Today, I find myself sitting here facing the Front Office Manager of Fairmont Jaipur..."

1st August 2017.

Name : Jay Rahul Ranade

Employee Code : 000824

I became the 824th employee to be registered on the roster of Fairmont Jaipur and from 21st August 2019, 000824 will be nothing more than a mere number.

It's a strange feeling really, the first job. A first venture into what they call the 'real world' one where each man fends for himself. Professional life seemed very superficial at first but then as time passed, it became more and more clear. The very first advice I got was from my roommate, who had open-heartedly invited me into the house. Having a trustworthy person guiding you since day one is something very few people are entitled to and I am grateful to be one of those lucky ones. I had entered the hotel with all my wit and smarts about me. I wanted to influence and implement my stamp on the industry since the moment I joined and this was the first mistake I made. My roommate, who had already been working there for a year sat me down and told me to put a rein on my horses. 

"I know you are a smart person. You know you are smart but don't enforce that smartness upon people. Not right now. Eventually, the time will come and the best thing you can do right now is to be silent and observe. There's already a reputation brewing around you where you come across as an over-smart and snobbish guy."

I needed this slap of honesty and I took it with a pinch of salt. This was my first week in Jaipur and I understood, I needed to take my time to settle down and savour the learning I was about to go through rather than enforce myself upon people who were way more experienced and learned than I was. It was really a lesson in humility and I shall definitely carry it for the rest of my life. Time passes by quickly in the hospitality industry... You are going through the motions always on someone else's clock. Your time is not your own but rather of the guests you serve and everything revolves around them. Luckily, since I was chosen as a management trainee I was on a timeline. Eighteen months until my promotion as an Assistant Manager and training divided into all the sub-departments of my core department, Front Office.

Royal Service :

My first department was the operator's service. A neglected and frowned upon department but it really is the heart of the hotel. There were times when I left the office numb in my head and with sore ears due to the constant call flow. A single person left to handle internal and external calls of a two hundred and forty five-room property is not something very idealistic but it had to be done. It helped me a lot to get a foothold in the hotel since I was the one person who had to communicate with all the departments of the hotel regardless. At least people got to know that there was a new colleague of theirs called Jay even if they did not know me by face. Royal Service taught me the phraseology, verbiage and gave me an immense amount of patience. No matter how mentally tired you are, your voice constantly has to sound positive and willing to help. Three months went by in a flash and my next department beckoned.

Concierge :

Probably the most physically taxing out of all my sub-departments. The three months spent at the bell desk were some of the best times I spent in the hotel. It was the wedding season when I joined the bell desk and boy, oh boy! Let me give you some numbers to put it into perspective. Two forty-five checkouts of the previous wedding followed by two forty-five check-ins of the upcoming wedding. Even if we count just two people per room, that's four hundred and ninety people checking in and checking out. Two bags per person on an average and that makes it nine hundred bags one way! Haha... Even I am slightly astonished by the number. The Bansals and the Goyals did not make it easy as each family got close to seven bags per person but that tale is for another day... If the luggage was not enough, we also took care of the valet service, the welcome experience team, guest requests for cars, organizing medicines from outside, airport pickups and drops and what not! I honestly believe that every hotel does the same processes but it's the people that make the difference and our bell desk team, like it had to be, was a united team throughout. We stood for each other in times of need and ensured that the work was done amidst disgusting jokes and constant snide comments (That was our idea of stressbusting!)

The bell desk taught me how to take charge and lead, delegating jobs and ensuring maximum efficiency with minimum effort. Being empathetic to my interns was something which came naturally due to having experienced horrible seniors during my internship... Just because it has been bad all this while doesn't mean it has to continue this way and I was hell-bent on changing this attitude. Late evenings were generally quiet and that was when I took my interns out to the main porch and we looked at the stars. It was the only way I knew how to teach them about humility. Compare a human to nature and he will never feel smaller in his life. After a busy day of listening to expletives, this came as a welcome change. I highly doubt any intern other than the batch of those few ones know how to spot Orion's constellation...

Front Desk :

After my three month stint at the Bell Desk, I did a month of Reservations, cross-training in Housekeeping and a month of cross exposure at a sister hotel. The best part about the cross exposure was that it made me appreciative of the people and the work culture at Fairmont. Fairmont was lucky enough to have hired people who had the right attitude rather than just technical know-how. You can teach a person to work on the system but you cannot teach him the right attitude at an office... After nine months of having joined the property, I came to the real warzone of the department, the Front Desk. I do understand that as a writer I have to find the correct words to express and describe a scenario to the reader but I would gladly accept that I failed as a writer when it comes to describing the Front Desk at a hotel. There are no words sufficient to paint a picture of what it is like. 'To one who has had the experience, no explanation is required; to one who hasn't there is none', is a quote I would use to fall back upon but let me give it a try.

So, I am sure all of you have seen a hotel reception. Seems fairly fine, you go to the desk, you get your work done and then you leave. For an associate standing at the desk, you seem like the devil himself, two horns and all walking towards him to make his life a little more miserable than it already is. Multitasking is the name of the game. If you think that the bell desk was a busy area, the desk is twenty times that. I won't give you numbers here but let me jot down a typical day at the front desk for you :

Guests arriving before check-in time feeling entitled to an early check-in with a free upgrade, guests checking out having an issue with their billing, guests wanting to do Forex, guests wanting new keys having lost the ones they were given earlier, profile updation of guests checked-in, random guest complaining about some random issue, preparation for VIP arrivals, preparation for VIP departures, guests with sales enquiries, Food and Beverage staff asking for reports to plan their day, Food and Beverage staff asking to take care of the mistakes they made in billing, colleagues asking you for help in profile updation of guests checked in, colleagues asking you for help in check-ins, colleagues asking you for help in check-outs, event teams of weddings asking for guest lists, event teams asking for cleaning of their storage area, event teams complaining about the AC in their storage area, senior manager expecting his job to be done first in all of this, handling the cash transactions happening in the day, tallying the credit and debit card transactions happening in the day etc. (yes, the etcetera is legit)

All of the aforementioned tasks are not even a busy day, they're part of the daily routine of a person working at the Front Desk. What I learnt was that amidst all this, I had to prioritize, plan and understand how to get everything done without errors and dissatisfied guests. Obviously, it was impossible not to commit errors amidst all of this and I made a ton of those. Some times, I had to turn to my senior managers to get through the sticky situations and some times get stuff done under the table with my senior colleagues. All is well that ends well, right? Thankfully, I have always been a naughty child and that helped me to gain the street smartness to get things done without getting too much flak for it. It was an experience, it really was. Having to handle wedding guests who, I think, visit hotels with their heads up their backside was extremely challenging yet enjoyable at the same time. 

Assistant Manager :

After going through eighteen months of a grueling training, the awaited day finally came. 1st February 2019. The day that had been decided for me to be promoted to the post of Assistant Manager. A post most people aspire of reaching after working for at least three years in the hotel industry... It had not been easy, definitely not. A diamond is chiseled and made only after exerting it to the utmost amount of pressure and I was being chiseled constantly by my senior managers to prep me for the role. The promotion letter was in my hand and congratulations were flowing in from all directions but I knew that albeit the initial challenge had been completed, the real challenge had just begun. Everyone in the department knew that this management trainee was bound to be an Assistant Manager after a certain period of time. Even the people who had joined before me knew it. My mentor gave me a harsh but real advice. "People are going to be envious and think that they deserve the position more than you do solely because they have been working here for longer. Do not pay attention to them, you deserve this more than anyone else.", she said. I did not know at that time whether this was a positive feedback or a check of reality but I knew one thing and that was to continue doing my best for the department and work even harder for the colleagues I now had to represent. Having worked as an associate, I could very well resonate with the difficulties faced on a daily basis by the subordinates. Empathy is a really strong emotion and I decided that is exactly what will get me through being an Assistant Manager even to the people who have worked here longer than I have.

'Respect is earned and never demanded' A quote I have loved since the day it has been imbibed in my mind. Just because I was now wearing a black coat instead of the beige sherwani did not mean that I had a stature higher than the rest. It just meant that I held more responsibility than I ever did... An ego will bring you down but being down to earth will take you higher than the skies, is something I have learned in my days of being a 'Leader'. I worked my ass off. I had to prove to myself that I deserved the position in such a short span of time and I ensured that no stone was left unturned in the pursuit of self satisfaction. It was a really humbling moment when I was named the 'Leader of Quarter - I' in April 2019. It was the first time that a manager only a month into his promotion had been the recipient of such an award. It was also the last day of my mentor in the property and I could not have wished for a better send off for her. All her hard work had borne fruit in the medium of that one trophy and if there is one person who deserves it, it is her. She had taught me the real meaning of leadership... All I had to do was emulate her and that is exactly what I did after she left.

A manager who was two years senior to me with at least ten years more experience than I had... all her responsibilities eventually trickled down to my young shoulders. Preparing the duty roster, submitting the attendance, taking care of requests from colleagues, any little problem they faced eventually came to me and taking inspiration from her, I could never say no to any one of them. They had put their faith in me as a new manager and it was up to me to really prove my worth and help them through their difficulties. I would be burdened with twenty different issues and if the twenty first one came along, I had to swallow and digest it just like the previous ones. It was extremely tough, I won't lie. There were times when I thought that at this position it is not my duty to handle all of this and neither am I getting paid to handle all this pressure. My professional mentor had raised me better than this though. Just like she had put her department before her personal issues, it was time for me to do so and I did. I had to. Just like my hand had been held by my seniors previously, it was my unsaid commitment to the department to do the same. Often,  I felt like a piece of  lettuce in a sandwich... Subordinates on one side and seniors on the other. 'What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger' and since I am alive and dandy writing this piece, it only means that I have received the strength to handle such pressure.

Resignation and Farewell :

It took me a lot of courage and with a heavy heart, I walked to the office of my Head of Department to hand in my resignation with the view of leaving Fairmont Jaipur after having completed two hectic yet lovely years of service. Like a lot of firsts that had taken place in this wonderful city for me, this was another one. My first ever resignation and it really felt like I was walking towards an electric chair. Naturally, the Head of Department did not want to accept the resignation and delayed it but eventually even she understood that I was too stubborn to be convinced into doing otherwise.

So, it was decided, 20th August would be my last working day at the Fairmont and everybody in the hotel seemed to be aware of this fact. My mother and grandmother visited the hotel to witness the farewell and those three days will forever be close to my heart. The team had decked the back office with pictures of me on my last working day and ensured that they made me feel extremely special. I do not think I have ever heard so many good things about me in a span of three days haha. There was an official farewell organized from the hotel side where colleagues from all departments joined and spoke a few words about our experiences there... Who would not love being the highlight on such a day! My focus more importantly was on seeing the smiles of the faces of my mother and grandmother. Both of them looked at me, eyes gleaming with pride like I had never seen before. I have always been a people's person and it really showed on that day. Everyone who spoke, spoke very genuinely and from their heart. I knew that I was going to miss this lovely lot of people once I was back home but then it was a step I had to take for personal reasons. The celebration, however, did not end there. I was constantly peppered with gifts from various people at various times of the day! Rather than the materialistic factor, I was really touched by the efforts they had put into making my departure a really memorable one. If that wasn't enough already, the day we were checking out from the hotel, they prepared a special mocktail, asked the sitar tabla players to very cornily sing 'Accha Chalta Hoon, Duaaon Mein Yaad Rakhna' and the entire team stood at the main porch in a line to say a final goodbye.

I really do not know what I have done to deserve such treatment. The only thing I had in mind when I walked in through the gates of the hotel was to give it my best shot. Day in and day out. It was to help the people around me be better and inspire them to be successful. Out of a hundred people, ninety nine will try to bring you down but it is that one person who believes in you that really matters. I was fortunate enough to have that one person constantly with me no matter what and that motivated me to be that one person for all of my colleagues. Fairmont has really taught me a lot. The best part about the hotel industry is that it will make you a better human being because that's all you really have to do. Be a good human and you shall be a good hotelier. The values imbibed in me since childhood by my parents really played a big part in all the success achieved at the hotel and I shall forever be indebted to them for that. The main reason behind asking my mother and grandmother to be there for the farewell was to show them that all their efforts had borne a certain fruit and this was it.

To whoever is reading this, it is my humble request to you that whenever you visit any place that is offering service, please be polite to the people who are serving you or assisting you. I have quite often experienced that guests, especially Indians, feel a false sense of entitlement solely due to the fact that they are paying money. Yes, I do completely understand that your money is important but the humans are way more valuable. You never know what background the person is coming from and trust me every hotelier or service staff is doing their level best to make your experience wonderful. We are here to serve you and we shall continue to do so with all our heart. I honestly believe that it is the guest himself who spoils his stay by finding petty faults and trying to make himself feel important. Please do not do that... I do agree that you have to raise your concerns regarding certain issues and if it is a genuine problem, we as professionals completely understand. None of us get any pleasure in hampering your experience. The more genuine a guest is, the more the staff will feel like helping them and ensure that they leave with lovely memories. Again, it is a humble request, please empathize with the staff who are working twelve to fourteen hour shifts daily only to make your stay or your dining experience something you would always remember. Ask them how they are doing, say please while requesting for anything, acknowledge their efforts, thank them... Treat them like professionals and not labour! This is something which really disheartens me. Indian guests with their rude and self centered demeanour towards staff really make my blood boil despite having to keep a calm head at all times. Let's hope this attitude changes and we as future generations learn to treat all professions with equal amount of respect.

It's been a week since I have left Fairmont. The eight hundred and twenty fourth employee to walk in through the palatial doors who was initially known to be an arrogant and over smart boy, walked out through the palatial doors with great pomp and more importantly a lot of love. What began as a chance interview in IHM Mumbai, ended with Nagadas and flower petals and a lot of gratitude.

1st August 2017 - 20th August 2019.

Fairmont Jaipur, I shall forever be thankful to you. You have helped me more than you can ever know.