The bored employee

I am Italian but it’s been a while that I am working abroad, for a bunch of reasons that I won’t mention in this post.

I am not the first, I won’t be the last…

Besides the fact that I love to travel, my motivation for working in Hotels as a Director of Sales & Marketing, does not lay only there.

One day, I was at work and one of my colleagues told me “you don’t understand us, you work that much because your family is not there and you have nothing to do, besides work!”.

I didn’t took it personally but it engendered a lot of reflections.

1. You are working in tourism, you cannot quit and drop the pen when your shift finishes because sometimes you are envolved in situations and conversations with guests.

2. I am not saying that this is fair, it is just a matter of fact, a hotel is not a ministry!

3. You work when others are having fun!

4. And you should enjoy that part, because it allows you to work in a relaxed ambient, for some aspects.

5. Otherwise you could always try “customer care”, where people are complaining most of the time. Only after you make that experience we could discuss about it again.

6. By the way, imho, you should always enjoy the caothic part.

7. Yes, some day it is a lot! Sometimes it is overwhelming. I only know that every time that I have left hotels for other jobs in different domains I have deeply missed them and I have always come back.

8. Until the day that I have embraced the only evidence, I belonged to them! After all I was not that “normal” and I was not meant to conduct a conventional existence with regular schedules, no rush, no stress!

9. I just love to be challenged, novelties, meeting new people every day, exchanging with them, talking about work stuff, reaching targets, feeling part of a team and once again reaching targets together, motivate the team, struggling to obtain results…

10. Failing is part of the game but the good thing is that it leads you to learn something! Always! Somehow you will always end up by enriching yourself and I cannot imagine a bigger gratification than a job that allows you to learn, mature, grow up, think out of the box.

11. Working in hotels just changed my life, I am sure it could happen in any other sector, to me it happened in hotels, this is why I always say that the job chose me and not viceversa!

12. To recap, if you are not doing a job that you love you should definitely change it. Life is too short to waste it in activities that you hate or you are not interested in (and I talk by experience, because it was exactly what happened to me in other contexts).

13. We all have a private life, family, friends, interests, hobbies… how arrogant is to think that the “foreigner” has nothing to do and comes to work just because otherwise she gets bored?

14. And by the way, what kind of lousy motivation would that be? I am investing on my self every single minute that I spend at work. I am investing on my education, on my training, knowledge, improving my skills, acquiring new ones. I invest on my business relationships, I invest on my future, on my career and you can be sure that most of those contacts will follow me wherever I will go!

15. Last but not least, I am a foreigner here and yes, one day I may want to leave but how idiot can you be if you are not investing in your country and solidifying your position in this company? You should do it for yourself or at least for the family that you claim to be your most important thing!

16. I am not saying that you should focus only on the job, of course there are other important things in life but I cannot forget that it is thanks to your job that you can have them or maintain them!

17. Now, what is your contribution to this company? Are you really an important asset?

The answer to this question came some years later: the day that I have left, people have cried, the day he left they have had a party!