The Look:
A Tale of Two Receptionists
When does an excessive focus on appearance start to impact the well-being and morale of employees?
It is all about the Look! The way you look can have too great impact on landing that job, any job. We live in a world that judges books (read people) by their covers (read face).
If you’re bilingual, love interacting with others, and don’t mind working various shifts, you’re a strong candidate for a front-desk position. But what if your appearance is also a factor that can even impact your yearly performance evaluation?
Let me tell you a story.
Hellen & Holly
Hotel staff tends to change every season and few are the establishments that maintain more than 80% of workers in a section for more than two years, like the Front-desk or the Bar. Nevertheless, I worked in a Hotel that was lucky enough that was the other way around – the Reception team was 90% made of retainer workers. Some people had been working in the Hotel for more than 10 years, so the Team was like a big family wearing uniforms.
In this team we had two amazing female receptionists, let’s call them Helen and Holly, who were working a morning shift (from 07:00 am to 04:00 pm). With them was a shift leader named Maria. The Front-office manager was not in as it was his day off and the only manager in the Hotel that morning was in fact the General Manager. A fellow most people inside the hotel disliked, for too many reasons.
We all called Hellen “Posh Receptionist” – she was a sweet middle aged woman who loved beautiful design clothes who sported expensive jewelry, fancy manicures and a shiny silky smooth hair. She was pretty inside out.
Holly was a very hard working person, to be honest one of the most professional people I have ever worked with – she was super focused and she never left a shift with any situation pending, even if it meant for her to work extra time.
Maria, on the other hand, was my favorite shift leader. She was always cracking jokes, even though she was extremely competent at her job and she always made sure everyone on her shift left before her, the best part being she organized every shift in a way that allowed everyone to leave on time! I mean, that’s a skilled leader right there!
Now, Maria was working in the back-office and Helen and Holly were behind the front-desk answering phones and checking guest’s requests by email. It was a fairly calm day. Some time into working, the General Manager approached Maria and requested her presence in the lobby area. On the way, he they chatted about in-house situations with guests, VIP’s in-house and other simple matters. As soon as they got to the center of the lobby, he requested Maria to face the front-desk. And so she did.
“Can you spot the differences?”
Maria was no fool, she understood immediately what the General Manager meant – two very different looking Receptionists and one of them was not up to the industry regards as acceptable.
Hellen looked as perfect as ever: make-up on point, hair perfectly straight and well-manicured baby pink short nails. Holly, on the other hand, was a different story. Even though most days Holly wore makeup, it was not the case that day, she had improvised a pony tail because of her oily hair and a cold sore sprouted on the corner of her upper lip.
Maria, pretended to not understand and the General Manager pushed further:
“If you were a guest, who would you want servicing you?”.
Later that afternoon, Maria had to call Holly and tell her that before coming in to work she should always wear make-up and the oily pony tail had to go. It did not matter that this was a one time situation, it could not happen again.
The Endless Grooming List
There is a “Good Practice Grooming List” for Hospitality Workers that keeps growing with unreal expectations of what those that check us in to hotels or that serve us our meals at a restaurant should look like. And while some of the rules in this list are just good hygiene, most of them can be abusive and I will go further and say discriminating towards the employees. Not only the rules, but also the way management teams address the situation.
In this specific hotel I worked at, this list was exposed in our back-office, employees toilets and even in the cafeteria. I went something like this:
Female Employees Grooming List:
- Full Makeup but not flashy;
- Short and well manicured nails with clear nail varnish, french manicure or red;
- Minimum usage of jewelry: wedding ring, stud earrings and a wristwatch;
- Black high heeled shoes, always clean and polished.
- Skin-toned pantyhose;
- Natural color hair and if below the shoulders should be tied back;
- No visible tattoos
- Perfumes should be used in moderation
- Deodorant should be worn
- Name badge to be worn and in good condition
Male Employee Grooming List:
- Hair perfectly groomed above the collar
- Jewelry is limited to a wedding band and a discreet bracelet.
- No earrings are to be worn
- The wristwatch may be worn
- Must be clean-shaven
- Perfumes are to be used in moderation
- No visible tattoos
- Socks should be black or in a dark color to go with pants
- Deodorant must be worn
- Black non-slip shoes are to be worn. No laces are permitted. Shoes are to be always clean and polished
- The name badge is to be worn and in good condition
It's a Matter of (Double) Standards
You might be wondering why Hellen wore a lot of expensive jewelry and I just gave you a list stating that it is not allowed.
Yes, it is truth. That comes to show you the double standards that people must live with while working in Hospitality. I can add here so many stories of loads of people I met while working in Hotels that came to suffer a lot of disrespect all because they needed to conform with the Hospitality Standards.
So, in the case of Hellen, it was accepted for her to use her fancy jewelry because a large number of guests saw it as proof of economic power offered by the Hotel to its employees while granting them status (I’ve heard it from one manager’s mouth). The truth is that if guests looked around, no other Receptionist wore as many jewels as Hellen and also, by reading any newspaper you will stumble on several articles on how Hospitality workers are underpaid and many rely on tips to make ends meet – specially the Housekeeping staff. When the General Manager called Maria out so she would later approach Holly because of her literally clean face and her not so clean ponytail (and on this let me add the best ponytails are hold up with oily hair), he did not mention that Hellen should also be told to oblige to the stud earrings and wedding band only policy.
And this happened with other workers also. There was a quite muscled night auditor that was allowed to keep his beard, because it made him look more fierce in the eyes of night owl guests that would get drunk and come back to the hotel accompanied by “female friends” they made outside (also heard from a managers mouth), while other night auditors and male staff were not allowed to keep beards. I actually witnessed a manager handing a shave kit to an employee and requesting him to go shave during a shift.
And don’t get me started on tattoos. I will leave that for a another story.
You Can Make a (Positive) Difference
This kind of situation happens everyday and Hospitality workers are not only judged by their appearance, but by their race, their gender (non-binary people have it even harder), by their ranking in hierarchy and the list goes on. I have many other stories like this one that I intend to share, not only because I want fellow Hospitality workers to feel that they are not alone when going through some kind of unfair situation, but also I believe the more we hear about injustice, the more we will do to act upon it.
Believe it or not, guests can make a huge difference towards any Hotel staff by doing simple things that can boost staff’s confidence and also remind management teams that the people under them are just as important for their success as they are.
- Thank and compliment them for their kindness and help ( believe me, this will boost anyone’s mood specially when they are having a hard day. Also, if you want to win extra points with the hotel staff and get some freebies, read this post.)
- If you identify their manager, let them know you have truly appreciated their work (this is not the easiest task as many managers tend to run away from guests unless it really is necessary);
- Leave a good comment on TripAdvisor and mention their name (every day, Hotel Management reads TripAdvisor and other Social Media platforms, so mentioning their name reminds management that guests appreciate their staff and so should them).
I honestly hope next time you stay at a Hotel and feel appreciated by one or more employees, that you take the time to make them feel valued as well.
Share with me your experiences or observations of this type of situation. I love to hear from you.
Yours Truly,
Nola
