Usually, this blog is about my travels. This past week in the USA has done nothing other than to make me very angry and embarrassed to be an American. How can we treat each other as poorly as we do? The following post is but one of what might be posted in the coming days. Yes, there will be travel tidbits and I know I've been slacking. Sorry. Really. But thanks for reading and thanks for allowing me to jump off the charted course.
I was just reading a Facebook post that one of my friends wrote
about the racial mess in the country. Made me remember a few things about jobs I
had, and people who influenced my life in the past. Funny how one person’s experience can unlock
long-forgotten instances that you may have had in your own life, like this one
did for me.
I've often said that I don't care what color your skin
happens to be, what religion you are, or your political leanings, I just care
about whether or not you're a decent human being.
Anyway, I was transported back 20+ years to when I was a
housekeeping manager for Marriott. My staff was a microcosm of the world. My
team came from many countries and were a lot of different races. I never
treated them as black or white or African or Haitian or Mexican or whatever. I
treated them as people and once they figured out that I wasn't going to be a
horrible boss, we all got along swimmingly.
When I went to housekeeping, I didn't pretend to know it
all. I went to another hotel for training, but every property has little tweaks
to the system, and I was lucky that a couple of the supervisors showed me the
ropes for our hotel. I respected them for helping me learn. They in turn,
learned that I'd stand up for them when necessary, whether it was rushing rooms
for a group, making the sales department come help strip beds when they wanted
rooms done faster, or defending them when they got accused of stealing. (Yes, when something goes missing from a
guests’ room, housekeeping is ALWAYS blamed first. Thing is, they’re NOT the only ones with
access to rooms. And nowadays, with electronic keys, hotel management is generally
able to know exactly who opened the door and when. Back in MY day, the master keys to rooms were
actual keys, and we didn’t know who entered the room, though we had ways of
knowing whether or not room service, or the bell staff went in for a delivery.)
So, because of the mutual respect, and their eventual
knowledge that I was a little crazy, one day we were discussing a wedding that
I was going to attend. We used to have music playing in our offices.
(Housekeeping was located far away from any public area, so we allowed tunes to
be played.) I was dancing, or trying to dance and some of the ladies said Miss
Meg (they always said Miss Meg, but it wasn't necessary....I called them Miss
Loretta or Miss Mary or Miss Marie too....) " you dance like a white
lady!" I said, I AM a white lady. They said, nah, that isn't gonna work,
we're gonna teach you how to dance right".
Now was I offended? Hell no. Was any of that meant in a
derogatory, racist fashion? Not a chance. I said OK, let's have Electric Slide
class. So, for 5 or 10 minutes, a few of my peeps taught me how to dance.
(Three of my ladies were sisters, they were crazy fun. Actually, I wish we had
video.) It was awesome, and I think I can still dance pretty well. Best advice
they gave me, and again, they weren't being offensive...."don't dance to
the words, dance to the beat."
So, why can't we all get along like that. I'll never forget
what several of them told me. They said you're a great boss cause you're fair
and you don't treat us like some of the other bosses. I learned so much from my
team. I'd like to think that my parents instilled in me that we're all equal,
regardless of what we look like. My awesome team of housekeepers furthered that
by making me feel accepted and respected.
It's pretty simple isn't it? Be fair. Get along. Learn from
each other.
And maybe dance more.
