Friday (Tuesday 15th)

Today was my last day of my practicum. I did Lobby-service which meant as the word lobby already suggests helping out in the Lobby at the Reception,storing luggage, helping guests that needed help with the luggage e.g. elderly.disabled... as well as doing the guests extra wishes and checking if the guest has departed after a certain period.  

It all started with me getting introduced to the staff which consisted of around 2 people+ the receptionist. 

The lobbyist was called Rodger a Mexican man in his late 30s and (Azdim) who was the concierge supervisor. I spend most of my day getting explained how everything worked as well as helping out Rodger with some tasks like there was a Thai lady who needed help with her heavy luggage and we helped her till the Airport Terminal. Then I got a few tasks like taking luggage from people and storing it in a storage room,keeping the lobby clean as well as giving destinations. Than I got the task of helping Rodger check a certain list of rooms who's guests had departure today. After we were done I than got a different list of rooms who had internet connection included in their hotel price. I had to go to the room, knock and call out "Front Office" than usually somebody opened the door and I asked them if they needed help setting it up. This I did for like 10 rooms. After I was done we ate lunch and than I continued helping out in the lobby. 

It was really nice as I got to meet the "clients" straight up,talk to them and help them out. It was a lot closer experience and I really liked the openness of some of the people. 

I really liked the overall experience I got in the hotel because of the variety, different options and amount of people I met and different tasks I could perform. There was never a task that got repeated too many times and I could do a lot of different tasks from setting up Meeting Rooms to showing a guest how to get to Nyhavn. I mainly liked the fact that they trusted me instead of being watched 24/7.

I learned to execute different tasks like setting up meeting-rooms or just keeping the Lobby clean. Also from outside a hotel looks like an easy please to work at however when you start working there you notice that its like a big anthill and if one part fails everything starts falling apart. Like if the kitchen gets the food late the employees have to wait while they wait they waste time=money which than equals to profit decrease..... so everything has to work smooth and 100% efficient. 

I had quite high expectations towards the job as its Hilton we are talking about not some Hostel in Copenhagen.  My expectations were that it will be demanding,difficult and certain problems might happen during the practicum like forgetting howto do something etc. My expectations were met and in some cases I had a better experience like when get let to help out more than half of the approaching guests even though I just helped out for 1 day. My carrier choices were influenced positively as I got exactly the experience I wanted a quite demanding however very varying and interesting "job". 

I didn't learn a lot of new things about myself as I have been openminded and talkative before starting the practicum however I did learn that I can be dependable upon even if the tasks were more difficult or needed some thinking. I approach a new environment openminded and by introducing myself and why I am here than I ask the people what I can help with, this generally gets to a positive outcome. A joke or 2 to break the ice along the way don't hurt either. Depending on the amount of the responsibility I tend not to have any problems dealing with it and I think the more responsibility one gets the better.Responsibility means that you are trusted and though you shouldn't abuse it you have to keep an eye so responsibility doesn't overwhelm you. I think that being dependable and responsible are traits that will get you far in life.

I believe that enjoying your job is a very essential element of it as if you don't enjoy it the quality of your work will suffer. If someone dislikes their job than they will produce a lot worse pieces of work than someone who enjoys it and is enthusiastic about it, you are also just wasting your companies time and money. I think that if someone dislikes their job they shouldn't do it as there for sure is a person who would enjoy doing what somebody else is doing right now with a bad attitude towards it herby wasting time,money and a lot more things.

It was a great roundup that at the end I had a little talk with Elisabeth my supervisor about my performance. And according to her all of my supervisor's in the different departments were satisfied with my work and like the fact that I had motivation and enthusiasm. I liked it very much and I think I made a good choice by choosing a hotel as my practicum place.

Marcell

Thursday (MONDAY 14th) (see explanation)

If Mr Howard might remember I wrote to Elisabeth last week and she allowed me to extend last week Thursday and Friday (Lobby Service,Building Service) to this week, as I got a viral Infection.

Today I started at 8 with the Building Service. It was very eventful and I did a lot of different tasks. My assigned employee was Stephen however I was on the constant switch between the people that were busy which were him,Claus,Sven. The day started with Sven showing me how to clean and reverse filter the swimming pool this took about an hour but was quite interesting as I didn't know that acid (nitric?) is used in the sandy cleaning process in order to get rid of the bacteria-even though they also use Chlor.

Then the day continued with me helping out Sven with a cloaked drain which was so cloaked that they needed to ask an external service to de-cloak it. It also stunk as the water has been collecting in the drain for 1 Week.I felt sorry for the people working in the kitchen :D.Here I learned how to take a drain apart.
Then we ate lunch at 12.45am however we did it in less than 15minutes and already I continued to help out this time I helped out Claus who just like Sven was Danish and a Technician. He showed me how to exchange a light-blub in the Hotel room roof lamps. Then I helped him exchange a few shower-pipes and at the end of the day he showed me the coolest spot ever which was going up on the Hiltons Roof which is 33m above See-level it was extremely windy but cool to watch the planes lift off so close to you.
I thought that this was a really teachable experience as I would have never managed to go up on the Roof on my own nor did I knew how time consuming it is to clean out a swimming pool. I can't really answer the questions regarding my responsibilities as they mostly are to help out and it changes in every section of the Hotel, C&E operations its meetings,lobby etc. whereas building services its more technical and fixing related.

Wednesday (I am sick)

Today would have been nice and same routine as yesterday if it would have been for the fact that I got sick. I already felt bad in the morning however my state only got worse towards the afternoon so I asked my supervisor (Slah) that even though its my last day in the C&E department to let me go home early so I can cure myself. When I got home I measured my Temperature which was 38.8ºC. I than asked Elisabeth if I could stay home tomorrow so I can be hopefully recovered by Friday (her reply is still pending).

I forgot my sheet with questions and answers which I would like to apologize for and I will hopefully get it on Friday.

Tuesday

Today was even more busy than Monday.It had a bit more variety and challenge as I had to start cleaning up as well as setting up rooms by myself. At the beginning I felt a bit unsecure about this new "challenge" as I was hoping not to forget anything or do my job unproperly in some way.In the Morning I came 10 minutes late which was already a bad start due to the stupid RE train that didn't come. Never-less I came into the C&E operations room to find a coworker who didn't know that Hilton had a praktikant- me which than got cleared up and from than on everything ran quite smooth.

Also today I had the challenge of helping setup a bigger meeting room for around 42 people. I had to help bring in the food and drinks as well as dessert and set the room up. I also learned that there are around 3-4 different office room table setups. They are called Board,Classroom,Theater.... Classroom is quite self-explanatory as it just means that the tables are setup like a classroom:

Hilton Hotel Classroom setup

The board setup means that you have 2-4 tables that are opposite or facing each other like this:

Hilton Hotel Board Setup (diner)

And the Theater bascially just means chairs without desks in multiple lines (usually accompanied by a buffet in the back)

This was quite surprising to me as I thought that there was the simple Board setup for the meeting room but not such a variety.
I also learned how to hold a tablet correctly, clean up the lobby and serve food to VIP guests (always from the right) and how to place cutlery correctly.
(you put it into a specially folded napkin and than insert a knife and a work into the upper opening lip? of the napkin)

It was altogether a very enjoyable day especially since I knew what to do or how to keep myself busy for most of the time with seldomly having a break or pause. The only surprisingly bad comment I had was the food because the meat got cooked precut so it was nearly as hard to eat as rubber.

My Day didn't have any high or low points apart from usually having a very slow start but ones things get moving around 11am it turns very busy and is full of challenges. I found particularly rewarding the fact that I learned everything so quickly and that I got trusted to clean up and setup rooms by myself in such a luxurious and high-quality hotel as Hilton also that I got to help out serving VIP guests.

Today I also helped out in meeting rooms were the companies are quite famous e.g. L'oreal,Dior,Kims as well as seeing the whole Danish National team in one place live.

The main challenge is finding good and interesting activities as well as doing everything correctly also believe it or not being polite all the time even if you feel like ripping the head of the person sitting opposite of you is quite challenging. I didn't find anything boring at maximum some things were a bit repetitive.

Monday

Today I had my first day at my practicum place-Hilton Hotel Denmark.
I had quite high expectations since a) it is the hilton hotel b)it is right at the airport meaning if this hotel doesn't have traffic than which one.
I was also expecting quite a few hectic situations and the feeling of not knowing at all what to do.
Luckily none of these happened as I was told that Mondays is always a slow start. Monday being a slow day was great as I learned all of the techniques and ways of setting up meeting rooms.meeting room buffets... due to this I knew what to do and this is going to be a savior for the next 2 days as I will continue working in the same area called C&E Operations. 



I started my day at 9.00 however I did manage to arrive 10 minutes early and was greeted promptly at the reception were I asked for my Contact Person "Elisabeth" who came shortly and explained to me how the day will go as well as asked my for my reason for choosing a hotel and told me to prepare for quite a challenging first day than she introduced me to the my contacting person for the C&E operations called Slah.Slah is from Tunesia and the senior supervisor at Hilton DK.
As the supervisor he is the person with the overview who is responsible for organization of what goes were and when, who told me what to do and whom to help as well as explained me how the programm setup sheet works. Something that surprised me was that the category which said how many people will attend a certain meeting is called "PAX" to my knowledge in the Roman Catholic religion it means peace and is used in connection with the church e.g. on graves and such however in the modern hotel language it is also used as a description for passenger or people.
Than Slah told me to help out Paves a tjener (servant) who was a very kind russian man in his early 50's. Paves showed me the different types of Meeting rooms as well as the Ball Room and the Club room. He also told me that there are 12 floors and a security net from the 4th one on because there was ones a person who committed suicide.
It is simple amazing how many rooms there are and only 4-5 people are needed to clean up and organize  them. There are approx. 32 meeting rooms, 1 ballroom which can be split into 2 half's and has a greenspace attached to it as well as a club room which occupies the complete 12th floor.Another interesting point that I noticed was that the 3rd floor meeting rooms are all named after Scandinavian Goods e.g. Odin,Thor,Idun,Freya... and the meeting rooms are all hotel rooms with a changed arrangement.

My main responsibilities are to help out and basically watch and learn.I will have to be able to service to an extend and help out as much as as I can til the end of the week. They did tell me exact responsibilities apart from smiling with a positive attitude and staying polite.

I am eagerly awaiting tomorrow and am ready to face a new challenge.