Oaklands Lodge: My New Home

Oaklands Lodge, Mt. Eden, Auckland

As soon as I arrived at Oaklands Lodge I felt like I was at home. Sitting out on the porch in the back garden was a new nightly ritual, and I met many a great person out there.

Sittin' on the porch at the lodge...

I arrived on Wednesday, and the next night I was chatting to some people and we decided to go on a roadtrip the following week - awesome! We were to leave the coming Monday morning and come back on the Friday night, ready for me to work on the Saturday. Woohooo!

My bedroom at Oaklands :)

 

Cosmos, the hostel cat

I started training with Dawn on the Friday, and there was so much to remember! Who knew that managing a hostel could be so difficult?! I was assured that it all became second nature pretty quickly, but it was still daunting! I was to be in charge of:

• Managing bookings (email, phone, face to face, internet sites)
• Checking people in and showing them to their rooms
• Managing the cleaning staff
• Doing the laundry (sheets & towels)
• Keeping the hostel clean throughout the day
• Managing any complaints
• Lots of other miscelaneous things

It doesn't sound like a lot, but it is - especially when you've never done anything like it before! I was very aware that I wanted to impress Martine, my fellow manager (Tessa would normally be the manager, but she was away in Australia for a month), as by her own admission, she's very anal about pretty much everything.

I trained more on Saturday (randomly inviting the first person I checked in, a guy called Graham, to come on the roadtrip with us!), and on Sunday I was running the show on my own. And I didn't have any cock-ups! This was going to be a fun 3 months :)