As most artists/writers/crazy people do at one time or another, I've moonlighted to make ends meet.
My most recent moonlight was not the typical waitress or barista job, as we like to call coffee makers in the United States. Instead, I took a job with much more responsibility and a lot less respect: hostel front desk clerk. Being an overachiever, I couldn't work at some bucolic country hostel where fifteen or so people sleep to the sound of crickets. No, I had to plant myself at the front desk at America's third-largest gateway hostel, home to 250 zany travelers on any given evening.
My job was simple: checking in guests, checking out guests, dealing with three constantly ringing telephones (mostly with folks who wanted me to speak some other language); serving as guest confidant, tour guide, translator and social coordinator; selling telephone cards, food, drinks, taking messages and sorting guests' mail; providing necessary items like bandages or swizzle sticks or pens to guests that needed them NOW!; taking reservations, changing reservations, confirming reservations, canceling reservations; and of course watching the front door the whole time so an ax murderer wouldn't come waltzing in.
Sound exhausting? It was.
Now, don't get me wrong. I love what hostels are all about - meeting and sharing a smile with people from afar. Kinship is easy to find when you love to travel. Fun too is finding out where people are going next: Florida Keys? South America? Asia? Friends will tell you that my ears prick happily at the sound of one or more foreign languages being spoken, even more so if it's a language can understand a little. That pleasure was definitely satisfied at the hostel. So was the fuzzy feeling of helping the lone travelers feeling helpless. From traveling abroad myself, I know how great it feels to be given a helping hand.
So many nationalities all gathered in one place made me feel like a globe was spinning around me as I stood still. Algeria, Slovenia and Pakistan might walk by one night; South Africa, Chile and Indonesia the next.
But I would be amiss to say that all of the international travelers were perfect guests. Many were downright annoying. It's important to point out that some hostel guests, regardless of nationality or age, expect the world while traveling it. Take it from me -- this is no way to travel and definitely no way to make friends in a foreign county, especially friends with the person (me) who can assign someone else (preferably a person who hasn't bathed for days) to your bed.
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