The Suite Life

"I Think I'm Gonna Like it Here" - Little Orphan Annie

There was a Disney Channel show, The Suite Life of Zach & Cody that aired from 2005-2008 about 12-year-old twins who lived at a hotel. My kids watched the show sometimes, and it struck me as funny that those kids got to live in the hotel. Well, by 2017, I was living The Suite Life too.

Our small, boutique hotel had three villas, two treehouses and five suites, sleeping 26 total guests. In our visits pre-closing, Mark and I had stayed in only 2 of the units. When we arrived in August, the hotel wasn’t very booked. (We’d have to get on the marketing soon to make any money!) We hadn’t bought or rented a home for us to live in, so Mark and I decided we would just live in whatever hotel units were unoccupied. We were able to stay in all the rooms at some point during those first two months. This gave us the chance to get an idea of any issue, maintenance or cleaning needed in the unit. We got to know each room inside and out!

In those first few weeks, we were still learning the workings of the hotel. The team members were getting to know us and were becoming more comfortable around us. It soon became clear that the previous owner (we will call him Gomer) had stopped putting money into running the hotel when we came along as buyers.   

With the concierge as a translator because of my limited Spanish, the head housekeeper came to me and said that she wanted to review the laundry inventory-sheets, towels, bedding etc. She said that we didn’t have enough inventory for all the beds and that many of the products were stained or worn. I wasn’t even aware of what we had, or where we kept it.

There weren’t any guests that week (geez we REALLY needed to pump up the marketing efforts!) so I asked the housekeepers to bring the worn inventory up to the dining room where we could spread it out and go through it.  Piles and piles of white towels, sheets, blankets, and duvets appeared on the dining tables.  They made towering piles of each item type. Not enough inventory for the beds? How many things did we possibly need? It seemed sufficient to me, but what do I know about running a hotel and room inventory? Apparently, nothing. 

Piles of laundry!

There was A LOT of pointing and the housekeepers speaking to me in what sounded like tongues! I had had years of Spanish in school, and had a college proficiency in Spanish (a class or 2 behind a minor) but WHAT WERE THEY SAYING? OMG. Feeling the panic and anxiety rise as they waited for me to say something, I saw it!

A white towel!

I knew the word for towel in Spanish. Phew, we’d start there. Channeling all my years of Spanish, I picked up the towel and summoned my best, ¿Cuántas toallas necesitamos? (How many towels do we need?) Woo hoo look at me, I can DO this! 

Blank stares. Blank I tell you.  I think they were trying to be nice, or they were secretly rolling their eyes at their new Jefa (boss). Yes, toalla is a Spanish word for towel-in Mexico! After a bunch of murmuring to each other like little hens, one of them asked the concierge to return to our little group, and she nicely informed me that in Costa Rica, toalla is the word for feminine napkin.

My expression at this revelation! Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash

I was done for the day, this was gonna be challenging.

Around the same time, Mark and I were taking some Spanish classes in town with a private teacher. We told the school that we had some basic Spanish knowledge. We began the classes and started with Book 1.  Now don’t get me wrong, but again, I’ve had Book 1 Spanish and I already have a handle on basic vocab like colors, weather, and how to tell time. More eye rolling, this time on our part, but we kept with it and were working through the book rapidly. 

After my housekeeping incident, I nicely reminded the teacher that we owned the hotel up the mountain and asked her when we would be moving on to hotelería vocab. Words that would be useful for me – you know, hospitality vocab like sheets, pillows, blankets, and rugs (I mean, I now already knew that a Costa Rican towel was a paño and not a toalla!).  She looked at us, and nicely replied in English, “Oh that’s not until Book 3.” Crap! I needed to know hotel words like, yesterday!  We didn’t stay in classes much longer as we were obviously learning more on the job than in class.

Little Orphan Annie

During a visit to the hotel pre-closing, we met with the previous owner (remember, we’re calling him Gomer) to discuss the hotel transition. Mark, Gomer, and I were sitting at the bar, when Gomer, with a condescending snap of his finger, barked at the server, “Ana, bring me some tea.” Gulp. No “please bring me…”, no respect for Ana, and no “thank you” either. I must have had a look on my face because Gomer turned to me, and said, “Marlo, I can see you’ll be the one to have a hard time living here.” (or something to that effect).

In the musical, Annie, (one of my faves!!), Annie grows up in an orphanage where mean Ms. Hannigan makes her and the other orphans do all the chores around the orphanage. Annie’s luck turns when she is chosen as the orphan who gets to spend Christmas with the rich millionaire, Daddy Warbucks, at his penthouse in NYC. The staff was happy to dote on this little girl, and never before had Annie been so pampered.

Fortunately, I was not an orphan, but when I was growing up, I was expected to clean my room, and do other household chores, and I learned to do laundry and cook when I was in junior high school. With no brothers, I even mowed the lawn. After getting married, I had kept our own family house for almost 25 years. I was the main shopper and meal planner.

Since we were living in the hotel, that meant our housekeeping, meals, and laundry were all handled by hotel staff. The small hotel kitchen couldn’t accommodate me and the chefs as they were prepping meals for guests. The small laundry room was always abuzz with the many loads of sheets and towels to do. It was obvious that I would be getting in the way if I was in the kitchen or laundry room attempting to do my own chores.

It was hard getting used to not doing things for ourselves. Our bed was mysteriously made, our toilet and shower were always spotless, we didn’t grocery shop or cook, we had clean towels in our room and our dirty laundry disappeared and reappeared clean. (Magic housekeeping fairies!) We had someone to make morning coffee and all our meals. You don’t realize the amount of time that you spend on daily tasks until you’re not the one to do them anymore!

As Gomer had said, I did have a ‘hard time’ getting used to living like that, and it took me a long time to feel comfortable with others doing so many things for us. 

Although I was not an orphan, I am not a princess either. But living the Suite life, eventually, like Annie, I thought, “I think I’m gonna like it here!”.

Annie!

And in case you don’t know the song, here it is!