Ema Earns Her Ears: My Secret Walt Disney World Cast Member Diary (Earning Your Ears Book 2) (7 page)

Just as well I had half an hour to redo my makeup.

June had come around so quickly, and it never slowed down. A new batch of college program participants were arriving this month. After telling them about my experiences, and making “enemies” for being at Disney a month before them, their dreams were about to become a reality.

I was especially excited about meeting a girl named Becca, who’d also been placed in Housekeeping. I had told her both the good and the bad. I wasn’t going to lie to her and tell her that Housekeeping is the best job in the world. I had said it depends on the resort. As it turned out, she was assigned to Port Orleans, and I’d be taking her under my wing. I found this out while taking a re-evaluating progress assessment. Sitting in the office waiting for my results, I passed the time by looking at all the Disney fandangles on every shelf and ledge, and then I caught sight of a bunch of green training folders, one with Becca’s name on it. I chose not to tell her, because finding out your location during orientation is exciting and I didn’t want to spoil the surprise for her.

Along with the June arrivals, another special guests was arriving: my university lecturer Martin Metcalfe, who taught events management. This is the same lecturer I spoke about in chapter 1, when I went to University of Chester’s open day. So this man has been a pretty influential part in my Disney journey. He knew the hardship I was going through. He convinced me to stay, and after I met with him, he went to speak to the international recruiter on my behalf to assist with application for the following year.

A couple of days later, we had a real-life Tower of Terror thunderstorm. The sky lit up, and the lightning was so scarily perfect that it could have been Photoshopped. The storm happened on June 10, when the second lot of English participants arrived. These storms continued through the night, leaving me no option but to call in sick the following day. It was also Abbie’s day off. After having a lie in, Abbie made us both pancakes for breakfast. I couldn’t go to the parks because I couldn’t use my ID (penalty for calling in sick) so we decided to make a trip to Cast Connections, a discount store exclusively for cast members. Abbie was terrible (in a good way) at not spending her money. She didn’t buy any Disney merchandise or much of anything not essential. She spent money on food. She didn’t see bedding as essential, and as she chose not to bring any with her, she went a whole month just using her duvet cover and towels in a pillow case. Today, however, she finally bought a blanket, a children’s blue Disney patterns blanket, with armholes. I had to talk her into buying it.

The day before I’d had a bit of a rough time. I had an issue with one of my managers who didn’t seem to like me very much, even though she would tell me, quite frequently, how much she did—she certainly had a funny way of showing it.

On this day, she tried to get me in trouble for the second time since I had moved to her area at the French Quarter. It had to do with how I had cleaned a room, but it was how they’d trained me to do it, and none of the other housekeepers were getting into trouble for the nitty gritty bits which she said matter so much to the company. (Which they do; Disney prides itself on perfection. But enforcing that perfection should be consistent.) What bothered me was that she was singling me out, and it felt like I’d gone all the way back to square one, to my first day on the job, when I felt different and unwelcome. Fortunately, managers often change their locations, and soon another manager, Jill, who I liked very much, came to my section.

I went into Jill’s office to chat. We discussed a lot of informal stuff, and then Jill asked what she could do to make my role more enjoyable for me. I mentioned to that I had been ready to self-term (leave the program voluntarily) and go back home when I learned that I wouldn’t be able to transfer to a different role. She offered to help me get runner training as soon as possible. One of my friends, Trent, was a runner at Riverside, and I was always jealous of how much fun he seemed to have. A runner has their own radio, and guests and housekeepers can contact base to request items, whereupon base contacts the runner to deliver those items.

The following day, I came into work expecting the worst. Jill had promised, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. My luck, however, had changed! I was put right into my first day of runner training.

My trainer was a guy I had never seen before, an American named Johnny. We spent the entire day together as “Runner 1”. Johnny explained how there were numerous runners at each resort because it would be virtually impossible for one person to handle all the requests. At French Quarter, there were three runners, and the resort was split into three areas:

• Runner 1: Buildings 1, 2, and the 3rd floor of building 3
  
• Runner 2: Buildings 4, 5, and the 2nd floor of building 3
  
• Runner 3: Buildings 6, 7, and the 1st floor of building 3
  

All the calls you got throughout the day were for requests within the same area, and although you were given a pargo, it made life too difficult to be darting back and forward across the entire resort for the smallest things. So it made sense to split up the duties between multiple runners and limit them to specific areas of the resort. Then, if a guest calls in for shampoo, he won’t have to wait for the sole runner to finish his current job, source the shampoo, and drive it over.

I spent the whole day with Johnny doing Runner 1’s job. We got a call sheet where we could write down all our requests because the radio could only hold a certain number of messages, and you had to have an additional way to keep track of your requests without having to faff around with technology. It was an insightful day. We got to deliver everything that a runner has to deliver, so I got to see where it all was kept. I did learn that this job literally lives up to its name, because you don’t walk when trying to source the items, since you rarely find what you need in the first place where you look, and Disney gives you only a 15-minute window to fulfill guest requests. Johnny and I would wait for a call to come in, and then we would go on our adventures to source the required item. In between the calls, he spent a lot of time asking me questions about England whenever I didn’t have any runner questions for him, and he also taught me how to drive the pargo, with him reminding me several times:
“We don’t drive on the left here.”

It was safe to say this change to my role made all the difference to my program, because without it I could feel my enthusiasm slipping, and although I’m a pretty strong person, I felt myself very close to self-terming a number of times. Some days, after getting off the bus from work, I even came close to walking to the International Service Centre to tell them that I’d had it, without telling my friends first. But I’d always taken a deep breath and walked the long way to my apartment.

If you’re in the program and think you have no choice but to self-term, don’t. It will be the biggest regret of your life. There is so much that Disney can offer to help you through the bad times. I had the best support network, and although I chose not to tell my friends the one time I came closest to self-terming, I knew that they would be able to talk me out of it, which is why I didn’t want to say anything. But the reason I walked away from the service center that day and back to my apartment was because I knew that whatever my friends would have to say, they would be right. Looking back now at everything I did after that day, I realize that I would have missed out on the best days of my program.

After my one day of runner training, I felt like my head was going to explode with information, and I walked away from work super happy. Even better, I had just one more day of work and then two days off. When I went in that morning, I fully expected to still be in Housekeeping. I knew it was going to be a busy day, because the day before the managers had been asking housekeepers with the following day off to come in and work overtime. There were the same few ladies hanging around who always wanted a 6th day to earn overtime or who always asked to “buy rooms” (which means that if the managers have rooms not assigned to anyone’s board, but still need to be cleaned, a runner will find a housekeeper—usually someone with an easy or short board—to “buy” the rooms, and they get extra money in their paycheck for doing so).

I walked into the Cast Services building and saw housekeepers everywhere. After I clocked in and walked into the ‘assembly hall’, I saw one of my friends who told me that ADOs were available and that I should put my name on the list. ADO stands for Approved Day Off. You can get one only by going into work and getting the manager’s approval, but if you do get approval, then all the restrictions that come with a sick day are lifted: so you can spend your ADO in the parks, if you want. ADOs are only available when there are too many housekeepers for the amount of boards they have to pass out that day, which seemed silly, since the managers were trying to get people to sign up for overtime the day before. You never know if ADOs will be available on any given day until everyone either turns up for work or calls in sick.

Today, however, there were so many ADOs to be passed out, that I was sent straight home, as did most of my friends. While waiting for the bus (the same one we had just gotten off), we grabbed some breakfast from the canteen to take on the road. I got a sausage muffin—which in England would look like a burger in a scone, but here it is sausage meat formed into the shape of a burger and put into a muffin with the taste and texture of a bread roll.

I continued my fun-filled ADO by changing clothes in the apartment before catching another bus to my favorite park, Hollywood Studios. I was on a mission to spend my ADO drawing, meeting characters, watching the Pixar parade, and attending Fantasmic!

I hadn’t heard from Becca for a while, at least not since I had scared her with my stories of Housekeeping and been a bit too negative, but a couple of days after Becca’s arrival date I got a message from her. She had found out she was working at Port Orleans and continued the message with “what you have said has made me so nervous.” I felt guilty. Even at the time of saying it, I felt bad for scaring her about the role she was going to be working, and I tried to cover it up by saying it might just be my location. Well, that came back to bite me in the backside.

A couple of days later, Becca got on my bus in her uniform. I was so glad have someone British; I loved my new American friends, but it just wasn’t the same. I regret not making more of an effort with Becca. I was such a moody bugger because I was really quite resentful that I couldn’t be having as much fun at work as my other friends were having. As the time went by, having Becca to work with meant I actually enjoyed myself, and now I kick myself for having taken so long to realize that.

I take pride in being able to help people, and I enjoy having a bit of authority. I really took Becca under my wing. I started to see that she felt just as lonely as I did at the beginning of my program. I made it my mission to make her feel as welcome and as at home as possible, because I knew what it felt like, and I didn’t want her to go through what I had.

Today I came back from my three days off, fully expecting to be in Housekeeping but secretly excited at the prospect of more runner training ahead of me. Before I’d even had a chance to find two seats for Becca and myself, Leah came over to me and said “You’re Runner 2 today.” This was an extremely scary concept, since the only time I’d been a runner was with Johnny. I felt unprepared, but I knew I’d pick it up quickly enough, so after I’d finished panicking, I got the keys for my own pargo and went to find where it was parked. When I started it up, I saw that it was low on petrol (gas, sorry!) so my first job was to drive to the gas station at Port Orleans Cast Services.

Suddenly, three ladies stood right in front of my pargo to stop me from driving any farther. They wanted me to take them to their buildings, which is a runners job, but they were all in different buildings, and their pargos hadn’t left yet. There were rules in place for the housekeepers, who were supposed to get on only the pargos assigned to their buildings. Some housekeepers chose to ignore the rules and convince themselves that there are quicker ways of getting around the resort. Just ahead, I could see Becca sitting on the curb where her pargo should be; it had left without her. I told the women trying to get on my pargo that I couldn’t take them all, as one seat was reserved for Becca. They were ridiculously rude, and so I asked them what building they were going to. “Four,” they said. I looked around until I spotted their pargo, still waiting to be filled up with riders. But they continued to sit on my pargo making minimal eye contact and pretending they didn’t understand me. This is the one thing I hated the most. They were so selfish, because in the time that I was arguing with them, the driver of their assigned pargo had decided to leave (the runners were aware that the housekeepers ignored the rules). Eventually, they jumped off, without a word to me. Becca ran to take her seat before anyone else could board.

I really enjoyed my first day as a runner on my own. Jill, my manager, said that I could contact her through my radio if I had any questions. I had 16 calls that day, which varied from extra pillows and more shampoo to broken fridges and room re-cleans. Room re-cleans were the worst, because the housekeepers didn’t handle me telling them to go back and clean a room very well, and a few them told me that I had to do it.

Some of the intervals between calls were up to an hour long. This is where I got creative. One of the other runners, Marci, had come to join me and Jill in our towel animal escapade. Marci was American, too. She started making some funky things with the foam. Most of the housekeepers would just make animals out of the towels. For the more special guests, or for a guest recovery situation, we could glue glitter, gems, or sequins on them, or make additional items for the animals to wear. This is where I invented the Disney name tag, sorcerer Mickey hat, Peter Pan hat, and the premium Mickey ice cream bar, made with pom poms, foam, and a glue gun. When Leah came from her building, she was rather impressed with my creations.