Several years ago, as I was preparing to write Sleeping Alongside the Road, I interviewed two dear friends, Fred and Maureen Clausen, proprietors of Proctor’s Lakehouse Cottages, in Weirs Beach, NH. As Fred and Maureen described typical Saturdays during a summer season, I was reminded of another old friend who once told me: motels and cottages are the dairy farms of the lodging industry. I now realize the full meaning of this statement. Like their pastoral brethren, moteliers work from dawn ’til dusk, and are captives of their properties . . . there is no leaving, no taking a day off. As the Clausens described the Saturday schedule, my jaw dropped: wake up, get the coffee ready, see who is checking in and out, place file cards on the registration desk in alphabetical order, work on business and emails, say goodbye to first wave of people who are leaving, remind ‘selves of faces of past guests who will be arriving, be certain of the latters’ special needs, prepare supplies to clean each unit checking out (there could be many), place the supplies at each unit’s doorway, remove any trash from the grounds, take away trash from empty rooms, rake the beach and sweep the sun deck, strip the beds and remove other dirty laundry, prepare specialized laundry for the laundry service, then wash, dry and fold the rest, take time to visit with each remaining parting guest, do a final check of the cleaned rooms, grab a quick lunch, then breathe because new guests are on their way.Despite being only half-way through the Clausens’ day, I’ve stopped this description, because you get the point. Above, I compared the mom-and-pop lodging operator with a dairy farm. There is another vocation that warrants comparison: the public school teacher. The workload of educators, like moteliers, is universally under-appreciated. Both work long hours performing a multitude of tasks, many of which the public is unaware. Both are criticized for having seasonal jobs. Many people simply don’t appreciate that neither of these vocations can simply shut it down when their charges are no longer on-site. Quite the contrary, this so-called down period is when creative change occurs, a time when surprisingly large personal expenditures of time and money are made, and new ideas take fruit.
The message here is, next time you consider that someone has a romantic (or–perish the thought–easy) job, stop and take a closer look. We need all three of these professions, and should support them as they so richly deserve.