Night Shift Job Description
Introduction
The general advice about the nightshift is to immediately upon arriving survey all the work that needs to be done. Sometimes it’s not until late in the shift that you know what condition things really are in and then it’s too late to change course. For example, if you don’t notice that there some critical washing or ironing to be done, you may elect to bake both cookies and granola when the granola could be deferred a day. In coming up with your plan for the shift, it is also important to budget in time for interruptions like above average numbers of phone inquiries and requests for tea. This puts you in the position of either working late into the night or putting the breakfast shift in a less than ideal position.
Qualifications
It’s helpful to have experience in the tasks performed during this shift but this is not necessary. The shift is relatively intense so a relatively high level of energy is required. This is particularly so because any shortfalls fall on the breakfast shift, and this gets communicated back to the nightshift person. Persons doing this shift report to the General Manager.
Hours and Pay
Starting pay is $8 an hour. Hours vary seasonally: in the summer it’s scheduled for 3pm to 10pm. In the winter, it’s scheduled for 3pm to 9pm. The reality is that frequently employees work later than this because they can’t finish. The inn commits to its guests to receive phone calls on their behalf until 9pm, so employees should not leave until 9.
Check Winter Pollution Regulations (fall/winter)
- During the colder months, check winter pollution regulations to see if guests and staff can start a fire in their rooms or in the living room. Call 303-758-4848 and listen to the recording. A “Blue” level means that fires can be started, while “Red” means no fires are allowed. We have the Air Pollution Regulations website bookmarked on Mozilla Firefox as well.
- Make sure to let guests staying in the Blanca and Antero rooms know that they should not start a fire if we have a “red” level. Otherwise, we get ticketed by the city if they detect a fire in our building on “red” days.
Check RezO for incoming guests
- Check the RezO screen to see which guests are checking in for the day. Pull their paper reservation cards from the card file above the computer to have them ready when guests walk in.
- If any of the reservations are color tagged (bluish-purple color) click into them to see what special notes or circumstances are indicated therein and prepare for those cases. Sometimes it may be that guests need an air mattress set up in their room, etc. (Note that this particular service is best done while the guests are at dinner. Make specific arrangements with the guest as to when this will be done, at thier convenience.) This will also give you a sense of what you have to do for the night in order to make sure all tasks are completed in a timely manner.
Check Staff Log for the day’s notes
- Make sure to read and then initial the notes as you go through them, so that the community, including the manager, knows that you have received the information.
- Respond to any notes that require a response from you (we usually put those in italics following the original note), remembering to put your initials every time.
- Throughout the evening, you will be writing notes in there as they come up. One note that must go in there is the one where you let the breakfast shift for the following morning know how many guests will be having breakfast, how many are checking out the next day, and how many are staying over. We place this particular note at the top of staff log section, followed by any notes to “All” staff members, and finally notes to specific staff members.
- All new information from Night Staff should be written under the next day’s staff log section (i.e. after you’ve read the current day’s notes and initialed them, please create a new day’s log and fill that with important information).
Laundry and Ironing
- Throughout your shift, work on laundry and ironing. Any laundry that housekeeping staff has left behind on the floor of the sunroom (towels, sheets, etc.) is the responsibility of night staff. Plan your night accordingly, so that you can get through all of the laundry.
- Also make sure to wash any housekeeping rags, kitchen rags, and/or napkins/placemats that are in the crates designated for those items. If the crate is about half-way full or more, throw the items in the wash.
- Clean pillow cases should be ironed. Ttable napkins, bread napkins, and placemats should be ironed if they need it. Use our larger, professional iron (set on its steam mode) and larger ironing board (latter located on coat hooks in staff closet) to iron these items before placing them back in their respective drawers. Pillow cases should always be folded in sets of twos, one inside the other, so that housekeeping can have an easier time when stocking up during their shift.
- Always check the top of the washing machine to see if any pillow cases or other items have been left there by previous staff for ironing. If for some reason, you have too heavy of a load of tasks one night and do not get to all of the ironing, place remaining items to be ironed on top of the washing machine. It is important to try and get through all or most of the laundry and ironing every night so that things do not pile up.
- Please note: when filling the side of the iron with water, make sure that the iron is not on to avoid splashing of water in your face or on your body. This water may even be hot, if the iron is on, and can burn you. Use the iron mindfully.
- At times, items will be left on or near the washing machine with special instructions, such as “needs stitching,” or “needs to be bleached.” If you have extra time during your shift, attend to these items so that they do not pile up and so that we have those items available for use as soon as possible. Stitching kits are located in the drawers under the plants in the dining room. We have several products near the detergents, such as bleach and stain removers that may be useful to you.
- For items that have difficult stains or a spot of something on them, make sure to spray stain remover on that spot, rub that area a bit until most of the stain is gone, then throw that item in with the rest of the wash. If you try to use stain remover after something has already gone through the wash, it may not come out as easily or at all. Please make sure to do this before sending the item through the washing cycle.
- All dried items should be folded and placed back in their appropriate spots in the house.
- Towels go in the armoire that faces room 4’s door
- Robes go in the bureau that is next to the couch in the living room
- Placemats, table napkins, and bread napkins should be placed in the dining room china cabinet
- Queen-sized sheets go in the bureau in the hallway near rooms 2 and 3
- King-sized sheets go in the drawers under the plants in the dining room
- Twin-sized sheets go in the bottom drawers of the dining room china cabinet.
- Pillow cases for twin and queen pillows, including their decorative equivalents, go on the right side of the dining room sideboard
- Pillow cases for king pillows, including their decorative equivalents, go on the top left shelf of the dining room sideboard
- Pillow cases that have come out of the wash, have been ironed, but do not have a matching partner yet, should be placed on the lower left shelf of the dining room sideboard
- You will note that on the bottom left shelf of the sideboard, there are several beige towels that look different in pattern from any of our other towels. These towels are specifically for Baker Roshi when he comes to visit the B&B.
- If there are any items left unattended to for any reason at the end of your shift, let other staff know about it in Staff Log (in that way, there won’t be confusion about a pile of sheets, for example, on sitting on the sunroom table for the next day’s staff members, and they will know how to deal with that pile).
- If you run out of any detergents, etc., we have more in the basement, in the back room in the tall white cabinets.
Welcome and check in any guests for the day
- Throughout your shift, people will be checking in. Often, they don’t know that our office is our kitchen in back. So they may ring our little bell at the front door or sometimes they call out for someone. Please keep an ear out for them; if you have trouble hearing things in the front anyway, please check the front door every once in a while to see if someone has come in.
- Lead guests back to the kitchen and let them know that is also our office. Give them the paper reservation card so that they may sign, in pen, the middle line of the back of the card. This line is for our smoking agreement with them: they can’t smoke in the rooms/house. They can smoke in the yard if they have to. We do have an ash tray or two floating around on the tables outside. They can also fill out the information about their car on the top of the back of the reservation card.
- Place the signed reservation card in the “Stay Over” section of the green bucket.
- Review the "points to cover" in the Check-in Process.
- Let them know about the four parking spaces on the side of the house (off of 22nd street) and the additional 3 parking spaces on the back of the house (in the alleyway).
- Guests cannot park in the lot facing our back spaces because those spaces are for the residents of the apartment building behind us. Guests can also park for free overnight (after 5) and on weekend days on the surrounding streets.
- During weekdays and Saturdays, from 8am to 5pm, guests must be careful to follow allotted hours on the street signs to avoid getting tickets.
- We have a few parking passes that we can assign to guests if they need to park on the street for several hours during the daytime. Please note: the parking permits cost us $75.00 each when we get them from the city. We have to be extra careful to record the room number/guest name when we give them out and also make sure to get them back when guests check out.
- In order to make sure we don’t forget to ask for the permit back: we ask that when you hand a parking permit out to a guest, that you fill out the parking permit sheet (number on permit, name of guest and room number, date it was given out, and your initials). The permits and accompanying sheet are in an envelope in a slot next to Jessika’s box above the kitchen computer.
- Make sure to also tape a post-it note to the guest’s paper reservation saying (in Caps) that they have a parking permit. In this way, whoever checks that guest out, will not miss seeing that note.
- Also make sure to leave a note in capital letters in the “Internal Staff Note” section of RezO to let us know they have a parking permit. The more places we have this information, the less chances that the guest walks off with the expensive permit.
- When putting the permit back in the envelope after it has been returned, please put the return date on the accompanying sheet.
- Click into their reservation in RezO and read any Internal Staff Notes or Guest notes to make sure they are checked in and accommodated appropriately.
- Ask for a credit card from them. Let them know that we only authorize the card when they check in and only charge it when they check out.
- Before swiping their card in the black card reader that is attached to the right of the kitchen computer monitor, make sure to click on the “Payment” tab in their reservation screen (in the “transactions” section at the bottom).
- Under the tab, choose “credit card payment.” A dialogue box opens up.
- At the top right corner of this box, click “Authorization Only.”
- Once that is highlighted, click on “Swipe Card.” You must do this before actually swiping the card, otherwise RezO gets confused and may have to be restarted (aka computer restarted). A small dialogue box will show up when you click “Swipe Card” and it will show that the computer is ready for you to do so.
- Swipe the card in the card reader with the back of the card facing you and the strip being on the left hand side where it can run through the card reader. A dialogue box will pop up letting you know if the transaction was successful or not.
- Please note: even when it says that the transaction was successful and saved, look for a line in the Transactions section of the original RezO screen for that guest to make sure that the Authorization shows up with the last four numbers of the card. If nothing shows up, then the card is not technically valid in our system. It may be that you have to use another card for the guest in that case or re-swipe the card, or type the numbers in by hand.
- Once you have swiped the card and the Authorization has shown up in the transactions section of the guest’s RezO screen, save the information, which will exit you out of the guest’s RezO screen.
- Then right click on the guest’s name in the general RezO screen and click on “Check in” so that a green check mark appears next to their name.
- Ask the guests if they would like one or two keys for the room and grab the appropriate number before showing them to their room. Make sure to let them know that we stop serving tea at 9pm ever day. (This is important b/c they can come in much later than that and you would end up being here for hours as you try to clean up, etc.) We can serve them tea either in their room or anywhere they’d like in the house.
- Offer to help the guests with taking any bags/luggage to their room.
- Once in the room, please let them know about the informational plaque (some rooms have it on the wall, others on the table) that tells them what time breakfast is the next day, gives contact information, etc.
- If they’d like to meditate in the Zendo, it is open until you lock it before leaving for the night.
- We have wireless throughout the house and the plaque shows the network name and code. Please let them know about the guest computers (with fax and printer) as well, if they didn’t notice it on the way into the house.
- Please also tell them that the water in the bottle is filtered and if they should run out, we have a filtered water tap in the kitchen that they can use to refill their bottle anytime.
- Let them know that their room key also opens the house’s front door after hours/after night staff locks the place up.
- Some guests may arrive late (after you have left for the night). If you are about to leave and see that a guest has not check in yet for the night, type out and print a note for the guest (place it in letter format with date at the top, etc., so that it is a neat letter rather than a quick little note that might appear like an afterthought).
- Things to have in the letter:
- Address the guest by his/her name
- Let them know that night staff has left for the evening and that appropriate arrangements have been made to let them in when they arrive
- Let the guest know that the key opens the front door in addition to their room door
- Give them direction to their room
- Let them know what time breakfast is the next day and where (dining room)
- Also make sure to let them know that they should officially check in with morning staff upon waking
- As a courtesy, turn on one or two lamps in their room so that they have a convenient time getting into the room
- Sign the letter with your name, place it in an envelope, add one key to their room in there, and seal the envelope. Make sure to write the guest’s name on the envelope, and make arrangements so the guests receive the envelope.
- Some guests may arrive early (before 3pm check-in or before their room is made ready by housekeeping). In this case, let them know that the room is currently being cleaned and when it will be ready. Offer to take their luggage and place it in the sunroom. Offer them tea and cookies in the living room while they wait. They may want to take a walk in town instead, so you can direct them to where they need to go. We have walking maps of the city of Boulder above the computer in the kitchen.
Verify Breakfast and Housekeeping Staffing
- At times late bookings or walk-ins occur which make the staffing inadequate for the number of guests. This may go unnoticed. The nighshift person verifies that the staffing is adequate for breakfast and housekeeping for the next day. If it is inadequate, place phone calls to try to get additional staff to work. If additional staff are unavailable, call the General Manager.
Serve tea and cookies, or iced tea to guests
- During your night shift, various guests may want tea. Please prepare tea using the hot water in the Zojirushi urns and steep the teas for the appropriate amount of time (varies according to tea type, please see tea labels for details).
- Please do not bring the tea strainer or timers to the guests, since you may need them for other guests afterwards. Steep and time the tea in the kitchen and then take it out to the guest.
- Ask the guests if they would like cookies with their tea and provide them in a small cookie dish alongside the appropriate number of tea cups on one of our silver platters (in bottom cabinets near sink). It’s best to use tea cups rather than mugs, unless you have run out of the former.
- You may want to use our larger tea cups for making tea, so that enough small, white china tea cups will be left over for you when you need to set the dining room table.
Refill butter urns and ice trays
- Technically, butter urns should have already been filled by breakfast staff. Please double check that they are indeed filled.
- Check the ice trays in the freezer to make sure that they are filled and that the white bucket next to them has a good amount of ice cubes in it.
Refill coffee grinder
- Check the level of the coffee beans in the coffee grinder and fill it to the top with the regular coffee beans in the freezer. We may have decaf beans and they do not go in the grinder.
- Make sure to double check that the machine has been turned off (white switch on bottom of machine).
Check amount of granola in drawer
- Check the drawer to see how much granola is available. If the quantity is low, make granola for the night. The recipe is on our website.
- Please note, since the time of baking the granola is in intervals, it is best to stay near/around the kitchen to avoid burning it. (e.g. Do not start them when you are about to leave the kitchen for any reason.)
- There are two Tupperware containers in the granola drawer. Please fill the bigger one with the new granola that you have just baked, while putting the older granola, that was left over/older, in the smaller Tupperware container that says “Please Use First.”
Check cookie jar
- Check cookie jar to see if you need to make a new batch. If the jar is half full or less, make a new batch.
- The recipe for Briar Rose Shortbread Cookies is on our website. Since we promise guests these specific cookies, please only bake shortbreads. (Unless we need to make gluten-free cookies every once in a while when a good amount of gluten free guests are in the house.)
- You can fill the center of the cookies with jam, as the recipe says, or if we have chocolate chips around, you can fill the center with those. Please, however, do not make them into chocolate chip cookies, or other formation.
- Note: Since Night Shift staff are responsible for baking bread, granola, and cookies, please assess the situation first and see what needs to be baked first (e.g. perhaps you can do bread and granola for the night, if there are a decent amount of cookies in jar, etc.)
Bake bread
- Choose a bread to bake from our online recipes. Try to avoid making the same bread that another night shift staff baked the day before or recently in order to offer variety to guests, particularly the ones that have been staying here for a few days in a row.
- Some of our recipes yield more than one loaf-- make sure to wrap the extra loaves that you are not going to offer for breakfast in plastic wrap, before then wrapping them in tin foil. The inner plastic wrap will keep the loaves from getting freezer burn.
- Make sure to label the loaf once it’s wrapped with the type of bread, the date, and your initials. If using a post-it, please also add a piece of tape on top, since post-its pop off easily in the freezer/refrigerator when things are being moved around. Place the labeled loaves in the freezer for future use.
- If you have a night where it is absolutely necessary that you make granola and cookies because we are very low or out of both, then you can grab a loaf from the freezer and have it thaw overnight.
- We try to make fresh bread every night, however, there are times when there are too many things to do at once, etc., and then we can pull bread from the freezer.
- Place any loaf or loaves that you are offering to breakfast crew in the microwave and let them know the type of bread and its location in staff log (in the same note where you mention the number of guests for breakfast).
- Please note: leaving them in the oven overnight is tricky, because some staff will forget to read the log first and turn the oven on for something, thus burning the bread that waiting in there for breakfast crew.
Start dishwasher no later than 7:45pm
- Our dishwasher takes a long time to clean its contents. The earlier you can get it filled and started the better, since you also have to empty the dishwasher during your shift. It can be better to pre-rinse the dishes well and run the “Light China” cycle so that your dishes finish earlier.
- Once you’ve filled both levels of the dishwasher with dishes, fill the left side of the gray dispenser up with dishwashing powder. There are two adjacent spaces in there that should be filled with powder. Please make sure to close the little dispenser door before closing the main dishwasher door.
- Before starting the dishwasher, turn on the hot water in the sink and let the faucet run until the water is hot. Then press the dishwasher buttons: “Normal,” “Energy Saver Dry,” and “Start.” We let water run in the faucet before we turn the dishwasher on and while it is initially starting up because we think hotter water makes the dishwasher function better and finish earlier. You may alternatively wish to run “Light/China” cycle with “Energy Saver Dry” if you have pre-rinsed the dishes well.
Set up sofa-beds or air-beds while guests are at dinner
- Prepare sofa-beds or air-beds for guests, as needed. The timing for this should be arranged with the guest at check-in. It is usually best to do this while the guests are at dinner; please suggest this.
- Check RezO to see which rooms need beds set up, and remember to take the kitchen phone with you as you go to each room in case someone calls.
- Bring the housekeeping key along with you and as you knock on each door, say “Housekeeping, I'm here to set up the extra bed” before entering.
- If the guests are in the room, ask them if they need anything.
- If guests are out:
- Set up the sofa-bed or air-bed, as appropriate.
- Look around the room to see if anything else needs attention while you are there. For example, refill any toilet paper that has run out, pcik up any trash, and empty the trash if it is full.
- Remove used tea trays, unless it appears that the guests are saving things for later. For example, leave the cookie plate if their are whole cookies left.
Set up Dining Room table
- When baking and the restocking of crucial items has been taken care of, prepare the dining room table for breakfast.
- Check RezO for the number of guests staying overnight to get set the appropriate number of places at the table.
- The dining room table takes 8 people. If we have 9-10 people staying overnight, you can just set the 8 places and then replace empty spots as guests finish their breakfast and leave. All guests usually do not come down for breakfast at the same time. If there is only one guest, set two settings so the guest is less alone.
- If there are more than 10 people, we set up the sunroom as well. There are two tables for extra guests.
- If you end up preparing the sunroom for breakfast as well, make sure to have all laundry finished/out of sight and to put up all three sliding doors to cover the washing machines.
- If using both tables, the door to the basement has to be put down as well.
- Make sure to have everything you need from down there before closing it.
- Be careful when closing the door; it is very heavy and it can slam down on your feet or hands, and you need to use good posture to handle the weight.
- The safety bar that leads to the basement should be shortened and placed in the space between the washing machines and the sliding cover doors.
- How to set the dining room table:
- There is a “Breakfast Set-Up” sheet taped to the inside door of the cabinet above, and to the right of the kitchen computer monitor if you need a reminder.
- Set up the appropriate number of placemats and napkins on the table(s). (Placemats and napkins can be found in the tall yellow cabinet in the dining room-- first drawer on the bottom).
- Large plates and salt and pepper are in the spaces above the drawers as well.
- The napkin goes on the left hand side of the mat.
- A large plate in the center.
- A fork should be placed on the napkin, while a large spoon and knife go to the right of the plate (knife should be closest to plate with ridges/sharper edge facing the plate).
- A smaller spoon (please note, not the smallest ones we have, because those are used for the jams) should be placed on top of the plate (spoon head facing toward the fork).
- Place a white saucer and its matching cup to the top right of the placemat. The teacup should be downwards on the saucer.
- In the center of the table, set up two sets of salt and pepper shakers (the tallest ones are used in the dining room, while the shorter ones are for the sunroom).
- Next to those, place honey bears, sugar, and alternative sweeteners. If there are only 4 or 5 people, place just one set of these on the table, but double it for more people.
Set up serving dishes for breakfast
- Set up serving dishes for the morning shift. Place number of items according to number of guests noted in the log for breakfast. Place these items on the counter where the coffee maker is located:
- one creamer,
- 2 jelly dishes,
- a granola bowl and its serving spoon,
- 1 bread basket and a napkin,
- 1 butter,
- 2 long handled jelly scoopers,
- 2 regular sized spoons for both types of yogurt,
- 1 large spoon (our largest in the drawer) for scooping raspberries.
- Also set out one fruit bowl per guest
- as well as one yogurt dish per guest.
- If there aren't sufficient thawed raspberries, move additional raspberries from freezer to refrigerator
- Set out a bread loaf (either the one you have just baked or one that you take from the freezer to thaw overnight). We usually place these in the microwave overnight and let breakfast staff know in staff log.
Record staff log with information for the next day
- Create the next day’s record in the staff log (under “Documents” in our gmail account).
- Use bullet points and make sure to initial and date every entry.
- The first entry should be the note for the breakfast crew. Record the number of people for breakfast in there, after taking a look at RezO.
- Record the number of check-outs (c/o) and stay-overs (s/o).
- Also make sure to mention any dietary restrictions that any of the guests may have (if any are gluten free, you can set out part of a loaf of one of our gluten-free breads that we keep stocked in the freezer; allow it to thaw overnight next to your own baked loaf).
- Note any room changes or anything that needs reporting in the log for next day’s crew, including housekeepers that should know about any changes/issued with rooms.
At 9:00 pm, close the kitchen door
- At 9pm, close the kitchen door making sure to place the “Kitchen is Gone for the Evening Sign” on the front of the door for guests to see.
- Place the cookie jar and the little “Help Yourselves” notice in the dining room, on the credenza, so that guests can munch on them if they need a late night snack.
Clean and close up the kitchen
- As you clean and close the kitchen up, double check that serving trays and bread are set for breakfast crew. Make sure that the refrigerator is stocked with enough orange juice, milk, eggs, fruit, veggies, etc. so that breakfast crew has enough to work with in the morning (especially if the sunroom door to the basement is closed, because we have to use both tables for extra guests, because they can’t access our backstock downstairs in that case).
- If for some reason we don’t have enough veggies or fruit (or any items for that matter) for the next day, please let our grocery shopping staff/Front Desk Manager know so we have enough for breakfast.
- Wipe down counters, stove top, under the toasters (and also dump out excess crumbs from the toasters themselves), sink, and tidy the desk.
- Dump out both compost bins, recycling materials, and throw out the trash.
- Refill trash can with a fresh trash bag.
- Wash out (with dish detergent) the compost bins so they remain clean and sanitized for the next day.
- Hand wash any dishes that are floating around.
- Empty the dishwasher and put all dishes back in their appropriate places.
- Sweep the kitchen and sunroom floors for debris and then mop both floors.
- Fill the hot water “Zojirushi” urns with filtered water and set their timers to 7 hours/195 degrees.
Close up the house
- LOCK THE ZENDO!
- Make sure that all outside lights are turned on, and turn off dining room light. Lights in living room and halls should be on, unless we have a small number of guests and in that case you can shut off appropriate lights to save energy.
- Lock all exterior doors:
- the door outside of Rooms 4 and 5,
- the sunroom door,
- and finally, the front door as you leave.
- Note: if no guests are staying in rooms 1 and 3, please make sure that the doors in those rooms that lead to the outside are locked as well.
- Also make sure that windows are closed in rooms that are without guests, to avoid drafts, etc.
- Make sure to put the “Staff is Gone for the Evening” sign on the front door as you leave.
