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U.S. Foreign Service Officer headed to Wuhan, China

The mission of a U.S. diplomat in the Foreign Service is to promote peace, support prosperity, and protect American citizens while advancing the interests of the U.S. abroad. The work that diplomats do has an impact on the world as they serve at one of any of the more than 270 embassies, consulates and other diplomatic missions in The Americas, Africa, Europe and Eurasia, East Asia and Pacific, Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia.

The duties of a Consular Officer include to provide emergency and non-emergency services to American citizens and protect our borders through the proper adjudication of visas to foreign nationals and passports to American citizens. We adjudicate immigrant and non-immigrant visas, facilitate adoptions, help evacuate Americans, combat fraud, and fight human trafficking. Consular Officers touch people’s lives in important ways, often reassuring families in crisis. They face many situations which require quick thinking under stress and develop and use a wide range of skills, from managing resources and conducting public outreach to assisting Americans in distress.

Door signs


At our hotel there are two signs that people can hang on their doors: "Do Not Disturb" and "Please Freshen Up My Room." Everyone in hospitality refers to a room with a "Do Not Disturb Sign" on it as a "DND." I absolutely love it when a room is a DND - it means that I don't have to clean it and that I can go home early. Yesterday I was lucky with 4 DNDs and got to leave at 4pm. I spent the rest of my afternoon at the beach as it was a perfect sunny day in the 70s.

Unfortunately, most people hang the other sign. For some reason, it actually kind of annoys me when I see the "Please Freshen Up My Room" sign. I mean, we are going to do it anyway so why all the redundancy? It's like they are making extra sure that we are going to clean it. What's usually the case is that when you see a "Please Freshen Up My Room" sign, it means that the room is trashed beyond belief and that the room is going to need a lot more than just 'freshening.'

There are some other irritating things that people do with the door signs (besides ripping them, throwing them away and spilling on them). The first one is hanging their DND sign all day until the time when they go to dinner at 6pm. At this point, when they leave their room, they flip their sign to the "Please Freshen Up My Room" side. For me, this is about 8-9 hours into my workday and all I want to do is go home. But if a supervisor sees that somebody has flipped their card, we have to go back and do it. This happens all the time and it is really, really annoying.

Another frustrating thing that people do with their signs is to hang the "Please Freshen Up My Room" sign but then when you knock on the door to clean their room, they act surprised and ask if you can come back later. This is aggravating because the hotel is huge, the trolleys are heavy and hard to push and it takes quite a bit of work and time to move between floors and rooms. Of course I always act like it's no problem and that I would love to come back and clean their room later, but all I really want to say is, "Then why did you hang the sign?"


The last thing people do with the signs is . . . the don't hang them. Every day I knock on doors and people answer who are really angry at being woken up from a nap, made to get out of the shower, interrupted from a phone call etc. They can be pretty rude and I have to apologize all over the place when all I really want to do is be like, "Dude, there's a sign for that, use it."

There are a few incredible souls who leave their DND sign up all the time and never require service. I love these people. I have talked with some of them about why they do this. Most of them (even though they are paying over $300/night for their room) are concerned about the environment and reason that it's not necessary to have fresh towels and a clean bathroom every day. Others don't use the DND sign, but when you go into their rooms, all of their towels are hanging which means they don't need them changed. I wish this 'green' attitude was more catching, but it's the exception rather than the norm.

You might be thinking, "Wow, she just wrote a whole post about door signs, are they really that important?" Well, when the simple act of flipping door signs stands between leaving work at 7pm (like tonight) or spending the better part of the day at the beach, you better believe they are important.
Read More 3 comments | Posted by Sarah Sanderson edit post

3 comments

  1. Dan on March 21, 2012 at 11:33 AM

    I leave my DND sign up all the time when I stay at hotels. The fact that the room/towels/sheets were cleaned before I got there automatically means it will be cleaner than my house, so why bother with cleaning it again during my stay? Plus with multiple towels, you're guaranteed a clean one for at least 2-3 days.

     
  2. Anonymous on March 21, 2012 at 4:18 PM

    Hi, Hamerson!

    I always enjoy your posts. Keep up the GREAT work. Yours is the ONLY blog I read EVERY day.

    Heading to Florida tomorrow for nine days of RV camping at an aviation event, so will take a break from technology. Looking forward to being back home on March 31 and catching up with your adventures. Best to Sean....cuzzin steve

     
  3. Sloan on March 22, 2012 at 9:39 PM

    This is great. When I was on the road I'd get really annoyed when the cleaning lady would knock and I was in the shower, but I guess I should have put up the sign...though she did knock at like 730 one morning, I was really irked cuz that's just too early.

    What do you do with those asshole kids that put BOTH up?

     


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    Sarah Sanderson
    I am currently in Mandarin language training as a new diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service. Sean and I depart for Wuhan, China in November 2019 for my first tour in consular affairs.
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