“Smart move,” I thought when I got the job. “Working at a university means summer holidays: the kids have gone home, the tutors are all on leave, there are just a few office bods grazing. That’s six weeks of chilling and chair races.”
When I shared my enthusiasm with my colleagues, it took one old guard to put me right.
“The tutors don’t stop, and everything else just goes mental,” he told me. “For 40 weeks of the year, we’re a second-rate university. For the summer, we’re the worst hotel in England.”
For anyone working or studying at a university that doesn’t rent out its halls of residence to the public over summer, let me walk you through the campus check-in procedure. It’s Sunday. You’ve just washed down the vans and are sitting at the computer, waiting for your sleeves to dry. A six-seater taxi pulls up and disgorges a family in bumbags. When they reach the counter, the mum hands you a letter where the only words you recognise are on the university logo – and that’s in Latin. You look again and a sentence reveals itself: Flat 5, Narbett Close. Time to slip into concierge mode.
There’s a cabinet behind the counter marked “Summer lets – all arrivals”. The key for 5 Narbett Close isn’t in there. You radio one of your mates to cover the counter, then head to the jangling hell that is the key room. There are 1,600 rooms to let; only 900 brass hooks for the keys. A lengthy search uncovers the key you need, but no official summer welcome pack. Sod it: you’ll narrate the welcome pack as you walk them down. Off you trot to Narbett Close, hauling as many suitcases as you can.
You get to the front door. The key doesn’t work.
After a second volley of apologies, you run back up the road and throw yourself once more into the key room. No sign of the 5 Narbett Close bastards anywhere. One last hope: the welcome counter. There’s your quarry, hiding in an envelope with the last guest’s feedback card! You grab it, dash to the family and open the front door, breathing relief.
Then you realise the flat hasn’t been cleaned since the last checkout.
You show the family around their holiday home while discreetly kicking pizza boxes under sofas, pulling down Drake posters and pushing bags of unwashed clothes behind doors. The son asks for the Wi-Fi password. There isn’t one. “Free Wi-Fi”, it says on their confirmation letter, the mum pointing. Yes, you explain, but only if you’re a student. You wrestle with your conscience – do you let them borrow your username? Is the son just looking to send a WhatsApp to nan, or is he itching to connect to an adult site?
After one final mix-up – it’s a three-bed flat and there are four kids, which means more apologies and an improvised sofa camp – you run back to reception and hide. Only 10 hours to go. You can easily make a site patrol last that long.
At quarter to eight, moments before your shift ends, the mum comes stomping to the counter. In broken English, she orders you to follow her to 5 Narbett Close. There you meet the Scheefneks, the family who’d been booked in the night before, but who had gone out for the day. The ones whose clothes and pizza boxes you threw into the skip. It’s about this time that you start wanting a sinkhole to open.
Checking in guests is just part of the summer fun. While it’s true that the campus is student-free, it’s also stuffed with builders racing to get a year’s worth of works done in three months. Often, there’s a dawn chorus of fire alarms caused by heat guns, and so much rubble in the car parks it’s like a meteorite’s come down.
There’s also the bizarre problem of students who are homesick for university and have snuck back. Last year, while trying to reline the football pitch, the groundsmen discovered four teams competing in a tournament they’d organised through Facebook. We let them get on with it.
Occasionally, amid the chaos, God gives us pearls. For reasons that are still unclear, the bookings department once put a pensioners group and a biker chapter in adjoining halls. The pensioners were understandably grumpy … until the night the bikers brought back dancers, and got them to set up on the campus lawn. What followed was one of those rare instances where you’re unsure where to point the CCTV: the girls with rubber pythons, the bikers trying to start a bonfire on the grass, or the old men sneakily watching from their windows, and getting a handbag around the head whenever one of their wives cottoned on.
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