-The hotel is managed poorly, particularly in how they handle check-ins. When someone books a room, the type of room they book for is just a "request" and the room types are first come first serve at check in. This is NOT made clear enough when people book their rooms (probably because its a terrible policy), which leads to the front desk staff constantly dealing with angry customers who are upset when they arrive and discover that it does not matter that they booked a non-smoking room with a king bed because the only thing left is a smoking room with double beds. Furthermore, multiple supervisors typically left the front desk staff to deal with irate customers on their own.
-It is common to slightly overbook a hotel on busy nights, but there were plenty of nights that I worked where the hotel was too overbooked (30-50+ rooms) because of a lack of cooperation from the casino hosts who would book their players even once the hotel was far overbooked and mostly checked in. This lead to the front desk staff (again) being constantly treated horribly by customers who were being told they were getting sent to another hotel. I can 100% understand customers being upset over this situation, but my problem was more with management. Even if a customer took things too far (which happened often) by calling front desk staff horrible things (c word, b word, f bombs all around, you name it!) and even occasionally threatening or throwing things, there were too many times where my supervisors would hide back in the office instead of coming to help their employees because they didn't want to deal with a raging maniac. Not okay. Of course, I had one or two great supervisors who wouldn't allow us to be treated like that, but because of my school schedule I was typically stuck working with the not-so-great supervisors during the last year I worked there, which meant almost every shift was very unpleasant.
-I had a supervisor who would abandon the front desk, even on a major check-in night like friday or saturday, to go visit friends in the bars, etc for up to two hours at the longest. Despite this being reported multiple times, nothing was ever done about it while I worked there. *note- there are times as a regular front desk employee where you have to have supervisor permission/help for things, so this really held things up at times and made the front desk staff look incompetent/helpless.
-They clearly don't want to pay for full-time benefits, so they work their part-time employees full-time hours. Again, some people might not mind this, but when I came on as a part-time employee I was a full-time college student who intended to work a max of 20 hrs/week (this was made clear in my interview) but was often worked 30+ because of high turnover.
-High turnover! Didn't see this nearly as often in other departments, but don't get too attached to your buddies if you work at the front desk. When I worked there, front desk employees mostly hated their job because of the abuse you take from customers, so people were always actively looking for a new job and left asap. Many left without having anything lined up. By the time I left I was working with completely different people, except 2 or 3 (one being a supervisor), from when I started.
-The casino attracts a lot of drunks, druggies, and gambling addicts. If you don't have thick skin to deal with people acting crazy, I wouldn't suggest working at the front desk. I watched multiple people quit right after finishing their training because they couldn't deal with the crazies.
-The hotel check-in system is ridiculously out of date. It looks like something from the 80's.
-If you're a young, relatively attractive female, you can count on creepy older men (hotel guests/patrons from the casino) saying inappropriate things to you regularly. I will say that when one guy took it too far by trying to persuade me to come to his room and being very insistent about it, even stopping me multiple times when I tried to leave work, the manager did tell me I could leave the desk and basically force him to check-in/interact with someone else whenever he came up.
-Don't expect to be home on holidays. The casino is open on Christmas and Thanksgiving and New Years... every day... and so is the hotel. If you're within your first two years of working there, you'll definitely be working holidays.
-You will have to work overnight shifts even if you are upfront during the interview and tell them you aren't able to. I made it clear during my interview that I wasn't able to do overnight shifts, not because I minded being there overnight or was trying to be picky, but because I had to be in class every day at 8 am until 3 pm. I knew I'd be falling asleep towards the end of the school day if I had worked all night. However, turnover eventually caught up and I was "temporarily" put on overnights (going into work at 11 pm, working till 6-7 am, going to class at 8 am, and occasionally having to leave class and come back to work at 3 pm.. Yes, it was AWFUL). "Temporarily" turned into a few months off and on because when a new person would get trained either they would quit or someone else would quit. Once I finally was there long enough to be completely off of overnight shifts, I watched newer employees complain about the same problem - said they were unable to work overnights for family/school/work reasons and were told they had to anyway if they wanted their job. If you have a wide open schedule and don't care about overnights then this is no problem, but if you aren't able to do overnights just be aware they might tell you that its okay but you will likely end up on them anyway for some reason.
-Overall, if you work at the front desk you will take a lot of abuse for very little return. Employees in other areas seemed at least relatively content in their positions, only dealing with the usual customer service issues, but where I was it was a complete mess. I've had multiple other customer service jobs and never had such a bad experience, despite being assured multiple times that I was one of their best employees. You'll most likely have good or at least decent relationships with your coworkers, thats the only thing that kept me there for as long as I was, but you'll dread coming to work and leave feeling incredibly relieved to be out of there. I noticed that I was so much happier overall once I left for good. I worked with a few supervisors during my time there who had worked at other hotels, even in Vegas and AC, and said they never saw nearly as many issues as at Dover Downs. All of those supervisors quit within about 4 months.
