A Culture of: The Suits vs. The Uniformed Staff
Pros
Excellent benefits. I cannot speak highly enough about how well the Ritz-Carlton treated their employees post-Katrina. We were compensated for 6 weeks, we were offered benefits continuation for 12 months, we were offered jobs throughout the world, jobs for our family members displaced with us, housing for up to 2 months not just for us but our family members displaced with us, and up to $10,000 in financial relief for those that suffered devastating losses.
Cons
I loathed the fact that the entire management staff, save the sole Manager-On-Duty, would disappear on Friday and Saturday nights (often the busiest times at a French Quarter hotel) only to chastise you on Monday morning for how you handled the absolute insanity and chaos of the 3 prior days. Little did they know, it would often be just me and a single-desk agent holding down the Lobby while the MOD chased a prostitute and her pimp out of the hotel, a drunken guest threw up on the marble floor, a third guest began shouting that she'd seen a cockroach in the hallway (thankfully, she'd only seen the one cockroach and not the entire family of rats that also occupied her floor), while a celebrity on 14 demanded a new room because she didn't feel that the only junior executive suite in the building was up to snuff and she felt that we should offer her the Presidential Suite, for free (normally $5,000/night), because she'd been in a couple of movies and her husband was a well-known director. The management often brought a whole new meaning to the phrase, "Monday-morning quarterbacking."
