Thursday, July 24, 2008

Everyone wants dirt

Two posts all of a sudden in one day! Well, I was snooping through my blog hits in Google Analytics and was surprised to see a referral from HostelManagement.com

I was curious as to how my site was linked, so after some hunting I found a post in the forums where a fellow wrote this about my site (quoted from this post):

Re: Blogging traveler writes about his hostel stay
If anyone's interested in reading a blog about working in a hostel I found this one interesting:
http://meganglover.blogspot.com/2008_03_01_archive.html
Not really humorous as such or containing any inside dirt on the SYHA, but interesting to see how many places she's been to in the course of her work - they're usually short staffed so there is always the opportunity to see some of the country while getting paid. The pay isn't great, but when you don't have to pay for accommodation you can save if you want.

If you're planning a trip , you could certainly do worse than hostel work if you want some interesting experiences - more interesting than office work in London anyway.

It's interesting that he mentions the lack of "inside dirt on the SYHA" in my blog, because that's one thing I was always very careful to keep out of my writings about my work - after all, people have gotten fired from jobs over what was written on their blogs.

Anyway, I often kept my opinions out of my posts whilst working because I wanted to keep that job at the time. Now I don't work for them anymore, but I just can't be bothered writing about what I think because it wouldn't change anything in the end anyway. Let's just sum it up this way: I worked with some good folks and I worked with some that were terrible. I won't work for the SYHA again because I happen to disagree with many aspects of the management of the organization, but that's just my opinion and I did have some good times in my hostel working days.

As a correction on what the forum poster wrote: you don't get free accommodation as a staff member with the SYHA. I had to pay 24 pounds per week for my room - cheap, but not free. The pay for me was hourly at minimum wage with no compensation for overtime (and I was assigned more hours per week than my contract unless I argued about it). I managed to save money, but I manage to do that at any job (and if you're wanting to save money, DO NOT become a seasonal/summer manager, as from what I've seen they get paid a low salary per month and end up working way more than the estimated 40 hours per week - even I wouldn't take that job as a holiday one).

It was more interesting than an office job in London to me, and I did get to a few different places in the country by working with the SYHA and I got to chat with loads of different people, and that's where I took the most out of the experience.

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