‘How does a day and night in an exclusive hotel, all expenses paid, plus S/200 in your pocket sound?’ my husband asked with a sparkle in his eyes.
‘That sounds amazing! Someone wants to pay us to stay at a fancy hotel. Really?’ I couldn’t believe it.
‘Yep, a friend of a friend works with a company that evaluates hotels and they are looking for foreigners to go in and assess the services. We’d go in incognito, can’t speak Spanish, only English.’
‘You mean like a secret spy mission?’ James Bond Skyfall music runs through my head.
‘Ah ha, they even give you a watch with a built-in camera to record it all.’
I gasped. ‘That’s so cool!’
And it was.
But it was also hard work. We had long and detailed lists of all we had to evaluate.
One of the things they asked was if the workers at the hotel looked us in the eyes and smiled when they were talking to us.
Doesn’t it make a difference if we are looked in the eye and greeted with a smile? The people cutting the grass, cleaning the rooms, sweeping the floors, all stopped what they were doing, greeted us, looked us in the eye as we passed. It made me feel like royalty, valued.
Sometimes I get so caught up in my day that I forget to look up and see others. Let’s look up today and smile into the hearts of those that come across our path. Make ‘em feel like royalty. You can pretend you’re on a secret spy mission too!
Must have been hard not to speak Spanish when you could have greeted them all.
Thanks for your story.
Ps. could you keep the watch?
It really was hard not to speak in Spanish and a few times we let slip a word or two! And no, we had to give the super cool spy watch back, unfortunately!