Denis TC O'Brien, head concierge, Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin
I NORMALLY start at 7am checking e-mails. It's mostly guests looking for me to book restaurants for them, or to let me know they are coming so that they can get their favourite room with everything ready the way they like it.
Return guests really like being looked after. It matters to them that you use their name when they arrive. I'm good on names but there are times I have to sneak a look at their luggage tags.
I'm 22 years a concierge and part of an international association called the Golden Keys. We meet once a year to swap hints and catch up on trends. There was a time, for example, when Arab visitors were few and far between here and it was only through the association that I learned little touches such as putting a prayer mat facing Mecca into their room for them.
Most days people come to me as a first point of contact in the case of an emergency. Very often it's a "my wife is in Vancouver and I've forgotten our anniversary" kind of crisis. Because of my network of concierges, I can organise things such as flowers pretty quickly.
I then spend an hour or so meeting and greeting on the floor because the morning is a busy time of the day. I look after a team of about 25 which includes valet parking people and bell men and because it's a large team, the couple of hours is usually taken up with training matters and paperwork. I always read the day's newspapers too. If there's something in the news here, guests will ask me about it. Or they'll want to talk about world events as a conversation starter, so I need to keep up to date.
Lunch is a particularly busy time for meeting and greeting, so it's back out on the floor to see where I'm needed.
I'd never envisage myself doing any other sort of job, except perhaps being a butler. I like the idea of giving service - before this I trained to be a priest. People share things with you as a concierge that they wouldn't say to any other person. And, of course, what I hear is totally confidential.
Much of the afternoon is spent back at my desk. It would be impossible to say how long an average shift is because my view is that I'll be there for as long as I need to be, which is normally between 10 and 12 hours a day.
Luckily, I absolutely love my job. I'm like Mr Fix It. People come to me looking for last minute tickets or lost luggage and I sort it. The oddest request I ever got was to find a church for a French bishop.
Occasionally I'm asked to find "escorts" for clients and my response is the same: "Unfortunately I cannot assist you with this request". Anything unethical, immoral or illegal we don't engage in. The only thing that bugs me about my job is people not doing what they said they would do, mainly suppliers or service providers.
I also don't tolerate rudeness or bad language. It happens occasionally, and my line is always: "This conversation is finished until you are civil with me".
In conversation with Sandra O'Connell