Kevin Kinneally, receptionist at Barnacles youth hostel in Temple Bar, Dublin
I’VE BEEN here for the past three months and prior to that I was unemployed for a year and a half so I was delighted to see the advert for it.
I studied engineering in college and did a post grad in journalism and had been working for an IT magazine when I took two months off to go travelling.
The recession hit while I was gone so I came back to no job. But I did have loads of experience staying in youth hostels and so it made perfect sense to me to apply for this.
There are two shifts, from 8am to 4pm and 3pm to 11pm. I prefer the early shift because you get to meet the guests coming down for breakfast and to have a chat with them about their day and help them map out their routes.
We have 149 beds and are at about 90 per cent occupancy midweek and are booked out at weekends, so it’s really busy.
We have a sister operation in Galway and, if you stay in one, you get a discount at the other, so we tend to feed each other in that way.
There’s always a great buzz. We organise comedy and music nights upstairs in the common room and try to get everyone involved.
It’s the kind of job where, once you finish your shift, you hang around to join in the fun rather than rush home. It’s very sociable and completely different to the office I used to work in. In my last job people would email you to say something, even though they were sitting beside you. I could never get my head around that.
Because of where we are in Temple Bar there are loads of great sandwich bars to nip out to for lunch and at 2.30pm check-in starts so it gets mad busy again. I’ve lost a tonne of weight since I started here because I’m on the go all the time.
Temple Bar is very lively but any trouble passes us by. We have very strict security and the rule for managers is that “if I wouldn’t like to share a room with this guy, he’s not getting in”. In that way we make sure there are no drunken louts.
The rooms are lovely too. The basic price is from €15 a night but you can get a private room, en suite, for €60, which is as good as any hotel room.
I keep having to tell my mother this, because I think she thinks I’m working in a homeless hostel.
The only downside, if there is one, to the job is hearing everybody talking about their travel plans. It gives you itchy feet.
On the other hand the way the shifts work I have time to write and the one thing I get loads of is interesting stories.
In conversation with
SANDRA O'CONNELL