She's perfectly tidy in an olive-green suit, nylon stockings and discreet black shoes. There's not a hair astray on her head. She's chatty and friendly when she comes down from her office to the hotel lobby. Here is an oasis of calm, a haven of peace from the traffic and the shoppers outside.

Yes, according to Patsy Mooney, a corporate sales executive at the Clarence Hotel on Dublin's Wellington Quay, it's always a case of "certainly sir", at the front of house. This calm exterior often masks the activity and frantic efforts going on behind the scenes. All hell could be breaking loose, but the customers will never know.

"You need to be a great actress. You need to maintain the face that everything is organised.

"If you'd just like to take a seat," she says, in the voice of a hotel receptionist, who never loses her composure. Perhaps her greatest test came the day "Elvis" walked in to the lobby. Mooney never even cracked a smile when the white-suited, glittering imposter walked up to the desk. "If you'd just like to take a seat, sir," she told him.

"The back of the house in every hotel is the least organised place. That's why I like it. My reaction is to sort it out and put things in their place. You never know what's going to happen. You don't know who is going to walk in the door. You never know what a guest is going to ask for. People are unpredictable. It always keeps you interested."

To start with, a neat appearance is essential. "You have to be presentable. You're selling the hotel," she says. "You just need to be in good form and ready to talk to anybody who comes in the door.

"You become very attached to the property, especially in sales. You know so much about it. It's kind of like your baby.

"We are always looking at things, always. It's a very open office, all the doors are open. We have an ideas box."

She worked in the hotel industry following her graduation from DIT Cathal Brugha Street with a higher diploma in hospitality management and a BSc awarded by TCD. Then she took a year out to travel and "decide if she wanted to stay in the hotel industry". In Bali, she and her friend stayed in a fivestar hotel for Christmas. She "walked around noting things - the way the staff handled the checking, the way they dressed, the brochures, relating it all to my job."

In Sydney, she became curious about hotels there, wondering how they were different to Irish ones. "Every place I went, I'd note something." In the end, she realised: "I am in the career that I want. Why am I troubling myself." When she came back the Clarence Hotel told her they had a job for her in sales. "It's a tough job. I knew the front desk would be the start of where I wanted to go. It's your opportunity to help people sort things out for them and they really appreciate that. On the desk, I ended up training everybody. You have to manage something. I wanted things done a certain way."

In her current job in the hotel, she introduces potential clients to the hotel. It's important "to be ready to persuade somebody. You have to be in form when you are doing the calls, to be chatty. You try to turn them around if they're not in the mood. You have to be organised and know what you're at. You have to believe, to be committed to the hotel. You have to put a lot of trust in the company."

Having started at the front desk as receptionist, she became reception manager and then she was promoted again to reservations manager.

"I love the hotel industry. It's perfect. If you want a fun career that is always different," she says.