If I’m on the early shift, then my alarm goes off at 4.30am. Which is no fun! I get up, make coffee and walk my dog. I get to the train by 5.30am, to work by 6.30am and to the desk by 7am. The shifts vary though – 7am to 3.30pm, or 2.30pm to 11pm – so my schedule is never consistent. And my commute is about an hour each way, which makes for a long day.

To be a concierge, you need a good knowledge of the city, and good relationships with the restaurant managers and especially the hostesses – they’re the ones that you have to plead with to get that impossible reservation. First and foremost though, you have to really like to help people: if you’re not a people person, this job is tough. And you need to be able to come up with a solution when the answer is “no”, because in this job the answer is never “no”. Thankfully, I love talking to people: they’re so interesting. Absolutely my favourite part is meeting guests from all over the world on a daily basis. My least favorite part – and I think I speak for everyone in hospitality – is the tough scheduling. That, and the paperwork.

My travelling isn’t too bad, though. I don’t even really mind the snow – it’s the rain I dislike. I drive to the train station, take the Blue Line, then the Green Line and walk a few blocks to the hotel. If there’s a blizzard, then we can normally stay in the hotel if we offer to work the next shift. If you’ve ever seen the bathtubs at the Mandarin Oriental, you’ll understand why I offer.

Many of the guests come back year after year and they get to be like family. I look forward to seeing them and watching their kids grow up. And it makes my job much easier because I can anticipate their needs and be ready when they arrive. Building relationships is key.

In a five-star hotel, we get all different requests all day. Often I’m booking transportation and making dinner reservations, but I could be finding private helicopters or yachts. Once I had a guest ask me to find a 10-week-old Bernese mountain dog and labrador that had had their shots, so that she could purchase them and send them to Saudi Arabia. I found them, but at the opposite ends of the US, of course: the Bernese in Montana and the labrador in Vermont. I most definitely got a few grey hairs in the process. She never did end up purchasing them. But I found them!

I was introduced to English Cut by one of the tailors, Eden Lewis, who was here for the launch event in the hotel. I talk to everybody, so I offered to help if he needed anything at all, and we quickly became friends. On his second visit, during the height of the busy season in Boston when the city is booked solid, he couldn’t find a hotel that had a room, so I offered my home. I really needed a dog walker while I was on vacation, so it worked out well. I’ve begged him to come back as my son is at college in Georgia and I loved having someone to cook for again.

There’s never any pattern to the day, so I pretty much have no idea what I’m heading into. Because the guests change every day and are all staying for different reasons – business, medical, visiting colleges – the requests change. I need to be prepared to answer any question that comes; I have to know everything. Thank God for Google.

I stumbled into my job. I started working at a brand- new hotel, and they hadn’t hired a concierge yet; people kept asking me questions so I started to fill in at the desk and the rest is history. Prior to the hotel life, I ran my own art studio teaching people how to paint; I also worked for UPS. When my son went to college, I decided that I was ready for a change.

I get one 30-minute break and one 10-minute break, but it’s nearly impossible to sneak out as it’s so busy. I can actually leave for my break whenever I’m ready, but because we constantly get requests that need attending to ASAP, and there isn’t someone else who can complete the task, it’s hard to get away. Thankfully, our bellman will always do a coffee run for us. (Boston has a cafe on every street corner.) Or occasionally a restaurant will send a bag of food as a thank you.

If I’m on the late shift, then I won’t get home until 12.30am. I literally get in, walk my dog and go to bed. If I was giving advice to someone who was thinking about be- coming a concierge, I’d say: be prepared to be exhausted.