James skills future upgrade was from a graphic designer to a hotel housepeeking housekeeping staff. He decides to make the most of it. Fun, fetishes and money.

When I saw what the very first reiteration of AI graphic generation could do, I knew it was all over for me. I was a graphic designer and a copy writer in an ad agency. How do you compete with something that can do what you spend years training for in seconds?

You can’t.

I knew I was fucked when I saw my boss ask the machine for 10 options for a proposal and it churned it out in seconds without whining like you owe it money. No need for OT pay and time off either. He could speak hokkien into the mic and AI could copy write his shit English and Hokkien combination into a speech that will make a public speaker cum in his pants.

Bobby’s email was always written with shit English, the kind that will give teacher cancers just by reading them. I use to write his email, but when AI came into the picture, he didn’t need me anymore. His email now read like a super polished kind of corporate emails you send to shareholders, perhaps to tell them you fucked up, lost a lot of money and needed more, and after they read it, willingly throw more money at you.

That’s how much the dynamic has changed in the office.

I’m not the only one in the graphic and copywriting team. There were 5 of us. I’m not the most experienced, or the best amongst all of us, I’m the one that knew how to keep my mouth shut. There are things you just don’t say out loud no matter how much you wish you could.

Unfortunately for Qinghui, the most experienced staff on my team, he said something he shouldn’t have to Bobby, at the most inappropriate time when company is not doing very well. We lost a major account, and were working our guts out to secure another one when he lost his shit at 2am in the morning at Bobby who wanted to change this change that.

Qinghui : You come and do yourself lor, you so good, you do la.

The office went quiet and i could tell from Bobby’s expression, he made up his mind right then. He didn’t raise his voice, he just told the whole team to head back and rest.

Bobby : Everyone shag already, cannot think properly. I tell you all what. Go back, rest. Tomorrow we cheong again, gum bo?

Then he shut down his laptop and left.

The next morning, when we got to our desk at, HR was waiting for us.

Bobby fired the whole team.

And you know the ridiculous part? He did a proposal on powerpoint, with AI, and got the contract.

I’m not sure if it was dumb luck or he was lucky.

There were tears and shit, people banging table but i just calmly packed up, wished Bobby all the best and left. Maybe because i was the only one who didn’t burn bridge with him, he called me to work on a part time basis while i hop on the skills future ladder to reskill into some other industry.

By not burning bridges, i earned myself another 3 months of temp work at 75% of the pay. Not going to lie, that money was useful to tide me over. I knew my entire team were jobless, no one is hiring graphic designers now, Qinghui is doing private hire because he has a family depending on him. I may be single but i’m saving up for my own HDB flat the moment i turn 35. I was on track, had it all planned out, get a 3 room flat, rent a room out to some pretty girl from Malaysia, collect rent and maybe get hitched.

I just never expect to be retrenched at 32.

Skill futures skills matching looks simple on paper, but on the ground, i tell you, my skills are really not that transferable. In the end, i’m also not sure what went wrong along the way, my attempt to go into hospitality, had me training in housekeeping.

Not the butler for the Beckhams kind of atas shit, it’s the basic hotel room cleaning kind. Partly because i took whatever courses that came my way that was subsidised and one thing led to another.

I find myself being job matched to a 4 star hotel in Bugis as a housekeeper.

Pay sucks but i soon learned that money doesn’t necessary just come from your pay cheque. You just need to be creative.

Tips from guests, shit people leave behind and well, i’m not proud to admit, i steal occasionally, from those that deserve it. Not saying it’s right, but i tell you, some people that check into hotels, they are fucking disgusting.

Anyway, i’m sharing this short period of my life when i’m a hotel house keeper for 5 months. I’m no longer in the industry but man, it was one of the most interesting period of my life.

I kind of realised i’m a voyeur deep down.

People underestimate how intimate it is to be a hotel housekeeper. The threshold between public and private blurs the moment you swipe that keycard and push open the door, letting yourself into the secret world of strangers.

The guests themselves become distant memories, their faces a blur, their voices muffled through the corridor walls but their lives remain.

Every bit of their private lives are scattered through the room like evidence. I sometimes hesitate at the entrance, let my eyes scan the debris, half-empty water bottles, luxury-brand shopping bags, a wristwatch carelessly abandoned next to a half-read self-help book.

I see the shoes lined up by the wall, the worn socks, the knee high boots, the party clothes hanging in the wardrobe.

And then there is the laundry. The lingerie, in particular, always gets to me.

It’s not just that it’s intimate, not just the thought of a body having occupied this expensive, delicate fabric. It’s the way it’s left to dry, sometimes draped with purpose and pride, other times bunched or hidden, as if the guest was embarrassed by her own desire to feel beautiful.

The underwire bras, lace thongs, and smooth, almost-invisible seamless panties tell stories about the bodies that wore them, but even more about the people who bought them, packed them, and wore them in a city where no one knows their real name.

Sometimes, the lingerie is new, tags still on from a recent shopping splurge at ION Orchard or MBS, other times, it’s old, frayed at the seams, the elastic fighting to hold things together.

I don’t mean to sound like a pervert, but there’s no other way to put it, seeing these things arouses me.

Not in the crude, i need to sniff them and wank off kid of way you might expect, but in a more general, animal sense. It makes me want to know what it would be like to live a different life, a more sexually charged one.

Ok fuck it, yes, i’m the kind of pervert that touches, sniffs and sometimes, put on the guest lingerie. I’m curious, not just the normal kind of curious, it’s the perverted kind of curious.

And the only way to satisfy that curiosity is to touch, to lift, to inhale the scent of whatever was left behind. If the guest was hot and pretty, I would find myself working in a trance, wanting to leave everything even neater, more perfect, as if the guest would somehow sense my devotion and reward me.

Most of the time, guests depart before I enter, and I can only reconstruct their lives from what they leave behind. Sometimes, though, I catch a glimpse of them in the corridor, or crossing paths in the lobby, all done up for a night at Clarke Quay or dinner at some restaurant.

There’s always a heady rush when the guest is someone you’ve already snooped on, someone whose secrets you already know. It’s like being an invisible observer of a reality TV show, but with higher stakes and less editing.

I see couples who checked in for staycations, or rather, sexcations. I will dig through the bin and see what condoms they used, how many they used. Did they bring any kinky stuff? Vibrators? bondage gear, school uniforms perhaps?

And putting a face to these things, it gives me a real hard on.

Sometimes, the most decent and geeky people, indulges in the wildest stuff.

Seeing a guy check in with different girls then one day, bring family for staycation. Seeing a girl checking messages at the lobby, looking around before being brought up to the room by different men.

And watching a couple chat with a tourist at the lobby before heading up to the room together.

Man the things that goes on in hotels, it’s rich enough to write a book.

I crave these encounters. The uglier the room, the more degraded the mess, the more I wanted to see what kind of person would do such things. But the opposite was also true, the more beautiful the guest, the more perfect the belongings, the greater my desire to eavesdrop on their lives.

I guess it’s a form of hunger, a need to fill the void left by having no real ambitions or career of my own.

Which brings me to the story I want to tell you. The story of the two most beautiful, most unforgettable guests I ever had the pleasure of cleaning up after.

And it all starts with 2 guest from China. 2 pretty, influencer wanna be girls.

Coming soon