Mountain Stories — Part 5: Staff Accommodation Can Be Grim

There’s nothing like returning to a comfortable home after a hard night at work or a big day on the mountain. A peaceful place where you can relax and recharge is precisely what you need as a worker in a ski resort. Unfortunately, you don’t always get what you need.

In my time in the mountains, I’ve seen many different types of staff accommodation. These are premises provided by holiday companies to house their team members and range from large chalets to small apartments and basement rooms.

You can, of course, rent your own accommodation if you’re not working for a holiday company, but it is costly, as suitable accommodation is rare. This is because landlords make more money by renting their property to holidaymakers. Therefore, people tend to cram many bodies into apartments; I’ve even heard stories of people living in garages just so they can ski or snowboard.

Lads, Lads, Lads!

I lived in a two-bedroom apartment with four other lads during my first season. As you can imagine, we weren’t the cleanest bunch, mainly as our jobs as kitchen porters revolved around cleaning and washing up. The last thing we wanted to do was more cleaning when we got home.

Our apartment had typically old-school Alpine decor from the 1970s, complete with carpeted walls and Savoyarde hearts carved into every piece of wood that didn’t move. One bedroom had a bunk bed, and the other a double bed; we also had a sofa bed in the living room.

The sofa bed was a double but on two levels. One person had to sleep on the seat, while the other slept on the pull-out part below him. Unfortunately, I had the lower part as I drew the short straw. However, I was only there briefly, as most of my flatmates either went home or were sent home when they were fired.

Hot Bedding

Our sleeping arrangements weren’t too bad, as we soon got used to it. We even began to rotate, so someone got a week in the double bed, which was welcome when you were wiped out.

Part of our job was to take turns working as a night porter. After a night shift, you had to creep into the apartment, doing your best not to wake anyone up, as you were only too aware of how important sleep is in this world.

However, bed space became scarce when people stayed over or were visiting from the UK. I remember coming home a few times to find 6 to 9 people sleeping in our apartment. This meant I had nowhere to sleep, so I just sat in the dark, waiting for someone to get up and go to work so I could reluctantly get in their warm bed.

Kitchen Hygiene

As I mentioned before, after scrubbing pans all day, we didn’t want to do it when we got home. Glasses and dishes were often stacked up due to laziness, so much so that we ran out of clean glasses and started drinking from jam jars and eggcups.

Our apartment kitchen could have been better, so most of us ate at work or out. I don’t think I made anything more than toast and cocktails in that kitchen during my entire time there. But a couple of the other lads often cooked without cleaning up.

Our saving grace was that we had a dishwasher, which was more inspiring to use than a sponge. However, after one of my flatmates got sacked, I didn’t realise he’d left the dishwasher full of dirty dishes for over a week. I only realised when I woke up one afternoon after a night shift to a squelching noise coming from the dishwasher. I opened the door to see bubbles rising from the blue mould that had collected around the dishes and cutlery.

I quickly slammed the dishwasher door shut and set it off. I must have set it off 4 times per day over the next couple of days to ensure all the nastiness had gone. After this incident, we made a pact to never cook in the kitchen again and just eat pizza.

Staff Accommodation In Hotels

The hotel I worked at also had staff accommodation. This consisted of a separate hallway with about 10 tiny rooms, a sort of communal area, and a bathroom with a single shower and toilet. Each room housed at least two people, but a couple had four. Needless to say, conditions were cramped, especially when you consider that everyone’s ski gear and clothing were in their rooms, and they had to share the same bathroom.

These rooms had paper-thin walls, so you could hear everything that was going on, which is one reason why there are no secrets in a ski resort. Everyone knew who brought who home, especially the person they shared the room with!

Each room had a single window, but it didn’t do much to remove the prison-like atmosphere. The first night the staff moved in, one of these windows fell inwards onto a bed just after one of the girls got up. The heavy wooden frame combined with the double glazing would have given her life-changing injuries, so she was super-lucky to have gotten out of bed in time.

The maintenance guy put the order for a new window to the head office and temporarily boarded it up. However, the boards were still there the following winter when I visited, which is a little insight into how some large ski companies prioritise the comfort of their staff members.

The Staff Chalets

The company I worked for in Val D’Isere had a couple of staff chalets. These were typically rustic but pretty nice as staff accommodation goes. Luckily, Carolyn and I had our own place, as we were much older than the other chalet hosts, so we were spared the staff chalet antics.

Like the hotel staff accommodation, soundproofing is not a French Architect’s forte, but this particular chalet was on another level. There were gaps between the floorboards, so you could see and hear what was going on in the bedroom above or below you. And when you have a bunch of twenty-somethings together in a place like this, there will be sleepless nights.

At first, people are polite and don’t mention the hot and sweaty action they have had to listen to. But over time, housemates become less polite due to familiarity and tiredness. They start egging the romantic couple on, critiquing the lad’s stamina, shouting out tips, and telling the insatiable chalet manager to “leave the poor lad alone; he’s had enough!”

Our Basement Room

We lived in a basement under a chalet next to a fromagerie. It was very different from our three-story, four-bedroom house in the UK.

It was one of two rooms at the end of a long corridor used to store cheese. The other room was inhabited by another chalet host. At the other end of the corridor was a small and freezing bathroom. The living conditions weren’t great, but, better than sharing with a bunch of horny kids.

However, the chalet above us was run by a budget holiday company, which created lots of noise. We would be kept awake on several occasions by their guests dancing on the table until we had to get up for work.

Even though we saw the chalet hosts most days, I don’t think they were aware that anyone lived below them. This became apparent when one knocked their guest’s skis down the stairs, which smashed into an adjoining door next to our room at 4am. I was not happy, especially when she started arguing with her coworker in another room. Except, it wasn’t her coworker; it was me telling her to shut up and have some respect (I was ill and tired). No matter how much I tried to explain that I was downstairs, she just didn’t understand. I later saw her throwing up last night’s chalet wine into the snow outside, none the wiser.

Throughout the season, we became increasingly uncomfortable and cold in our basement. We soon noticed visitors didn’t stay long until someone pointed out the damp smell. I moved my guitar propped up the corner to reveal mould climbing up the wall and a massive wet patch on the carpet under the bed. As the snow outside melted, the water seeped into our room, but it did so gradually that we didn’t notice the smell build up.

Toward the end of the season, a spare room at the bottom of our chalet was fitted with a shower so the company owner’s son could stay there. Once he had gone, we moved our stuff into it to escape the nasty mould spores we’d breathed in for the past few months.

When the company owner asked me if we were returning, I said it depended on the accommodation, as nobody should ever sleep in that room again. He then offered us a job in Courchevel with a nice apartment, but we didn’t take it.

It’s Not All Bad

When we moved to Morzine, we had excellent staff accommodation. We shared a large apartment with two other couples during our first winter. It wasn’t without its faults, but it was palatial compared to what we were used to. On top of this, it was next door to the chalet we ran, so getting to work was super easy.