I was hired by ITT Sheraton ResCorps on September 22, 1997 and began my hotel customer service career taking general reservation sales calls for about eight months. After gaining some confidence in this area, I was promoted to Special Services (the resorts desk). I did this job for another eight months before applying for the Corporate Services department, which is now known as Corporate Customer Service. Corporate Services’ main mandate was handling hotel-related complaints. One might say that I managed to hang on just long enough in sales to get a job in hotel customer service, but the in-bound telephone sales experience was most helpful even if I did not excel in that particular area.

After a month in Corporate Services, I was asked to join an elite team of customer service professionals on what we then called the Exec Desk. We answered letters and phone calls that were escalated to the President of Sheraton Hotels & Resorts, which at the time was Daniel Weadock. Then along came 1998, and many, many changes came to Starwood. They moved the Exec Desk to White Plains after a year or so, hired some new folks, and re-named it Consumer Affairs – Executive Division.

I went back to splitting time at Corporate Services, and serving as a Reservation Sales Support Specialist, assisting the nerve center of Customer Contact. After about six months, openings for the E-Communications Department were created. I applied and was accepted. Soon afterwards, I was selected to be a back-up supervisor in that department.

I was minding my business doing emails in E-Com one day in November 2000 when I was called into the office of Starwood Preferred Guest’s director of operations. The array of talent in the room was awesome, including some former managers and supervisors with which I had direct contact. Among them was Jae Knowlton, who had found Flyertalk.com and had been posting there on behalf of Starwood Preferred Guest. They explained to me that Flyertalk.com was this frequent flyer web site that we had begun to get ourselves involved with and that we would like to continue to do so, but that Jae’s duties as a Member Services supervisor would not allow him to monitor as closely as needed. They had apparently decided that I would be a likely candidate to take over for Jae and they wanted to know if I’d be willing to do it on a part-time basis – working part-time in E-Com and part-time on Flyertalk.com answering members’ questions. Why did they choose me in particular? My best guess is that it was because I had previous experience with multiple levels of performing customer service in various departments within the company.

I have to say that I was at first a reluctant participant. After all, Jae left some very large shoes to fill, and frankly, I was not too thrilled at being a more noticeable figure at the corporate level. Then there was the unknown factor of the message board itself. While there were “lurkers” at Flyertalk.com previously, no one had really ever attempted to communicate as I was being urged to do. But, it was a risk that Starwood seemed to be willing to take, so I gave up my relative anonymity in December 2000 and never looked back.

Now, five plus years later, I can say with confidence that my decision to become the Starwood Lurker at Flyertalk.com has been very satisfying from a work-related standpoint and even more rewarding on a personal level. Furthermore, as long as Starwood permits me to do so, I will gladly represent them and Starwood Preferred Guest here and on Flyertalk.com.