Dorota Piatkowska, Housekeeping Manager, The Royal Crescent Hotel & Spa
Dorota, known as Dot, was born in Lask and lived her young life in Niedoń, a village in Sieradz County in central Poland, west of the regional capital Łódź. Dot describes it as a tiny village in the middle of the forest, an agricultural region with just a few houses, and she and her siblings grew up on the family farm, all contributing to its daily management.
At the age of 21 Dot did an accountancy degree in Łòdź and then decided to take a year off. Hearing about a work opportunity from a friend in Bath, she flew over to the UK and the very next day started work at The Royal Crescent Hotel in Bath as a cleaner. Fast forward 17 years and she is now Housekeeping Manager, managing more than 30 people, including supervisors, housekeepers and cleaners, who all keep the hotel and its 45 rooms spick and span.
She says that her team motivates and inspires her every day and describes them as “the best in the universe – if I don’t have my team I couldn’t achieve anything!” She is clearly a supportive and empathetic manager and there is a strong collaborative approach within the team.
When Dot first moved to Bath, the initial few years were challenging, living in a different country with a new job and no family close. Her English at this stage was very basic, but this soon changed as she studied at home, attended evening classes and communicated at work with supportive colleagues who would correct her if she used a word or phrase wrongly.
Dot’s home is conveniently located just opposite The Royal Crescent and her four-year old son attends nursery a short way away, so her commute is very straighforward. When at home, Dot says she loves to cook Polish food for her family, which has a strong emphasis on soups and stews such as Żurek (sour rye soup), Ogórkowa (cucumber soup) and Rosòł (chicken soup). As a Catholic, she and her family attend Polish mass on Sundays at Manvers Street Baptist Church.
Dot describes her homeland as a world away from her life in the UK, with Bath having a different culture and architecture and with so many nationalities living together in the same city. She still considers Poland as her home, seeing it as an oasis of peace, and returns at least twice a year to Niedoń to visit her family, but can’t imagine a time when she would go back there to live. She explains that there is such a sense of interconnected family when she returns, with everyone eating sociably together, and her children love to spend their summers there helping their grandparents on the farm, feeding the animals, fishing and picking mushrooms and berries in the forest.
Fortunately for The Royal Crescent Hotel and its visitors, Dot sees Bath as a much loved second home.
royalcrescent.co.uk
Main photograph by Joe Short, an award-winning photographer based in Bath. joeshort.com