Motel Owner Takes Over Cleaning After Staff Quits

Joseph Franklyn McElroy has a new appreciation for the work involved in keeping a 34-room hotel clean after most of his staff quit when he required them to get vaccinated for COVID-19. The owner of the Meadowlark Motel in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, took over cleaning duties himself, with some help from his sister, The Charlotte Observer reports.

McElroy’s parents bought the motel surrounded by the Great Smoky Mountains when he was 14 and he and his siblings worked in the building. As an adult he moved to New York City, but when he had children of his own he decided he wanted to raise them where he grew up.

The first few days after McElroy took over cleaning, he quickly became overwhelmed. “The first few days I was dead, man. I was killing myself, and my legs and everything else [were sore],” he recalled.

McElroy figured out how to minimize his physical exertion while maximizing cleanliness. Along with his newfound appreciation for manual labor, he was able to make the job more enticing to would-be applicants. McElroy kept the mask and vaccine mandates in place, but he doubled the cleaning staff salary from US$7 hourly to $14, which is a high rate for the area.