Light work

I class myself as one of the old school. I like to get up well before my shift, which starts at 7.30am. I wake at 5.45am, shower and shave and have a light breakfast of cereal, toast and a cup of coffee. I walk my dog for 10 minutes and leave the house at 6.30am.

I live in Mayfield, seven miles outside Edinburgh, and always take the bus to work. It takes roughly 35 minutes in the mornings and I am usually in the hotel by five past seven.

The first thing I do is go to the main switchboard and get the keys for the engineering office. I then go to my office, pick up my keys and pager and sign in for work. I change into my uniform and at 7.20am nip to the staff canteen to have a cup of coffee.

At 7.30am I start the bulb run.

I hate Mondays because they are the busiest day. I work Mondays to Fridays, so after the weekend there is a lot of bulb-checking to do. Mondays can be quite heavy.

At 7.30am I go to my workshop where I store the bulbs. I put them into my basket and go to reception, where there are two big chandeliers. Because it is so quiet first thing in the morning, I can disrupt the furniture and suchlike if I need to.

Once reception is done, I go to the public toilets, the Palm Court restaurant, the three function suites and the basement.

Time can whizz by and I can get it all done in half an hour. But if a bulb on one of the main chandeliers goes out and I need to get the big ladders, I could be in one area for an hour and a half.

I also have to check the bulbs in the elevators, the second-floor conference rooms and the main corridors on floors one to seven.

It is viewed as an important job and I don't feel it is repetitive. I spend so much time walking round, meeting people and seeing different things, it takes away any boredom. On an average day I'll walk two-and-a-half miles and change 70-100 bulbs.

I can be paged at any time to go to a bedroom to repair a light. If that happens, I drop what I am doing and attend to the guest.

After doing all the floors, I go through the kitchen, the pantry, the butcher's shop, the offices, the cafeteria and the workshops.

I usually stop at 10am for a 15-minute break, during which I have a quick toast and a cup of coffee. I get all the work done by half past 12 and then have lunch for half an hour in the staff dining room. Usually I have a bowl of soup and a main course.

After lunch, because I've finished the bulb run, I move on to general maintenance work. People can't believe I actually get paid for changing light bulbs but it's not just that - I do other work as well.

Each morning the housekeeping department registers calls, which can concern anything from handles off doors to blown fuses, missing chains on sinks and ripped-off bath plugs. I deal with those in the afternoon.

I finish work at 4pm so I do maintenance work until three o'clock and then go round the hotel again, checking if any bulbs are out.

If I leave at four o'clock, I can be home by five. I'm a painter by trade but I wasn't having much luck holding down jobs, so when this came along, I thought to myself "this could be a good one" - and it is.

When I get home, I like to relax with a cuppa and put my feet up. One thing I won't do is change any light bulbs.

Interview by Louise Bozec