Prior to being promoted to a supervisor at Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis, Richaundra Poe was simultaneously preparing to have her second son. She pursued maternity leave benefits but learned that she would be paid for her previous position as office coordinator.
Poe had already been supervising without the title as a part of her training for about a year and a half, but was denied the full benefits because of her title in the system. She was livid. She kept fighting until her manager finally relented and assured her that he’d make her promotion to supervisor official.
“I felt like that was my first step to knowing that I could make something happen for myself,” Poe said. “I’m no longer afraid to voice what I feel is right, to push to make things happen for myself.”
Four years later, Poe is the housekeeping assistant manager at the Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis and has her sights set on the assistant director position.
Poe was born in St. Louis in 1987 and lived with her mom and two of her brothers after her parents split up. She had another brother who lived with her dad, but she said they were around each other all the time.
They all grew up in an environment where drugs and violence were the norm, but still managed to enjoy a pretty normal childhood. Once she graduated from Gateway High School in 2005, Poe attended Southeast Missouri State University, where she majored in psychology while working at White Castle.
Poe returned to St. Louis after her freshman year of college and got promoted to shift manager at the same White Castle’s location where she started at the age of 16. She had switched to Missouri College, which has since closed, and intended to continue her education, but then she became pregnant.
Working from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. and then going to school from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. just got to be too much during her third trimester, so she dropped out. A couple years after having her son in 2007, she pursued a second job at the Four Seasons. She planned to work as a part-time room attendant while working full-time at White Castle, but the director of housekeeping at the time had different plans.
He told her that he didn’t see her cleaning rooms, but she told him, “With all due respect, I just wanna take care of my son, so whatever it is that I need to do I’m gonna do it.”
When the assistant director of housekeeping called her back for a second interview, she was surprised to discuss computer training. “Your room attendants work off computers?” she asked. “No,” she was told. “You didn’t know we were going to offer you the office coordinator position?”
Poe put in her two-week notice at White Castle and worked as an office coordinator for the next two and a-half years, while also cleaning rooms and helping out wherever she was needed. Meanwhile, she returned to school at the University of Phoenix and earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2012.
Her first opportunity to be a supervisor came when the Four Seasons opened up a location in Baltimore. She volunteered for the move, but quickly realized that the situation was a bad fit for her after a rough opening. She returned to St. Louis using the Four Seasons’ safety net provision before eventually earning her aforementioned promotion in 2014. In that same year she earned her master’s degree in business management.
Now she is in charge of anywhere between seven and 20 room attendants on a daily basis.
“It’s hard to get up and come in and have to clean behind people, but you’re doing it because you have a purpose,’” she said. “If you can see yourself being a manager or you can see yourself leading, then this is the first step.”
Poe serves as a mentor to the room attendants, many of whom are also black women and come to her for advice. Her willingness to help comes from knowing how hard it is for people who look like her to make it. “Of course, with me growing up in the inner city, black people have that persona of being ghetto, very outspoken, very proud,” she said.
Poe said that she possesses some of these qualities but had to suppress them in order to move through the ranks. “Some people struggle with thinking that they have to change who they are,” she said. “It’s not that you’re changing who you are, it’s that you’re changing your environment, so you have to adapt.”
Poe said that it’s fear of changing and adapting that holds black people back in the industry.
“I have to always tell them, ‘Hey, I’m African-American, I made it,’” Poe said. “It’s about you. You have to put yourself in a position to where they have no choice but to choose you. She said that black people have to work hard, be versatile and promote themselves in order to be noticed. She knows from experience.
“I won’t lie, it was hard,” Poe said. “I basically had to prove myself. I had to start to put myself in positions to where I was willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.”
She said success starts in the household. As a child, her mother made sure that she read a lot, participated in activities at school and believed that she could do and be whatever she wanted to.
“What I’m trying to teach my children is, ‘Don’t be afraid to try,’” Poe said. “I think a lot of times we’re afraid that there’s already a stereotype of us. We’re afraid to step outside of that stereotype and show the world, ‘This is who we are.’”
This is the fourth in a series of profiles of hospitality professionals that Tashan Reed is reporting for The American.
