Every time a guest steps into the majestic Grand Hyatt Singapore hotel and is greeted by a bellboy, served by a receptionist or handed a cool Singapore Sling by a bartender, they’ve just unknowingly witnessed the handiwork of Doris Chan.
For it is Aunty Doris – as the silver is affectionately known – who’s overseen the sizing, cleaning, mending and sorting of all staff uniforms at the hotel for the better part of her 53 years there.
The linen supervisor is the hotel’s longest-serving associate at 76 years old. She and her team handle all the hotel’s linen, which apart from uniforms include bath towels, hand towels, face towels and tablecloths for close to 700 rooms and suites.
The magic happens in the laundry room, tucked deep within the bowels of the hotel and out of sight from guests.
Some might find such a working environment stifling or claustrophobic. But for the silver, it’s been home for more than half a century.
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Grand Hyatt Singapore her longest career stint
Doris’ hospitality story began in the early 1970s. While looking for a change of pace from an early “desk-bound job” as a clerk in a printing shop, she decided to enter the hotel industry, flitting from the former Ming Court Hotel (present-day Orchard Parade Hotel) to the Ladyhill Hotel (now demolished and replaced with a condominium complex), and later, the Shangri-La Hotel Singapore in Orchard.
One day, her friend showed her a vacancy for the role of housekeeping coordinator at the Hyatt Regency Singapore (Grand Hyatt Singapore’s former name), which was the biggest hotel in Southeast Asia at the time of its opening. Doris successfully snagged the job, not knowing she would end up working there for the rest of her career.
Some credit, of course, belongs to the senior, who enthusiastically took on new tasks as they came. While most of her work then revolved around scheduling, coordinating and recording manpower allocations for the housekeeping department, she sometimes had to roll up her sleeves too.
Aunty Doris: Working in laundry "a big responsibility"
In 1983, Doris received a new assignment. She was headed for the laundry department – a back-of-house role that would see her handling inventory, managing alterations and overseeing cleaning for all of the hotel’s uniforms and linens.
Though she says working in laundry “is a big responsibility” to have – “uniforms are the first thing that guests see, so everyone’s personal appearance is very important” – she is in her element.
On the rare occasion she had to step out in front of guests herself, Aunty Doris admits to feeling like a fish out of water.
It’s no surprise, then, that her fondest memories over the years remain squarely within her work in the laundry room – whether it be dressing staff in their festive Christmas uniforms or seeing new joiners “transform” when first putting on their uniform.
New challenges with Grand Hyatt Singapore’s reopening
One of the only times Aunty Doris faced “heartbreak” in her career was when the Grand Hyatt Singapore underwent a major renovation in 2022.
But with the overhaul comes new opportunities. In months prior to the hotel’s partial reopening on 10 July 2024, Aunty Doris and her crew refreshed the entire staff’s uniforms. Her precious laundry room – which is still being renovated now – will also be transformed with a new automated uniform retrieval system.
Instead of Aunty Doris and her team scurrying around and sorting through racks of uniforms for specific staff tags, they’ll be able to scan a pass to have the clean uniform automatically retrieved by conveyor belt, saving them time and energy.
"The uniform room is my baby. I can't bear to see it go."
