Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Tuesday, September 22
We were pretty not busy considering we were sold out…All but one arrival was in and since a lot of our guests are working firefighters they’re too busy sleeping to pester the night auditor.
The one arrival was a nice piece of revenue enhancement by Amy…We have a lot of regular clients including pilots from some corporate air outfit and they customarily check-in on Tuesdays around 1000…Their room is reserved for arrival the day before, tho, so they’re billed for the night, payment for the privilege of checking in whenever the hell you want.
We were sold out of course but Amy’s ears perked up when Mr Proctor called in desperate need of a room until 0600 at the latest…Well, there is simply no reason you can’t put the corporate air room to work here because a professional housekeeping department can certainly have a room clean by 1000, the first maids wandering in around 0700.
The technical details of this are easy…You don’t have to be Mr Motel 6 to know you can’t have to two reservations for the same room for the same night, so Amy moved the corporate air reservation from a Monday arrival to a Tuesday arrival, then reserved the room for Mr Proctor…When Mr Proctor hadn’t arrived when I started the night audit I checked him in and when he finally arrived around 0200 I billed his credit card right then and produced a receipt…When he came by the front desk at 0500 – grateful for a couple of hours down and a shower – and announced his departure, I checked him out, checked the pilot in, and then billed the pilot for the previous night’s stay.
That was really it, tho…No one bothered me, and ol’ Sparrow was thru delivering folios before 0100.
I screwed up, too…It could have caused major problems for Tammy and everyone else on day shift, but with the luck that sometimes attends night auditors who show up for work on time every night, we got away with it.
It started a couple of nights ago when 110, originally scheduled to check out this morning, came by to request a night’s extension, to Wednesday morning…I pulled up her account, looked at availability and said sure, that would be no problem…Had I bothered to enter it…I didn’t tho and about 0600 Ms 110 presented herself at the front desk with the folio I’d slid under her door because she was scheduled to check out wondering, very reasonably, what the deal was.
Crap…We’re sold out for tonight, too, so extending her stay would overbook us, a real hassle but there really wasn’t another option because I had told her she could stay…So I extended her stay and overbooked us.
One of the Wonders of the Front Desk is sometimes you have good luck when you need it…Sometimes you don’t, but today we did…Not more than five minutes later 233 came up and announced he was departing a day early…I am not making that up…Ol’ Sparrow’s sigh of relief was audible because we weren’t overbooked anymore…Sure, there might – or there might not – be an issue or two with availability for specific room types, but Tammy waved this off when I told her because this is a routine matter for a day shift hotel desk clerk, handled as a matter of course.
The question is not whether or not yours truly is going to the hot springs Wednesday afternoon after his shift at the Veterans Service Office (VSO), the question is whether or not he is going to fork over for a membership…Recall ol’ Sparrow went last Wednesday with triumphant results…The soak itself was nice but recall I woke up feeling wonderful Thursday morning and I’ve slept great all week (see Sleep Log below) so we’re going to field test the hot springs once again…It’s $22 for a day pass and $55 for a monthly membership so do I fork over another $22 or just go ahead and dive in for a monthly membership???
(Also, recall ol’ Sparrow, the dolt, forgot his trunks and towel and was obliged to buy both…I packed them tonight, tho, to ensure this doesn’t happen again…As you get older you learn to take care of things when you think about them because if you put it off you’ll forget.)
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0900 Tuesday until 1900 Tuesday…10.0 hours for the day and 24.0 hours for the week, not the highest Tuesday total of all-time, but an inspiring total nonetheless…I took a shot of Zzzz-Sleep and was nodding before even half a page of reading was in.
The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.
It was inspired by the 19th-century British novel of the same name.
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