It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Tuesday, March 15
It was busy tonite for the first hour, but after that, it was a very leisurely nite, the type of nite you’re looking for in the nite audit racket.
About 15 minutes after reporting for duty, 148 calls looking for a rollaway…All right, I told her I’d do what I could and if she’d’ve left it at that ol’ Sparrow wouldn’t have ended up hoping for her death…But she noted she had talked to “the girl” who guaranteed her a rollaway…She had a room with two queen beds and it was her and her three rugrats.
Well, if you want to get frisky like that, two can play at that game…I opened her reservation, which had no notes about a rollaway, advised he of this and noted she’d checked in a bit after 1600…Ol’ Sparrow was relentlessly pleasant:
– Ma’am, I notice you checked in this afternoon…
– That I did…
– How come you didn’t take care of this then???
She didn’t really have a satisfactory explanation…They’d left and gone to the mountain and then did this and did that and now BOOM, she needs a rollaway and humans being humans, she tried to pass the responsibility for this off on ol’ Sparrow, concluding her review of the problem with “so that’s where we’re at”, something I’ve heard from “takers” at the veterans service office.
She got lucky; we had a rollaway available…Honestly, yours truly would not have dismissed out of hand telling her we were out, but you can’t get snitty and say no…This is not particularly egalitarian on ol’ Sparrow’s part, it’s more CYA: if I’d said there weren’t any and she whines in the morning, they may well find out there were rollaways available and people would be wondering why ol’ Sparrow had said no.
Then 253 needed some sheets…These were unhappy guests because somehow their dog had gotten out, was found wandering the hallways, taken to the front desk, and, when the owners never showed, was turned over to Animal Control…Later, when the couple showed up wondering where Fido was, they were told an Animal Control told them their dog could be picked up in the morning.
What’s not clear is how the dog got out in the first place…A maid is a leading suspect, of course, but you’d think they’d recognize this as a problem and notify someone…If Head Housekeeper Gloria wasn’t around she could grab someone and make barking noises and start running around if need be but Gloria would later say a check of lock showed no one from the hotel had entered the room…You would think the guests would notice a dog fleeing out the door, but that appears to be what happened.
Anyway, for whatever reason, this crew needed fresh sheets…Yours truly should’ve known the room had a king bed but didn’t, and delivered the requested queen sheets, which necessitated another trip to the laundry room…Later, the dumb broad called me to report the sheets had been successfully put on.
Drai the Dairy Delivery Driver (DDDD) was a bit late for his usual Tuesday morning coffee, showing up at 0430, about ten minutes later than normal…He claimed modern technology problems held him up, advising he was having trouble logging into his work computer…Unclear is whether DDDD is referring to that handheld deal drivers take in with them on delivers or whether it’s a company-provided laptop, but either way it’s one that originally belonged to the new guy (who is also in-house weekly but doesn’t stop by the lobby) and for some reason, they ended up trading.
I do miss seeing Amy regularly but, honestly, since she’s been leaving early both cash drawers have been even-steven $200 all week; there have been no overages needing to be dropped…In other news from the Cash Drawer Desk (CDD), there was a $5 bill that had a notation on it reading “5/27 8AM” on it…There was no further information on it and you don’t have to be Joe Friday to conclude the reminder was from some prior year.
The big news is there isn’t any dish soap in the back office coffee room…There’s a sink in there and it’s where ol’ Sparrow washes his dinner dishes every nite…Some fast thinking led yours truly to conclude that hand soap could be utilized in a pinch, tho we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see if ol’ Sparrow keels over from soap poisoning to see if this was a good call or not.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1330 Tuesday until 1930 Tuesday…6.0 hours for the week and 22.5 hours for the week, not exactly what we’re looking for, but hardly the end of the world, either.
Yours truly has no idea why he didn’t sleep strait thru till the usual 2130 – and I know you don’t either – but no matter…An abbreviated yet pleasant morning routine was conducted, to include beard trimming and shower, and we should be strong for the usual long Wednesday.
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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.
Gaylon’s books can also be found at The Reading Salon.