Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Tuesday, October 15
Dead slow at the hotel this morning…We were sold out, too, but nobody bothered me…There were no sundry sales and no walk-ins looking for a room and the bar was even closed when I reported for duty and I didn’t see anybody from the time Mark left until the porters started wandering in at 0500, a phenomenan you generally only see at the height of slow season…Heck, the only time the phone rang was when 105 wanted an 0630 wake-up call…Wake up calls are entered into the PBX phone at the front desk and as soon as you enter it the wake-up prints out on a sheet in the server room in the back office…This is so we have a record so someone doesn’t blame us if they miss their plane…It’s happened…We can say hey, look, you got your wake-up call, don’t blame us…Heck, hotels are so intent on you getting out of bed in Vegas they’d send a security officer to your room if you didn’t answer your wake-up to make sure you weren’t dead.
(The server room is also a storeroom for front desk supplies and is where yours truly hangs up his uniform shirt after work…I’m told this used to be an office and if so it’s the smallest office in the history of labor because it’s a pretty small server/supply/changing room.)
One of my stock-in-trade funny lines didn’t go over well this morning…This rather serious looking man comes up and hands me his keys, announcing he is leaving…I nod and the standard Sparrow line follows:
Excellent…Departures are allowed today!!!
Nothing…He actually looks somewhat peeved and yours truly might as well’ve been quoting the phone book…Actually, he appeared to think I was serious because he said good, he needed to leave…Yes, sir…I played it straight, asking him how his stay was and thanking him for staying with us and that was that.
The Wife is staying at the hotel tonight…It’s inventory at the retailer and it’s a late-night tonight and an early morning Thursday so I got her a room…($39, plus tax, not the best employee rate but not the worst, either because we’re sold out Wednesday night.) Actually, The Wife’s in a suite, which Assistant Front Desk Manager Devani booked when she made the reservation for me.
Dead slow at the Veteran Service Office (VSO), too…Jack came by to chat around 1000…He had a lot of complaining to get off his chest and he was in the area…I listened for a half-hour and then be announced he’d let me go which was funny because Jack saying he’ll let you go is code for he’s just getting warmed up…He didn’t actually leave until 11 or so.
Jack is no longer at the pizza joint at the end of town…Some may – or they may not – recall I had a Stromboli there a while ago that gave me gas for a week…I told Jack this and he wasn’t surprised adding, apropos of nothing whatsover, that sometimes customers left him tips in the form of weed…And his boss would get on him for not declaring his tips…The quote from Jack:
How the f*ck do you declare half a bowl of weed on your taxes???
All the ladies do in the Building Office next door is gossip…They make a church sewing circle seem discreet by comparison…I’m never entirely sure who or what they are gossiping about because they talk in hushed tones, but I know women gossiping when I see them…I’ll walk in to send a fax or put something in the refrigerator and there they are talking intently and completely ignoring me…I know not even to issue greetings here…If what’s-her-nose is back in her office leaving the gals up front alone, then it’s OK because Heidi and Tammy don’t gossip alone, they prattle, a completely different form of female communication.
With The Wife staying at the hotel yours truly was on his own for dinner and I had some options…A meatloaf sandwich at the diner in town sounded really good, as did a burger and a couple of Scotches at our small-town bar and these would have both been trumped by a meal at our small-town diner, however, of course, our small town doesn’t have a diner right now…And despite full shifts at both jobs, I was feeling pretty good and a trip to the Mexican joint in the next wasn’t being entirely dismissed, either.
I ended up slumming tho…I didn’t really think about the diner in town until I’d passed it and I don’t really like our local bar and I can always go to the Mexican joint Thursday, especially if ol’ Sparrow gets some yard work done and earns it…So I ended up at the small town market and got some hot dogs and buns…And mayo because I wasn’t entirely sure how much we had at The Shire…I stood there not entirely pleased, tho: this represented just slightly more effort than not eating at all…I mean, I’m hardly a broke bachelor anymore and I thought about going to the bar but I didn’t want to waste the time; I really just wanted to go home, play with the cat and do some reading so, to add some substance, I got some pre-cooked crunchy orange chicken from the deli…I could nuke that and enjoy it while the hot dogs were boiling and it was actually a satisfactory meal.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: As usual, there was no sleep to report Wednesday.
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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