Read Free Fortnight at The Diary continues.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Monday, June 7
There is a new chair at the desk in the hotel’s back office…This almost immediately following the tech refresh, which is a bit more change than any of us are looking for, frankly, but humans in general, if not night auditors specifically, are pretty flexible.
I don’t know why they got rid of the old chair…It was still in good shape and as near as I can tell earned wide acclaim and drew no complaints and regular readers of this crap know a change of this magnitude has the potential to cause yours truly all kinds of angst because few are as big a creature of habit as moi…The old chair was comfortable and while the seat of the new chair is hardly laced with thumbtacks, the arms are not adjustable!!!…I am not making that up…The arms are fixed while the arms on the old chair adjusted and yours truly preferred them as high up as they could go…Now, I am obliged to tolerate low armrests and it took until midway thru the shift before a complete adjustment was made.
I’ve come up with a new falsies policy, too…Recall the mask mandate is gone and the old policy was to take the falsies out for most of the shift because guests never saw me without a mask and couldn’t know they weren’t in…Now, tho, as we discussed, it’s good for morale for guests to see those serving them with teeth, so now I keep them in water at the back office desk (they had been kept in a cup in the back), and put them in at need…It delays my arrival at the front desk by a few seconds and I have some zero clue why I don’t just keep them in all night, but the policy is still under construction.
I had a discussion about rates with a couple of guys tonight…They were traveling with their families and needed two rooms each with two queen beds…All right, we have those and I quoted them a rate of $150, plus tax, per room…Guy A asks if there was a AAA discount and yours truly says of course there is and immediately lowers the rate to $135, plus tax, not too bad…It’s not Rate of the Year, but everyone could sleep well tonight knowing they weren’t taking it in the shorts.
Then Guy B advises he is not an auto club member but he is a rewards club member and asks if there’s a special rate for him…Well, yeah…I mean, I’m not going to make you pay $150 while your buddy pays $135, so I tap a few buttons which do absolutely nothing and note, significantly, that the rewards club rate is the same $135, plus tax…Guy B nods knowingly, adding he has a buddy that owns “several hotels”.
Guy B: I thought they’d be about the same…
Guy A: It’s not too bad a discount…
I nodded significantly.
Sparrow: It’s a good rate for a tourist area in summer.
This is complete hogwash, of course, because regular readers of this crap know rates hardly come down from Mount Sinai on stone tablets: they’re whatever I happen to say they are, but they bought it and are already feeling good about their stay, and that’s what counts.
Some may recall that today was the day we were supposed to close on The Shire’s refinancing…However, regular readers of this crap may – or they may not – recall ol’ Sparrow couldn’t be bothered to take the appraiser’s call and he hasn’t called back yet (he’s based well south of here) so we are still on hold.
I texted The Ex with information because some of the proceeds will go to pay her money I am under legal compulsion to provide, and she texted back OK, have a nice day which sounds nice but is actually Ex code for rot in hell you bastard, tho it should be noted the deadline is still a couple of months away…Meanwhile, The Shire continues to increase in value, so we’ll see how much ol’ Sparrow will be allowed to borrow.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1430 Monday until 2130 Monday…7.0 hours for the day and 15.0 hours for the week, a hell of a two-day sleep week total.
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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