The Diary of a Nobody/May 1

It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Of course it’s Read Free Sunday at The Diary. 

Saturday, May 1
Front Desk Manager Brandon was there when I reported for duty tonight, the first time I’d seen him since before leaving on the road trip…I was there earlier than usual and was actually clocked in and ready to go at ten till, allowing Brandon to leave early, but then he remembered he’d forgotten to close the pool and that took ten minutes which meant he didn’t really get to leave early at all.  

He mocked me, too, before he left, announcing he was leaving me “poised for success”  and that everything was “Code 4” which is radio code for OK or conditions normal, both phrases I routinely use when either Brandon or Tammy are relieving me.

I’d forgotten it was the end of the month tonight…It’s really no big deal, but I’ve found it’s good to start getting mentally prepared a couple of nights early…As it was, ol’ Sparrow had to dive in cold, hardly ideal, but yours truly is such a professional it was pulled off without a hitch. 

It’s hardly the Upset of the Year that the April 2021 numbers were infinitely better than the April 2020 numbers and some research showed they were even better than the April 2019 numbers…Revenue for this month was 153K on 1578 rooms, which produced a Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR) of $43…Last April the figures were 44K on 521 rooms and a RevPAR of $12 and in April 2019 revenue was $135K on 1,397 rooms and RevPAR was $37. 

There was one fly in the ointment this morning…I opened the May 2020 revenue spreadsheet so I could make one for this May and there were only figures for the first three days on there…Not only that, further checking showed they were actually figures for June 2019 which is academic because either way the figures for May 2020 were missing…This is bad because I need the May 2020 revenue and room figures to paste into the May 2021 spreadsheet…At first, I thought I’d have to generate a report and put in these figures myself, then it hit me there would be a copy of the May 2020 spreadsheet in my email because it was sent as an attachment as part of the May 31, 2020 nite audit package and a search of my email produced it in fairly short order. 

There was an article in the paper today about how dry the labor pool is right now…Unemployment is just a bit below 5% which isn’t really the virtually full employment that 4% is, but it does mean workers are tuff to find right now, especially up here where few outside of yours truly and some law-and-order types can pass a drug test.

The article even produced figures that said there were 800 unemployed in the county and 1,000 jobs available, which means that if every pothead and ski bum decided to get a job there would still be 200 openings…In fact, the article quoted a restaurant owner saying he is even resorting to increasing wages and providing benefits to attract workers which is, of course, nothing more than the free market doing its work. 

This does not bode well for the restaurant…Or us, for that matter…The county has relaxed all public health mandates except the wearing of a mask, so restaurants can operate at full capacity again, but good luck finding anyone…They are still only open for breakfast from 0700 until 1030 and for dinner from 1600 to 2000 and as a practical matter, the only real change is the bar is now open during dinner…Brandon said the restaurant wants to reopen for lunch in a couple of weeks, but neither of us sees how that’s possible without more people. 

The front desk could use some help, too, because we could use another full-timer in addition to the new girl Kylie…At full strength, we have two people on for both day and swing shifts and we are going to need that come summer…There aren’t the large number of baseball tournaments we used to have – the company and the town got into a p*ssing match over the contract – but there will be a couple and ol’ Sparrow otherwise expects matters to pick up considerably here at the hotel. 

 37.785 MPG!!!

I am not making that up…I’ve been negligent in reporting the new ride’s MPG figures lately, getting pouty after they fell below 33 MPG for a while, but that gas treatment I’ve been putting in has done its work well and it’s been creeping up for a while now except, of course, when we were allowed to floor it on the road trip…I knew it was going to be good, too…The odometer read well over 400 miles since the last fill-up, where it was reading 360 miles in the 32 MPG days…This is good because gas is $3.50/gallon up here and the Sparrow General Fund appreciates the increased gas mileage. 

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1530 Saturday until 2130 Saturday…6.0 hours for the day and 47.0 hours for the week. 

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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