It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Wednesday, March 22
There could be a new reality vis-a-vis Mark’s highlighting of his cash drawer spreadsheets (CDSSs)…Last week, recall, it was green ink for his signature, with orange highlighter for the day, date, time, amounts, and the marketing logo-ish slash thru his signature…A rather new combination, but still something we’ve seen once or twice recently…Tonite, tho, it was green ink/orange highlighter again…Both sheets…Regular readers of this crap know this follows a long spell of mostly purple ink and pink highlighter and with the calendar showing spring, maybe Mark is freshening up his CDSSs.
In other cash drawer news, the right drawer – ol’ Sparrow’s home drawer – had 20 pennies in it!!!…I am not making that up…Now, we haven’t made a big deal of it here – we don’t know why we haven’t made a big deal of it here – but for the past two weeks, at least, it has only had 15 pennies in it, a rather long stretch for a coin tray to have the same amount of coins in it…We have some zero clue who took in five pennies, or why, and it will have to remain a not-too-interesting Wonder of the Front Desk because we’re not going to look into it.
There was another episode of Let’s Handle Our Hotel Business On Graveyard Shift tonite…This happens fairly regularly, of course, tho we’ve never understood why some people prefer to handle their hotel business with some hack nite auditor than with an AM or PM professional.
Anyway, this rather nice lady said she had a reservation here for Thursday arrival and had just received an email from us heralding her upcoming stay…She said they weren’t going to be able to make it and she had assigned the task of canceling the reservation (known as CXL in the trade) to her husband, who duly reported he had canceled it online but evidently, that evolution had failed…So ol’ Sparrow makes a comment along the lines of “husbands, what are you going to do” and she laffed and we looked up the reservation and BOOM no indeedy, it had not been canceled…Technically, we should’ve billed her for the first nite but there was no reason not to believe her claim of husband incompetence (HI), so we were pleased to CXL the stay without penalty…This was done out of equal part graciousness and a deep concern for the safety of the hapless husband (HH).
There was a morning appointment at the veterans service office (VSO) before spring VSO training began at noon…CD was a bit early and on the phone he’d given the impression he wasn’t yet in the VA system…This was false, as his two large, not particularly well-organized binders of VA correspondence showed…It turns out he’d been in the VA system for a while, having a combined rating of 40% for PTSD, hearing loss, and tinnitus…What you do in this situation is sit back and listen to what the client wants…It turns out his hearing is getting worse, and he has sleep apnea, which the VA knows because they provide his sleep machine…However, he’s never filed for it as a secondary condition to his PTSD, a not uncommon award…So we filed for that, and an increase in his hearing loss rating…Actually, CD has two hearing ratings, one for each ear…His right ear is rated at 0% – which means the VA acknowledges there’s a problem, but the problem is not compensable – and they denied his claim for a rating for his left ear.
There was also a message from my old buddy James, but we didn’t know it was James until a minute or so into the call…James is a good guy and pretty funny and we used to work together at Hotel A a few years back, where he did maintenance…His message tho, started with him singing Happy Birthday of all the silly things and then he ID’d himself as “Jim Bob” in an offhand manner that implied we were besties, tho we don’t know a “Jim Bob”…So I called him and it turned out he and his woman are getting kicked out of their apartment here in town because it is being redeveloped and he wanted to know if the VA could offer any help.
Well, regular readers of this crap know the VA itself does not, however, they do fund VOA, who we’ve used before…Now, James and his woman are not destitute; on the other hand, they’re hardly made of money, so I gave him VOA’s contact information, with the caveat that they may not qualify…But they might; they have an eviction notice for a month from now and they are not made of money…(When we realized Jim Bob was actually James we called him a “f*cking c*cksucker, which is actually a term of endearment amongst some, tho certainly not all, veterans…It was used all the time in the Navy in a variety of contexts.)
The training was useful, tho we were glad we chose to take it remotely…It’s still snowing and the drive would’ve blown chunks…Director Dave gave some interesting introductory remarks noting, among other things, that they want to add two regions to current five, and that a recent audit by someone – we forget who – showed 27 discrepancies that needed to be addressed…Topics today included ethics, claim development, grants, and a couple of other things.
Regarding ethics, we were pleased to note the dating of clients who are attractive, older women, while not specifically encouraged, was not proscribed, either, tho the Widow B and I haven’t gone out for ages.
We had a drink with Carolyn after work…We talked about New Orleans and then a couple of people she knew came over and joined us, which pissed me off, but was otherwise pleasant…We’ll see if the combination of a shot of rye and getting home later than usual on Wednesdays will wreak havoc with getting to sleep.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: As usual, there is no sleep to report for 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.
Coming soon! Gaylon’s books in actual book form!
