It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Sunday, May 21
AGM Brandon was at the hotel when we reported for duty…I am not making that up…We were naturally leery because having the boss there when we reported for duty has sometimes resulted in ol’ Sparrow being fired but, of course, that was hardly the case tonite…Nite auditors in general do not grow on trees and those that show up 20 minutes early, as ol’ Sparrow happened to do tonite, are simply gems to be treasured unless there’s video coverage of them actually stuffing money from the till into their pockets.
We asked Brandon what the deal was about Hotel B, which the hotel now owns, and what happens if something major happens, like flooding or a fire and he said what we strongly suspected would be the case yesterday: call him…He added that anyone needing a key made or something like that would be out of luck…I’ll tell you what, that is going to happen sooner or later…They do not have a nite auditor three nites a week and sooner or later there is going to be some dorfman who either left his key in the room or lost it while he was out…Brandon added that in the case all scheduled arrivals weren’t in when the PM clerk left Hotel B, they’d bring the registration cards and keys over which will, of course, result in considerable inconvenience for the valued Hotel B guest.
As noted, we were there 20 minutes early and Brandon looked haggard after a long day so we offered to clock in and assume the watch early, an offer Brandon gladly accepted…Thing is, tho, things kept popping up…First, there were some emails to send, than some paperwork to clear up and then he remembered to do his drop, a rare enuff occurrence for Brandon…Then he had a couple of items for me and all in all, it wasn’t much before 2300 that he actually left.
Then a few minutes into the shift, three people bothered me all at once…First, the phone rang, then almost immediately the bell rang, and a nanosecond after the phone rang again…The first phone call wanted to know about transit to the small town, we never did get to answer the second call, and the bell ringer wanted a room…We asked if he could wait until I finished with Phone Call #1 and he said sure, he’d go get something to eat and asked if the fast food joint was still open…We had no idea, but the internet said it was open till midnite, tho when he came back he noted it had already closed and they ordered a pizza.
As it happens, there is a regional bus that goes from town to the next county, but the service is limited to two runs from the next county in the morning and two runs returning to the next county in the evening, which didn’t work because the guy wanted to be in the small town around noon.
We were putting morning coffee service (MCS) out when a gent who we’d checked in earlier wanders in in his jammies, saying his goddamned son was snoring, preventing him from sleeping…We offered him some earplugs…I have significant experience in this matter and, in fact, still sleep with them long after The Ex has left…They do the trick; they don’t block out everything, but they tone down loud snoring so it’s mere background noise…He declined them, tho, not the first time someone’s declined this solution to the problem.
We got to talking because he asked about weekly rates here and we told him we don’t really deal with that but Tammy could help him later this morning…He said he and his rugrat were up here to work at the mine that is actually a bit south of the small town…It’s seven days on and seven days off, twelve-hour shifts, and while you really shouldn’t ask what a man makes, we were curious and made it a general query about whether or not coal mining paid well…It does, with the guy noting he and his boy were starting at $42 an hour, which is pretty good dough…And that’s for an 84-hour week, so 44 of those hours are OT and you don’t have to be the Secretary of Labor to figure out that comes out $102,000 a year…So they can probably afford to stay here during their weeks on.
Then he said the mine’s hiring and that we should look into it…Ha!!!…Unless they are looking for a Certified Whiner, we are so unqualified for any work there it isn’t even funny.
Later, we gave an English lesson to someone who primarily spoke Spanish…We had checked him and noted that while polite, he had called me ma’am on a couple of occasions…By chance, we were there when he checked out and he did it again…Well, we didn’t particularly care, however, we’d hate to see him get smacked around by someone who does…So we offered guidance, saying, in our famous Spanglish, that us hombres are known as sir, and that women (mujeres) are called ma’am, tidbits he seemed to genuinely appreciate.
We’d brought our trunks and a towel into town with us because we had delusions about getting a soak in…This was to maximize our membership at the in-town gym (ITG)…Recall we only go there one day a week now and we’re paying $50/month for that privilege, so a Sunday soak would make it a better value…But we were already yawning and waved it off; we were too tired to change into swim trunks and soak in a hot tub.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0830 Sunday until 2130 Sunday…13 triumphant hours for the day, the best possible start to the sleep week outside of a coma, the four hours we missed on Friday more than made up for.
We were up at 1630 feeling pretty good but something – call it the instincts all the great ones have if you must – said there was more sleep there for us and a patented Sparrow Roll Over (SRO) was executed…And it really wasn’t a surprise there were five more hours there for us because the cat didn’t come in at all like she usually does when she knows we’re up for the day…She knew, too, that more sleep was forthcoming and didn’t bother coming in and hopping on my back…God bless all of you.
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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!
