Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Wednesday, December 4
Had what I thought was a funny line tonight at the hotel, but it bounced off the guest like a wet rag…I had just reported for duty and I see this guy rolling one of our cribs in from the hallway…It’s actually half-crib, half-playpen and they’re a pain in the neck to roll because the wheels to have minds of their own, rolling wherever the hell they want instead of where you’re trying to go.
Anyway, he gets it to the front desk and apologizes for returning it…The line from yours truly:
What, do you sell the kid???
I was so expecting a laff I had a follow-up line ready (How much per pound did you get???) but the line never got uttered because the guy showed no reaction at all…None whatsoever…Zero…Nothing…A belch would have gotten a better response…Now, I’m not claiming it’s a Line of Year candidate – cleary it wasn’t – but it wasn’t that bad, either…It turns out he had been put in a room with two beds and his wife would sleep with the baby.
After the audit, a woman with a dog checks in and this is one of those dogs created by Providence on the seventh day because it has never done anything wrong whatsoever…It always had the sweetest disposition and it never barked – which would turn out to be a lie – and it was deaf, too – another lie, unless Fido can read lips because it was responding to commands left and right…The dog was supremely nosy as well, wandering behind the front desk like it was the general manager or something.
And it barked, too…It barked when it saw the treats I was going to offer it and it barked at other times, too…When I came out from behind the front desk to see if the lady needed assistance with anything (she was not in good health) he barked some more and then went executive protection on me, assuming an aggressive posture and showing me its teeth.
Well, I don’t need this…I told the lady to please “take care of this” while I backed away, retreating to the back entrance to the office.
The big news is we got a new shredder in the back office…The old one was repaired by Joe in Maintenance a few weeks ago and it was a lousy repair and it broke again earlier this week with no less than four boxes of paperwork waiting to be shredded.
At first, the new shredder wasn’t working, tho, because no matter what you did the red light that shows the basket is open would not shut off…And the basket was shut, too…It’s the exact same model shredder so I know when the basket light should be off…And then it hit me…If the basket is not working properly, why don’t we switch out the basket???…The old shredder was right there in the storeroom, so I pulled out the old basket, pulled the one out of the new shredder, swapped the bags, put the old basket in the new shredder and BOOM we’re shredding again.
Pretty slow at the Veterans Service Office (VSO) today…I did get my monthly paperwork filled in, the report that goes to the state VSO and I also filled in the spreadsheet that goes to the county commissioners…Regular readers of the crap may – or they may not – recall that I have a collateral duty as Welfare Debit Card Czar where I am in charge of issuing the welfare cards to Denise, who then passes them out to those in need…They’re kept in an unlocked drawer in the main office across the street so it’s not as if I actually have control over them and I paid no attention to the monthly report I was responsible for…Oh, I’d go over and see Denise and feign interest while she prepared it and then printed it for my signature…Then word came down Denise was to have nothing further to do with it whereupon I promptly ignored the report and now Tina the Bookkeeper does it and lets me know when it’s ready to be signed…Denise informed me this morning they were looking for someone who actually works for the welfare office to take charge of the debit cards…Good, I told her.
Today’s VSO shift is my last shift until Saturday night at the hotel…I’m taking Friday off from both the VSO and the hotel, giving me consecutive calendar days off for the first time in a couple of years…The Wife and I are making tentative plans for a road trip on Saturday.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: As usual for Wednesday, there is no sleep to report.
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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