Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Tuesday, October 22
Brandon in when yours truly reported for duty…We’ve discussed this before: no one working graveyard likes to see management on the scene when they report for duty because you never know.
Look, my resume is hardly a litany of success…I’ve lost jobs before and while my time here includes an Employee of the Month award, you never know…Of course, Brandon wasn’t here to fire me, he was here doing something or other, and he also announced he would be in at 0630 to clean a room because it seemed we were oversold and one of our regular corporate airline pilots would be arriving later in the morning…Usually, he’s already checked in but for some reason that was never entirely clear, we needed his room for someone else.
Key here, of course, is you need someone to checkout so you have a vacant room to clean…This usually isn’t a problem but you never know: sometimes you have luck here and sometimes you don’t…As it was, today we did: I was at the front desk putting the day’s registration cards in the appropriate place when I saw a gentleman walking towards the desk with a bag in one hand and his key packet in the other…Luck was with us today…A little bit later Brandon calls:
Hey, it’s Brandon…You got anything for me???
His voice was low, like a guy trying to set up a dope deal…I responded in a similar tone:
Yeah…105’s gone…
Brandon grunted and hung up.
I had similar luck once…I was the night auditor at 700-room hotel in Sin City years ago, where I actually had a modest staff working for me, and we were, as large hotels tend to do, overbooked…This is seldom a problem because you can usually count on five percent of your arrivals not showing up…In that case at 0200 or so you check them in, bill them and then check them out, thereby making the room available to rent again.
We had done this for one guest when at 0530 they presented themselves at the front desk for check-in…Crap…They had a right to the room they’d reserved, however, we’d long ago rented it…I was about to relieve the desk clerk of dealing with this – while having some zero clue what I was going to say – when out of the blue this couple comes up to check out…Well, at a hotel this size you have options, including a 24-hour restaurant and 24-hour housekeeping…I apologized profusely, telling them their room was not ready yet and they asked how their room could not possibly be ready – hardly an unreasonable question – and I long ago learned it’s best to fess up in these situations so I told them the truth…I then offered them breakfast with my compliments and told them their room would be ready in a half-hour…Let me tell you something, a comp in Vegas is a great carrot to be able to dangle in situations like this, and they were pleased.
Z, the dog belonging to our maintenance chief Luke was, as usual, knocking around the front desk this morning and I am not a dog person and dogs intuitively know this and Z and I have a relationship best described as “correct”…She loves Tammy and Gloria the Head Housekeeper, tho, going completely ga-ga immediately upon their arrival…Like this morning…Gloria sashays in and Z goes crazy, spinning around and making non-barking noises and generally acting as if Jesus H Christ himself had just wandered in…Gloria’s petting her and calling her “wiggle-butt” and other adorable things which have me beat because the only cute name I have for her his “mutt”…Then Gloria’s asking Z if she wants go back with her to the housekeeping office…Of course, she does…This led to a pretty funny exchange:
Sparrow: You turn her against me when you two are back there, don’t you…You hold up my picture and…
Gloria: ATTACK!!!
I think even Z laffed at that…It was pretty funny.
Earlier the restaurant cook had arrived actually wearing a sweatshirt…Recall in the past it had been noted he’s always worn a t-shirt and shorts, even when it was colder than it was this morning, but today he had on a sweatshirt…He was still wearing shorts, tho, which I don’t understand at all.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0930 Tuesday until 1930 Tuesday…10.0 hours for the day and a robust 23.5 hours for the week.
Proof that ol’ Sparrow will whine about absolutely anything can be found in the fact I was whining about sleeping too much…This is folly, of course…It’s impossible to sleep too much because if you’re asleep it’s because your body needs the rest…When it’s rested it will wake you up…But I slept thru workout and it was late enough The Wife was ready to retire and I had to rush morning routine.
On the plus side, I’ll be rested for my double shift at the hotel/Veterans Service Office, and that’s OK.
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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