The Diary of a Nobody is free during Read Free Fortnight. Enjoy.
Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Wednesday, January 13
64 rooms rented tonight at the hotel, the highest of the month by a dozen or so and, and, actually, two dozen more than this date last year…We had 28 arrivals scheduled when I left Tuesday morning and there was relatively decent walk-in traffic, too.
The big news is it appears Mark has settled on a yellow highlighter for his cash drawer spreadsheets…Recall a month or so ago he started highlighting his name and the drawer totals on the sheets he left in the drawers…(Both drawers, because Mark is the only one besides me who counts both drawers…Everyone else merely counts the drawer they use and not all of them leave a sheet.)…Exactly why he decided to start doing this after a dozen or so years here has never been completely clear, but to start he used an assortment of highlighter colors: blue, green, orange and pink…Lately, tho, it’s been yellow – as it was tonight, tho it’s not clear if he prefers yellow or merely if that’s been the one closest to him lately…Perhaps next week I’ll go tactical and do a field test on the matter and confiscate the yellow ones and leave some blue and greens near his preferred left workstation and see if he goes and hunts out a yellow highlighter or whether he uses what’s nearby.
Ol’ Sparrow is finally fully integrated into the clock-in routine…Regular readers of this crap may – or they may not – recall this has been in the works for a few weeks…First, the new monitor made its appearance, first (inconveniently) at the back desk, then in its spot at the clock-in table where it shares space with the old clock in monitor…Then Tammy started demonstrating how she could clock in on her phone, tho yours truly had yet to receive an email on the matter…Then there was a sign at the clock-in table advising us to use the new system on which I wrote I needed an invite.
At first, it was thought the hotel had switched payroll companies, but no, it’s still ADP…They are merely changing, or maybe updating is a better word, the way we go about clocking in and out…Well, I’ve had an ADP account since I started and after requesting a password reset I was able to access my account…Yours truly was then bright enuff to download the app, access my account there and BOOM am now able to clock in and out with my phone.
Later, I helped Javier, a porter, with the new clock-in system…He came in at 0450 and I could hear him farting around at the clock-in station and even tho I could only hear the festivities, it was plain he had some zero clue what the deal was…It turns out he had been issued a username and password for the new system and while he had them written down he didn’t really understand how to enter them. (It would turn out he mistook a ‘y’ for a ‘u’.)…Anyway, he comes and asks ol’ Sparrow for help and I’m able to get him logged in and then, using my Spanglish like a fine surgeon, I find out he has a smartphone and inform him he can use the app (it appears they actually say out the whole word in Spanish) to clock in and out, so we download that and BOOM before you know it he’s signed in and able to clock in and out from his phone.
Still dead slow at the Veterans Service Office (VSO) and it’s unknown when the county building will reopen again…There was an email from Carolyn concerning new business cards for the Human Services Department, tho it was dated Tuesday and advised the information was needed by the end of the day…Well, I’m not in the office on Tuesdays, so I sent my information in hoping it wasn’t too late.
Because I need some more business cards. The ones they got me last year without my input were all hosed up, as we used to say in the Navy…The title is inaccurate and the fax number was left off and there are other things, too, that make them unusable.
In the Building Department kitchen, I ran into a building inspector and he mentioned he’d seen the plans for the new Human Services Building they’re going to build for us…I jokingly asked if there would be a corner office for the VSO and a humorless sort he took my query seriously, saying no, not a corner office, but the new VSO office is bigger than the former broom closet I’m in now and even has a window…Curious, I asked if the plans were handy and he said no, and they very preliminary besides.
I don’t really want to change offices…I was on a submarine so the small office doesn’t bother me and its location across the street from the current Human Services building affords privacy for both clients and ol’ Sparrow, which is to be interpreted as he is left alone and not pestered by two dozen yapping women all day because he is one of only two men in the department.
Hardly for the first time, yours truly flaked out on going out for Wednesday dinner…Recall plans were to go that nice American eatery in town and blow the remainder of the gift card on a fine steak and some duck liver, but I knocked off from the VSO a couple of hours early and ended up celebrating $1 Pizza Slice Wednesday at the small town convenience store, supplemented with a couple of their pretty good burgers.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: As usual, there is no sleep to report on Wednesday.
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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