At 1,304 words, this is the longest Diary entry ever. In keeping with newly established policy, it is offered with Sparrow’s compliments today.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Wednesday, June 16
Boy, Assistant Front Desk Manager Q is really getting his lunch handed to him by Amy in the June reward club sign-up race…Not this is a bulletin because everyone, including Q and especially Amy, was expecting this after she exchanged her three PM two graveyard shifts a week for five swing shifts…The tally so far is 32-23, Amy comfortably ahead, and there is some zero reason to think this won’t do anything but increase the rest of the month.
A little after midnight I get a call from a guy who doesn’t sound too with it asking about a room…I quoted him $150, plus tax and he whines and wonders if I could do better???…Sure, why not…We’re not close to being sold out and the ol’ bottom line isn’t really going to notice a $20 difference…He says OK, he’s “right outside”.
Ol’ Sparrow, however, does not immediately drop everything and stand at parade rest at the front desk because one of the lessons you learn while working a hotel front desk is never – and never means not once – adjust your life around when someone says they’ll be in…Usually, they’re somewhat accurate but you’d be surprised how often they aren’t, to the point where occasionally people who’ve gone thru the bother of calling to herald their imminent arrival have never actually made it in…I am not making that up…Hell, I’ve had people parked outside say they’ll be “right in” and three minutes later you’re seeing their tail lights in the driveway…So you continue with your labors without coming to all stop and waiting for them.
I don’t know what his deal was, but it took him over two hours for him to navigate his way from “right outside” to the front desk…Then he has the nerve/idiocy to try the oldest trick in the book on me: someone he talked to earlier had quoted him a rate of a hundred dollars…No they hadn’t…I smiled and apologized and said the rate was $130, plus tax…He could have pissed and moaned but he knew a defeat when he saw one and he certainly wasn’t going to leave at oh-dark-thirty with a nice bed only a few minutes away.
(Sparrow ProTip: If you ever do get a quote over the phone but don’t book, get a name, because if the guy had said, look, Brandon quoted me a hundred there is a high level or probability yours truly would have honored it…It is also likely Brandon would have told me about it, too.)
At 0500 I’m stocking the sundry stand and I stand up and turn to my left and there’s a goddamn bear at the front door…It’s not standing on its hind legs hell-bent for mischief, but it is nosing around and crap, if that door opens the interior door will open too and I don’t think Mr Bear would be looking for a Choco-Taco.
There are some options here, tho, to avoid a painful death…First, those that supposedly know these things say your only real danger is if you’re standing in between the bear and its only way out and at the sundry stand you’re only really blocking the bear’s access to the restaurant.
HOWEVER, if it does get inside and, hilariously, the doors won’t open back up, then ‘ol Sparrow is up a creek because he’s not a hero…I would lock myself in the back office because it’s unlikely the bear would navigate its way behind the front desk before I could scoot thru the back door and close the front door to the office and if the bear is smart enuff to push the required buttons that open the back door’s lock well, more power to it and while I’d prefer not to die being torn apart by a bear in a hotel back office, well, we’re all going sometime and it’s been a nice life.
As it was, the bear was unable to activate the automatic door and eventually wandered off.
One thing you develop over the years serving others are instincts that tell you which guest would appreciate one of your smart-ass comments and which ones will not…At about 0530 a guest wanders in from his morning walk and asks what time check-out is…Well, ol’ Sparrow has been working the Front Desk Comedy Racket for many years so, naturally, the first line that came to mind was “Oh, sir, checkout was three hours ago”, the type of line that has made me such a treasure to generations of travelers.
Well, this guy seemed a serious sort and something – call it the instincts all the great ones have if you must – said he wouldn’t appreciate this line, so I merely told him 1100 and filed it away as a future Line of the Year nominee.
Ms P was on time for her 1115 appointment at the veterans service office (VSO) today…Recall she is the widow whose late husband was denied a disability rating for a presumptive Agent Orange condition that is now routinely approved and she had received a VA letter saying they were reviewing such decisions…The claim was for Type II diabetes.
Claims had been filed in the 80s and 90s, all denied…This was back when the VA did not acknowledge that Agent Orange (so named because that was the color of the barrels it came in, tho other herbicides came in different colored barrels) caused diseases and after Mr P died a claim for a pension was denied because the cause of death was pneumonia, which was not caused by Agent Orange.
Now, her income is too high to qualify for a widow’s pension and there really isn’t much else we could do, at least in accordance with current VA policy…BUT ol’ Sparrow got to thinking that if the original, denied claim is one that is now routinely approved, let’s refile the claim and see if we can get a disability rating – and, of course, an appropriate, retroactive payment – issued.
So we dove in…The first form was the power of attorney, which allows me to represent her in front of the VA, then we filled out the form that establishes she’s his widow (to include marriage and death certificates)…This was probably unnecessary because she’s getting letters from the VA as his widow, but you never know with the government and they certainly weren’t going to deny the claim because we sent the form in…Then we filled out the claim form itself and then the Statement in Support of Claim form.
For my money, this is key, because it details exactly what we are filing for…It noted that Mr P’s denied claim is one that is now routinely accepted and that we are respectfully requesting a posthumous disability rating and back pay for the widow from the time of diagnosis until the date of Mr P’s death in 1995.
We’ll see…I’ve asked around and no one knows if there is any precedent for this and while status quo ol’ Sparrow is hardly Mr Precedent Buster, you never know if something will be saluted until you run it up the flagpole, tho I did tell Ms P to keep expectations low and expect the claim to be denied.
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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