It’s Read Free Sunday. Enjoy today’s Diary entry with Sparrow’s compliments.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Friday, July 23
Sold out at the hotel tonite, thanks again to the canyon on the Interstate closing…Amy said there were 30 rooms available when she came on at 1500 – well, 1510 because she’s always late – and noted the last one had been reserved a couple of hours ago.
So ol’ Sparrow put the Sold Out Post-It on the door, not that it did any good because no less than four people would come in asking if we had anything available, either thinking the sign was a joke and we lots of vacancies or maybe there was a room I’d been saving just for them.
And because a light weekend was expected and you can’t anticipate freeway closures, room revenue for the nite was only about 27K – good but not great – because we were unable to jack up rates appropriate to a sold-out weekend and gouge the suckers, I mean guests, who were stranded by the Interstate closure.
About halfway thru the nite a guy who was very tuff to understand called three times within 45 minutes asking if we had availability…He was not too bright:
– I’m sorry, sir, we’re sold out…
– You’re sold out.
– Indeed we are, sir…I’m sorry.
– Is that for the whole property???
Good gravy, what a dolt…What I wanted to say was uh, yeah, dumb-dumb, sold out does, in fact, refer to the whole GD effing property, but I only said, with relentless cordiality, I was afraid so…Sir…Reasons for the following two calls will always remain an enduring mystery…Perhaps he thought he was calling a different hotel or maybe he thought something had opened up in the last ten minutes…His motives remain unclear.
It was the holy grail for the knife tonite as all three creamer boxes AND the box of coffee packets needed to be changed out in the back coffee room…Changing the half & half box was pushing it, tho, because it had enuff for today and changing it could be regarded by some as gratuitous, but the knife was already out doing its work and in the big picture it doesn’t really matter anyway…(By the by, the knife was rewarded with a sharpening upon return to The Shire.)
Evidently, the new guy that works on my nite’s off has it in his contract that he doesn’t have to do squat because not only were the creamer and coffee boxes not changed, the sundry stand looked like it had been attacked by refugees…Good gravy, everything needed at least some restocking and two rows were actually empty…I am not making that up…In fact, the $1 waters needed an entire case to get back up to Sparrow standards (SS).
Tho usually ol’ Sparrow can be counted on to whine like a four-year-old in times like these, I actually rather enjoyed it…My guests are entitled to a nice sundry stand and, of course, Rule #2 of nite auditing states we don’t let the rascals on day shift wondering what we are doing all night, so it was nice getting everything squared away.
And someone (again) messed with the MCS display, too!!!…Swing shift was swamped again, so the racks and even two pots were still out on the table and some ding dong – there are no suspects right now – put the small trash can in between the coffee pot rack and the cup/creamer rack…No, I don’t know why, either.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0930 Saturday until 1930 Saturday…10.0 hours for the day and 51.0 hours for the week, the first 50-hour sleep week since May and a strong follow-up to last week’s 45.5-hour fiasco.
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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