Of course, it’s Read Free Sunday (RFS) at The Diary.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, September 4
The French vanilla creamer box was changed while I was gone for four nites!!!
I am not making that up.
Recall when yours truly left Monday morning French vanilla and half & half were about half full and it was reasonable to expect both boxes would still be in service but, no, evidently there was a surge in French vanilla usage while I was gone because the box was full while both half & half and hazelnut showed the usage you’d expect…I have no idea what the deal is and the second creamer usage test (CUT) must be considered a “no contest”.
Amy was still at the front desk when a guy comes up looking to buy a couple of things…(I forget what, which is surprising.)…Amy, typically, makes some small talk and the guy’s chatty but he is under the impression it’s Memorial Day weekend and not Labor Day weekend. Mindlessly, Amy corrects him but yours truly is nodding approval and pointing at him as if both hands were pistols and he just won a prize:
Sir, you’re the guest, you want Memorial Day, you got Memorial Day…I’m a vet, I’ll make a speech right now.
All right, hardly a Line of the Year candidate, but it wasn’t too bad and, besides, it was early in the shift and ol’ Sparrow was still getting limbered up.
Slow so far this weekend, with only about half occupancy tonite and more or less two-thirds occupancy Saturday and Sunday, tho the possibility of strong last-minute traffic cannot be dismissed out of hand…This is in stark contrast to Labor Day weekend last year when we were sold out all three nites.
Despite being gone for four nites, there was only one email waiting for me, from Front Desk Manager Brandon advising that from here on out whenever we take refugees from the high-end residence-type hotel next door we need a letter from the hotel stating they sent the guest over because there were no vacancies…Without one, we don’t get reimbursed.
(This is known in the trade as getting “walked” and it is not completely unheard of for large hotels to overbook because they know some won’t show up…And, actually, this is almost standard procedure in Sin City where it is all but guaranteed that out of several hundred arrivals 5% or so won’t bother coming.)
B, the restaurant manager, forgot his briefcase, so he was back in to retrieve it and I asked where he lived, hoping it was a short drive…He said yeah, it was, he lives by the drug store and right as I was wondering if this was that low(er) income place subsidized with tax dollars he stated it wasn’t too far because he lived in that low(er) income place subsidized with tax dollars…Well, while I was wondering why exactly a professional man like that needed to live in a place like that (tho they are really nice apartments) I congratulated him because
1) it’s an affordable place in town to live; and
2) there’s a waiting list to get in them.
A really long waiting list, like Green Bay Packer season ticket waiting list long…40 years by the housing authority’s count, for the two complexes in town and it won’t get a whole hell of a lot shorter when the new complex going up on the far side of town opens up next year…Hell, that’s long enuff so that if you’re not near the top your acceptance notification will probably be delivered by the coroner.
I’ve forgotten what the income threshold for these places are, but I recall thinking it’s rather generous…As I recall it’s 125% of the county’s median income which is about 77,000 and the rent is about $500 or so less than regular in-town rents…I tried to look it up but their website had been hijacked by an online pharmacy promising great deals on assorted types of Viagra.
Ring the bell, dammit!!!
About 0400 some broad comes up to the front desk and says, not unpleasantly “good morning”…In the Upset of the Year, ol’ Sparrow was actually standing up and intuitively walked out front instead of petulantly waiting for her to ring the bell…I sold her some Band-Aids and not ringing the bell cost her, too, because when she asked when coffee would be out and I looked up at the clock, saw it was 0400, and said “in about an hour” when had she rung the bell I would have gotten her some from the back.
To ensure continuity in his personal habits somewhat disrupted by the past two weeks, ol’ Sparrow celebrated Fast Food Saturday (FFS) this morning, tho it should be noted FFS was not only celebrated last Saturday but a couple of other celebrations were snuck in, as well…Still tho, it is nice to be back to normal.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1230 Saturday until 1930 Saturday…7.0 hours for the day and 44.0 hours for the week.
Like you probably did, yours truly thought he’d sleep strait thru to the 2130 alarm, but no…The big news, tho, is the weather is starting to change and the cat and I were able to sleep an entire day with the windows open.
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.
Gaylon’s books can also be found at The Reading Salon.
