Yes indeedy, it is Read Free Sunday at The Diary. Enjoy today’s entry with Sparrow’s compliments.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, October 9
Amy had left and yours truly had just started in on his nite’s labors when the phone rings…It’s a guest who’s wrapped up his evening’s revels downtown and found himself without a way back to the hotel…It seems the few Ubers and Lyfts were enjoying the nite off and could I come down and pick him and his homies up???
Of course, I can’t…I’m the hotel’s nite auditor, not transportation director, and even if yours truly was of a mind to go and get your non-plan ahead ass – which I wasn’t – the circumstances where I can leave an entire hotel unattended are few and seldom arise and this ain’t one of them…I told him what with the free bus having left downtown for the last time, his only real option was the taxi service, so I gave him the number tho I didn’t add it wasn’t clear if they were running tonite.
We had a saying in the Nav: prior planning prevents piss poor performance…You can’t just go out and drink willy-nilly in a strange town: you must know how you are going to get back to your hotel…Is there bus service???…Ubers, Lyfts???…Taxis???…If you’re calling your hotel wondering what the deal is, you did not plan ahead.
It was a veritable condiment bar at the desk in the back office…Good gravy, two salt shakers – one for each hand, I guess – a pepper grinder, some vinegar and mayo packets and a hand sanitizer for when it was all done…Clean up after yourselves, people!!!…Good gravy, I don’t need any of this for my nite’s labors and I put it all up on top of the microwave.
About midnite this woman comes in with her dad and announces there is a reservation for him…No, there wasn’t…She said she had made the reservation a while ago and it had been verified multiple times since and while she didn’t come out and say we were a bunch of idiots here, it was implicit…She was plainly tired and equally plainly a ditz who would screw up the boiling of water, so make allowances for her exhaustion and take offense at nothing.
Some checking showed there were some reservations in her name for arrival Thursday that had been canceled – none of them in her father’s name – and again she reiterated that the reservation had been made a while ago and personally verified by her regularly since.
Let me tell you something: if you’ve verified this reservation every hour on the hour for the past five years and we don’t have a record for it, well, it didn’t have to be you that screwed it up, but you’re the lead suspect.
It’s really not that big a deal as we’re hardly sold out and accommodating dad is no problemo…She’d left her credit card at the condo they were staying at, however, so dad – a nice enuff sort – offers his card, tho this is declined…So were two others, which embarrassed dad, tho I know from experience this could have been for any number of reasons not necessarily having to with the card being bad…Eventually, the woman goes to the condo to get her card…I give the room keys to the dad, but he chooses to wait in the lobby.
The big news is the key to the restaurant was nowhere to be found…I am not making that up…I got to get it at 0600ish when Megan the Chef reports for duty, but it’s not there….Ol’ Sparrow’s usually the lead suspect on this one, sometimes leaving it in his vest pocket, but I’ve been gone for two nights so yours truly is in the clear here.
The problem is, there’s really no place else it can be at the front desk…When I started here, procedure was to give the key to the chef and then wait for them to return it, but it wasn’t always returned and the key is ultimately my responsibility so yours truly started opening the door himself and then returning the key to the key box…Longtime readers of this crap may also recall – or they may also not recall – that there used to be two keys to the restaurant in the key box, but one was taken away for reasons I’m sure someone thought good.
Without the key, there is literally no way for the door to the restaurant to be opened and yours truly has some zero clue what to do and Megan is valiantly trying to pick the lock with a hanger when Head Housekeeper Gloria saves the day by bringing a spare key to the conference room – which affords access to the restaurant – from a top-secret stash in the Maintenance Office and you can bet ol’ Sparrow found out this location for if, when, this happens again.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0900 Saturday until 1900 Saturday…10.0 hours for the day and a triumphant 51.5 hours for the week.
Sweet mother of Providence this was a good sleep…I was exhausted upon returning to The Shire, so much so reading in the chair was dispensed with, with yours truly going to bed immediately after feeding the cat and these are the first consecutive 50-hour-plus sleep weeks since Reconstruction.
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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.
