Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Wednesday, May 22
Today’s lesson is do not annoy your desk clerk.
A bit after midnight I get a call from an older gentleman who, it turns out, wants to cancel a reservation…His voice is hoarse and gravely, not to mention accented, and is tedious to listen to…Compounding matters is his insistence on telling the entire story of his travels, which I need to hear as much as I need to hear the Beatitudes recited…All I really need to cancel your reservation is your name and arrival date, not where you live or where you’re heading to or, really, anything else…The first name he gives me isn’t in our system for arrival Saturday and by the time he comes up with the correct name I want to smack him.
I can’t go through the phone, tho, and smack him, but I am in the mood to make him wait…Sue me…I’m not paid to make guests wait, but I’m human so maybe I had an itch to scratch or maybe I wanted another cup of coffee…I put him on hold for three minutes, more or less, I hardly timed it…That is long enough to make him wait tho anything longer and I’m being petty and vindictive, which I’m probably being anyway, and it’s wasting my time besides…So I get back on the phone and cancel his reservation in thirty seconds flat, thanking him pleasantly and adding I hope we see him next time.
Later, I do something really stupid…I had finished out front and had retired to the back desk to do the night audit and I sit down and, after some putzing around, start generating the post-night audit reports without actually having run the night audit…The first clue, the only clue needed really, came when I started entering the revenue figures and room revenue for today was exactly the same as yesterday…All right, possible, tho hardly likely, but when the number of rooms rented was exactly the same even ol’ Sparrow was smart enuff to say “hey” and some research showed it was the exact same report and since the latest report is automatically generated, it meant idiot Sparrow had not run the audit yet…Now, this exercise wasn’t a complete waste of time – like putting that guy on hold for three minutes was, frankly – as the trial balance report was cut up into eight pieces of scratch paper.
One of the benefits of working for the government is getting sent around and around in circles by other government workers…This continued today in the Affair of Corky’s CCW Permit…Recall last week Corky came by to show me the VA letter declaring him competent, which he needed because his incompetence declaration was prohibiting him from renewing his CCW…Regular readers of this crap know last week I made some calls and the feds said they couldn’t do anything, the state said they couldn’t do anything and now the detective with the county Sheriff had said hewas completely powerless.
I’m not, tho I still haven’t solved the problem…After some thought, I decided to call the new White House VA 800 number…The actual existence of this line is somewhat funny because the VA has no less than five thousand 800 numbers designed to give vets information but I figured this was would be a good place to start…I half-figured she could easily transfer me to some assistant director’s office or something, I’d email him a copy of the VA letter declaring Corky was able to wipe his own ass without a designee, and that would be that.
I was wrong, of course…The polite and well-meaning gal who took my call referred me to the VA hospital a bit south of here…Almost funny was that before I talked to her a recording asked if I was having thoughts of suicide…Well, not now, but if this crap keeps up, I just might…I ended up emailing a couple of folks in the state office, but hadn’t heard back from them by the time I left.
Officially, I’m calling it ‘doubtful’ I will be able to mow the lawn tomorrow…We’ve simply had too much rain and snow the past few days.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: As usual, there was no sleep to report for 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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