Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, July 27
We were pretty busy with walk-ins and phone calls tonight because the Interstate a couple of hours south of here is closed because of a mudslide and traffic is being detoured thru town, which is about as inconvenient as it sounds…it’s 90-minutes north to here, an hour west to the next county and another 90-minutes south…I actually noticed it as soon as I left the house because there was a lot more traffic than there usually is on Friday night and I wasn’t surprised when Brandon said the Interstate had been closed.
Brandon had a funny line tonight…We were in the back office and he was working late and he was talking about the top-secret changes that are coming to the front desk…Among them will be his promotion to front desk supervisor…Recall his sister is leaving and Candace is going to take her job as revenue and sales coordinator…Brandon is really looking forward to the change – referred to as The Transition here in the office – and he said one of his plans involved ol’ Sparrow:
Brandon: I’m going to have to start bringing the hammer down on you…
Sparrow: Fine. Do your own night audit then.
We both laffed…One, I’m not the reigning Employee of the Month because I have good hair, I’m reigning Employee of the Month in no small measure because I show up every night and good luck finding that in today’s labor market…Everyone enjoys the good night’s sleep they get with me on the job and there will be no laying down of the hammer…Two, I do my job reasonably well, so there really isn’t a hammer to bring down.
Friends here’s a ProTip: when you call a hotel looking for a room, all that is required is to ask if we have a vacancy…You don’t need to inform me that you are considering where to stay tonight (as likely as not your car because the whole town is sold out) and that we are an option (!) and I neither need nor desire details about your day’s drive…They won’t make a room magically appear…Merely ask if we have a room, I’ll tell you no, and that will be that…I’ll go back to farting around and you can go back to kicking yourself for having not made a reservation…We’ve been sold out the last five nights and we’re still eight short for tomorrow but there’s no reason to believe those won’t be sold by the time I report for duty.
About 0100 this guy comes down to report the vending machine on the second floor wouldn’t give him a cookie despite the fact he put money in…Evidently, the cookie was right there on the edge and the guy reported he shook it several times…I give him two options: I could refund his money or he could take an item from the sundry stand with my compliments…He goes over to look at what we’ve got and plainly he’s not pleased when he notices the Oreos…He smiles and glances over at me and I nod knowingly and I completely lose my mind and let him take two with my compliments instead of one.
In office equipment news, the printer at the back desk needs some maintenance…It’s not printing well at all and there’s a full thing of toner in there and Brandon said the company’s been called…There is a workaround tho…For example, when printing folios to be delivered under the doors of the rooms of departing guests, you preview the folio instead of directly printing it…Then you print from the preview…When you do this the copies come out at the copy machine in the back office, obliging you to walk the few steps to the copier, but you have the benefit of clear copies.
We are out of Choco-Tacos at the sundry stand!!!…!!!!…I am not making that up…The first clue was when I started moving some ice cream a bit after midnight and all anyone was getting were those Oreo Klondike deals…No one was getting Choco-Tacos and some investigating showed they weren’t getting Choco-Taco because there weren’t any in the sundry stand freezer and there weren’t any in the freezer in the back office, either…I refuse to panic, but I have some zero clue what the deal is…Are Choco-taco workers on strike???…Did they run out of Choco-Taco shells???…They can’t possibly be out of chocolate…I don’t know, tho…We’re also out of ham and cheese Hot Pockets.
The Halliburton oaf who uses a half-gallon of hazelnut creamer with his coffee is back on the job…The entire top row of hazelnut creamer was gone…In fact, creamers were in such demand I was obliged to replenish the bottom rows for both hazelnut and French vanilla and once again found myself wondering if they were doing creamer shots because there wasn’t a whole lot of coffee used.
Tammy reports for duty a bit before 0700 and the first thing I do is notify her that I’ve got a secret…Recall last month Tammy said she had a secret and since she is unable to keep secrets this declaration was immediately followed by the news of my Employee of the Month nomination…Yours truly, however, can keep a secret, which visibly annoyed Tammy, who loves gossip…The secret involves Tammy, too, but I’m not telling what it is.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0930 Saturday until 1530 Saturday…6.0 hours for the day and 44.5 hours for the week…A satisfactory week in the sack.
Here are end-of-month numbers:
July Average: 43.4 hours
Rolling 3-month Average: 43.5 hours
2019 Monthly Average: 44.65 hours
It’s good to see some consistency in the sleep log…I know you appreciate it, too.
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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