Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Sunday, September 15
I reported for duty at the usual time and Devani was still finishing up some stuff and we were chatting about nothing in particular when Quentin, who had clocked out an hour earlier, stumbles in from the bar and assumes his usual seat in the lobby waiting for Devani to offer him a ride home (which she ended up doing)…They start talking about something called “shifters” and whether or not they regularly have them after their shift…I have some zero clue what they are talking about, but it sounds like fun so I asked what a “shifter” is.
It turns out “shifter” equals a complimentary well drink at the bar after your shift…I am not making that up, with Devani adding, with Q solemnly nodding concurrence, that “shifters” are also available at 0701 for hard-working, freshly off-duty nite auditors…I then asked Devani why/how in the heck I am only now hearing about “shifters”, tonite, a full eleven months after my eligibility for “shifters” began…I told Q it certainly wasn’t part of the night audit training he had provided me…Then Devani said I could even have an orange juice “since you don’t seem to be the type to drink in the morning”.
You have no way of knowing that, young lady.
This got a good laff from Devani…Q was across the lobby and was engrossed in something on his phone and appeared not to have heard the line..So after my shift I go to the bar and ask if this is true, that I can unwind after tuff night audit with a complimentary toddy and the barkeep says sure, what would you like???…I tell nothing right now, but I am going to file away for future drinking, er reference.
Tonight was pretty busy but hardly as busy as last night…First, we were sold out and everybody was checked in, so I didn’t have to waste time checking guests in and renting rooms…Second, few people came by the front desk…About 2330, tho, this guy comes in asking for a room and I told him we were sold out but he doesn’t leave…He asks if I was sure, a stupid question, then he feigns petulance and asks:
What about tomorrow???…What about the day after???
I was tired and prepared to be annoyed at anyone who didn’t display proper deference to yours truly, but I smiled because it was actually kind of funny…I told him I didn’t know offhand, but I was certain we did and then he asked if I knew if anyone else who had availability and I said yeah, the luxury hotel on the mountain did…I gave him the number and he dialed it and stood there as if he still expected some sort of service, but as soon as they answered he scooted out.
About 0115 I’m doing the night’s billing and this chick in 135 calls up to inform me she is trying to coordinate breakfast later this morning with her BFFs and she absolutely had to know if her BFFs had left a wake-up call or had asked for a late checkout…Oh heck, regular readers of this crap know I can’t give out this kind of information…One of the things you pay for at a hotel is to not have goddamned front desk personnel blabbing about your wake-up and check-our plans…I told her this…She emphasized we were talking about her best friends on the entire planet…I told her I cannot give out guest information of any sort…To her credit, she realized when the tablets were coming down from Mount Sinai and stopped asking…She had some other questions, tho, which I happily answered, and we rang off on good terms, tho I still found myself wondering if they were so damn close why didn’t she just call them herself.
Front desk internet went down about 0317…I had everything done, including the night’s project work, which I sluffed on, actually, and I had just reclined at the back office desk with my feet up – a shocker, I know – and had some mindless crap playing on youtube so I don’t fall completely asleep when it stopped playing…This also affects the in-room TV and the TV in the lobby…It does not, tho affect, the WiFi and you may be asking yourself why didn’t ol’ Sparrow connect to the WiFi???…Well, because ol’ Sparrow wasn’t allowed to…The front desk and back-office computers aren’t able to connect to WiFi, tho there is a dial-up option.
Because I couldn’t do the 0500 stuff and had the time, I actually cleaned the coffee stains from the sink in the back coffee room…I am not making that up…There’s a scrubby and some cleanser back there and I do this from time to time because, believe it or not, coffee stains annoy me…At least here…They don’t seem to annoy me anywhere else like, say, for instance, on my desk, but they do in the sink at work…Front desk internet reappeared at 0545 or so, leaving barely enuff time to get credit card reports and the housekeeping report printed, and the day’s registration cards printed, with rewards club point balances written on them.
The Wife had a great dinner waiting for me when I woke up: a BBQd ribeye and some potato slices she had grilled, too, an utterly tasty and ingenious idea…She had already canceled our usual Sunday Spaghetti Nite (SSN), announcing that she was going “to do some grilling”…Well, not only did she grill her beloved, hard-sleeping husband a ribeye, but she had also grilled some chicken and some post-workout hamburger I hadn’t gotten around to eating yet that needed to be cooked.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0830 Sunday until 2030 Sunday…12.0 hours, every one of them needed after Saturday’s 3.0-hour debacle…I only woke up once to use the can, the usual 1130 pit stop, and at 1730 or so I recall rolling over but that was it, otherwise I slept straight thru…I cheated and took a melatonin, too, for exactly this purpose…There was no doubt I’d be able to fall asleep, but sometimes a melatonin helps keep you asleep.
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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