Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Monday, September 24
Christopher, who manages the restaurant and who I just met tonight, stopped by the front desk saying he might need a room for the night…OK, we have rooms available, actually, we had were some suites, and he was welcome to one at the usual employee rate of $25, plus tax.
Actually, before he could get to that point, I asked him about shifters, the complimentary drink I heard we were entitled to after a tuff front desk shift…Chris, God bless him, confirmed this…They’re even available first thing in the morning and – and I am not making this up – he added we were entitled to 20% off our second drink, too!…Crap…I am not much of a drinker but I like to pretend I am and privately, I fretted about missing out on over 200 complimentary whiskey sours since I started here.
Anyway, he said he didn’t know if he’d need a room yet, and he’d be back and about 20 minutes later I hear Chris out front with a waitress…Evidently something happened at the restaurant, something fairly serious, which would explain his presence there that late, but the conversation sounded like the waitress was breaking up with Chris:
You have to make a decision…
I’ve given you lots of different options…
I had a reaction to what you did tonite…
It sounded like a soap opera and I almost started to weep and I still have some zero clue what went on, except that they weren’t breaking up, and I couldn’t be bothered to ask Chris what the deal was because 1) I don’t particularly care and, 2) if I was supposed to know he would have told me…As it was, he did want a room for the nite.
Later I get a call from a gal at the rewards club world headquarters:
I would like to verify a reservation was cancelled, may I give you a confirmation number???
Uh, yeah, sure…I am always logged in ready to receive confirmation numbers at oh-dark-thirty…I told her to hold on and put the phone down while I logged into the system and made her wait a few more seconds just for funsies…As it was, the reservation, made with his reward points, had been canceled – I had talked to the guy and canceled it myself earlier in the week – and she was out of my hair soon enuff.
Later, an accented voice from 113 sounded surprised to hear mine when I answered…She told me she had been trying to make an international call, rare in the mobile phone era, which wasn’t surprising because when I answered she was still pressing buttons…She must have had some money because with toll charges and surcharges and whatnot calling overseas is expensive…Heck, it even costs a couple of bucks to call me at the front desk.
Speaking of Chris and shifters, I came this close to having my first one this morning…Exactly why I thought having a cocktail was appropriate prior to heading into the Veteran Service Office (VSO) isn’t immediately clear, but it’s one drink and not continuous shots…As it was, the front desk was a madhouse and I clocked out too late…We had a couple of tour busses in house and every one of them was in the lobby for morning coffee service…Good gravy, I made more coffee than I did during the busiest morning during ski season…Hell, the sailors on a frigate wouldn’t put down as much coffee as these geezers…I also refilled the creamer four times and the sugar twice
I guess all veterans in town have been mobilized for active duty because boy, it continues to be dead slow at the VSO…I had one call, a local guy about to get out of the Marine Corps, who wanted to know if we had a program where vets going into law enforcement get some help buying their duty belts and holsters – known as leather in the trade – before going to the academy…He said a buddy of his from Texas said his county VSO is helping him with his…That’s not too bad a program, actually, but I had to tell him no, my office did not offer a program like that.
That was it…There wasn’t even an email waiting for me, tho I did get one a couple of hours into the shift from the VA heralding some progress made on something or another.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1530 Monday until 2130 Monday…6.0 hours for the day and 13.0 hours for the week, a drab total I know none of you are pleased with.
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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