Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Monday, January 14
Had a couple of technical issues in the back office of the hotel this morning.
First, the PDF deal started acting up…I was doing the post-night audit reports, which are generated as PDF files, which I save and then email them out…Well, Mr PDF decided to cop an attitude with pages either disappearing or generating a blank page…Sometimes both…For the Manager’s Flash Report – which details occupancy and revenue and other exciting things, I transfer some figures onto the monthly spreadsheet which I couldn’t do because the PDF kept vanishing…This obliged me to print the report instead of previewing it which not only enabled me to get the figures I needed for the spreadsheet but also resulted in eight sheets of scratch paper for the pile…The pile didn’t really need eight more sheets, it’s not too far from the bottom of the monitor, but I didn’t want to waste the paper by shredding it.
Then later, during the 0500 routine, the computer started running really slow and then not running at all, so I restarted it which solved everything.
I really wanted to scream at this oaf who meekly said “hi” instead of ringing the bell but, hardly for the first time, I forgot to put the sign and the bell out…So I was cordial, apologizing for not having the bell out and the getting it out and asking him to ring it, which he found only moderately funny…It was a regular guest, a delivery driver for a big city company that can’t find a driver up here…He recently extended his stay for another couple of weeks and wanted to make sure his keys were good…Well, I tried to make them but we got new keys and the machine was acting funny and in the end I wasn’t able to make them with the new keys…(You can tell they’re new because they don’t have directional arrows on them)…So I went and got some holiday keys from the back, made them and verified they were working and they must have worked because he didn’t come back.
For the third consecutive night I shredded a night audit checklist, merely to lessen the stack in the folder in the file cabinet and not after filling it out…Recall Assistant Front Desk Manager Devani had made a bunch of new ones earlier in the week, for reasons I’m sure she thought good, God bless her…Lord knows I don’t use them…Anyway, just for funsies, I went down the list – it’s three-plus pages long – and initialed everything I actually do and I was surprised at how useful I actually am: out of 45 items, I do 35 of them…Of the ten I don’t do, one was not really applicable and one was actually included in another item…The other eight are things done by other people that are listed as a back-up, but I’ve never known how to do them, or have long forgotten, so all-in-all I feel OK about my night’s labors.
Mr A came by the Veterans Service Office (VSO) today, a bit late for his 0830 appointment, but it was hardly a harried morning…Mr A is another older gentleman looking to sign up for VA medical, specifically so he can get hearing aids…On Civvie Street these are very expensive and it is not unheard of for veterans to save several thousand dollars when getting them thru the VA…And you don’t have to have a service-connected disability, either, you merely have to be signed up for VA medical.
Mr A is one of those who feels kind of guilty doing this…He’s retired and has insurance thru his former employer, but evidently hearing aids aren’t covered…I told him the same thing I tell everyone else who hesitates about signing up: don’t worry about it…These are benefits a grateful nation wants to extend to their veterans, so take them…We earned them.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1430 Monday until 2130 Monday…7.0 hours for the day and I didn’t get up to use the can once!!!…I am not making that up…I did wake up about 1730 or so but immediately rolled back over…I dreamt well and vividly and all in all, it was a great sleep session.
Regular readers of this crap know that 17.0 hours so far for the week is one heck of a total, 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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