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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Sunday, August 26
Rajib was on time today.
Actually, he was dressed and ready at 0700, but Indians must be constitutionally incapable of actually showing up on time because he was still farting around in the back of the manager’s apartment, so I merely called back that I was leaving and he said OK or something similar and I left…But he was ready to go.
Rajib is also a mess…Admirably so, because I am messy and he even has me taking notes…The front desk, which has two computer monitors and really isn’t all that big, had paperwork, some hotel some not, and some tourist brochures and some other things, scattered all over it…None of it seemed particularly important but I didn’t want to throw stuff out merely because it wasn’t important to me, so I put it in a stack so I could do what little I have…Besides, I know from having people try to tidy up after me how futile this is: there will just be more…It’s the way the world is built.
It struck me that I hadn’t seen JoAnn, the lady who I usually relieved on Friday and Saturday nights so I asked Rajib about her and his reply was “Who?”…He said the only one Puja had told him about was me and if that’s the case he is working 24/7 until I report for duty next Friday night, altho Puja and Dustin could be back before then.
The tooth came out at the retailer tonight…Hardly a surprise, especially with my constant prodding the past few days…I am not one to whine so I hadn’t mentioned the moderate, non-stop discomfort it had provided the past couple of weeks and the good news is that stopped the instant it slipped out of its slot.
The bad news, of course, is I have a gaping hole in my teeth. This is hardly ideal, of course, but it is getting fixed, but not until the 13th, so maybe I can keep my mouth shut until then because it is really kind of ugly…The tooth itself looked like something from an archaeological dig and I don’t think my mouth could be worse off had I gargled with battery acid the past 20 years…I am looking forward to my new smile appointment on the 13th.
Before clocking in at the retailer I wandered into the break room and Charlie was there eating dinner…He’s in his early 20’s, has unkempt curly hair and takes advantage of the new dress code by wearing white undershirts to work and tonight Charlie was feasting on ramen noodles and potato chips, with some beef jerky standing by for dessert…I had a funny line:
Charlie, it is plain you are not married…Not only that, you don’t have a girlfriend…Hell, you don’t even have a date, do you???
Charlie is pretty funny.
That obvious?
I nodded solemnly and said yes and that he reminded me of me at that age, altho I was way too much of snob to sink to eating ramen noodles…I was always a macaroni and cheese guy, Kraft, too, unless I was broke, then I’d slum and get the 4 for a $1 ones…I could never see spending only a dime for dinner, even when I didn’t have a whole lot more to spend.
Things were a complete mess at Hotel B tonight…First, the internet service is down at the front desk…Guest wifi is still up, tho, but the front desk computers are not wifi compatible of all things, so we are stuck…Adam was accessing the system from his laptop, and I was able to access it from mine, which helped, but whether or not I could hook my laptop up to the printer turned out to be academic because there wasn’t any paper in the office…We had run out – not the first time we’ve run out of supplies, tho it isn’t a daily occurrence…Also, GM Adam was working the front desk because Shawn needed the past two days off and he is still pulling breakfast attendant duties and he looked like death warmed over…He is getting frustrated, I could see it in his eyes and I’ve had that look once or twice over the years…He said there has been some interest in the breakfast attendant position, but they’re people who already have work and the job does not pay well at all.
I was surprised we could log into the system from a personal laptop…Glad for it because it would have been a complete fiasco otherwise, but surprised…I mean, what is to prevent some malcontent from logging from anywhere and canceling a month’s worth of reservations???
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0830 Sunday until 1600 Sunday…7.5 hours, a strong start to the new sleep week…I took a melatonin, too, tho that didn’t stop me needing to use the can a couple of times.
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.
