Yes, it’s Read Free Sunday at The Diary. Enjoy.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, December 18
Good gravy, it was a fiasco when I reported for duty at the hotel…it was so busy there was actually a modest line of guests waiting to check-in, meaning ol’ Sparrow couldn’t ease into his night’s labors with a cup of joe like he prefers, being obliged to dive right into matters, which he strongly objects to.
As I’m checking these good folks in one of the guys Amy was checking in pulled out some cash and drops it on the counter and then Amy goes into the back office and then presumably into the restaurant, which as already closed, and returns with two six-packs of brewskies…I am not making that up: she sold guests beer and there is some zero clue how she did this because there isn’t a “6-Pack” button on the sundry stand sales screen (SSS)…She took the cash and presumably took it back to the bar in the restaurant, but they’d already closed out their drawers, so who the hell knows how it was accounted for.
The actual front desk was out of hand…There were a lot of registration cards lying around because Amy had been slammed and I told her not to worry about it, I’d take care of them…A couple of them didn’t match up tho, plus two of the remaining arrivals had had their room number changed and ol’ Sparrow was generally getting bad vibes so he did a bucket check, which is making sure the right registration card is in the right slot in the file doohickey the reg cards are kept in, known in the trade as the bucket.
This wasn’t a full-blown bucket check where you verify the dates of the stay and the rate on the reg card matches the dates and rate in the system, tho, it was merely to make sure the right registration card was in the correct slot, but it still took some work…I could’ve not done one, but it’s important to have a squared away front desk for the purely selfish reason that a squared away front desk prevents mistakes and headaches for yours truly…Besides, I’m not here to do as little as possible – well, yes I am – and sometimes you have to dig in and do a bucket check.
The back office wasn’t any better, either, the desk looking like a scullery…There was cutlery and two cups and even mustard and ketchup bottles on the desk, not to mention crumbs all over the place and getting the desk straightened up was like doing a Level II cleaning at The Shire.
Morning Coffee Service (MCS) was still up, too, offering cold, perhaps lukewarm coffee to guests…This is unsatisfactory, of course, but we no longer have two people working day and swing shifts, there’s one person working what’s called a mid-shit here, usually 1200-2000, so when it’s a weekend in ski season you can understand why MCS is still up because swing shift in this instance can be a dead sprint from start to finish…I took the coffee and water pots in, of course, but left the racks up because they’d only be going back up in a couple of hours, of course.
Needless to say, the sundry stand needed to be stocked…Heck, it was so bereft of stuff it felt like it was being stocked for its grand opening and between guests and cleaning up and stocking it was a busy nite at the hotel.
The big news is – and ol’ Sparrow is not making this up – is that Creamer Challenge II is on!!!…Recall a while back new boxes of both half & half and French vanilla creamer needed to be opened in the back coffee room and Creamer Challenge I showed French vanilla got used the most, tho an unofficial field test later showed half & half got strong usage…Tonite fresh boxes of both were again opened, and those of you keeping score at home will anxiously be awaiting the results, I’m sure.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0900 Saturday until 2100 Saturday…A whopping 12.0 hours for the day and ladies and gentlemen there you have it, the new Heavyweight Champion of the World, a Sleep Log record (SLR) 54.5 hours for the week.
The big news – as if bigger news were possible – is that there was only one trip to the can…Now, yours truly was up at 1630 after a dream ended feeling pretty good and wondering – briefly, as it turned out – whether to get up and get some coffee going, but a patented Sparrow Roll Over (SRO) nipped that folly in the bud.
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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.
Gaylon’s books can also be found at The Reading Salon.
