It’s Read Free Sunday (RFS) at The Diary of a Nobody.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, July 31
Good gravy this was a busy nite…Billing wasn’t done and the hotel walked until after 0300 and registration cards for the day’s arrivals weren’t done until 0530, tho we can all take heart in the fact morning coffee service (MCS) went off on time and without a hitch.
It started immediately, too, with this guy whose room had been booked by the hotel next door because they were unable to produce the suite (remember that) he’d originally reserved with them…Everything actually proceeded normally until he asked what kind of suite we had for him and ol’ Sparrow’s been serving people long enuff to know that he would be rather tedious to deal with if the proper answer wasn’t produced.
It wasn’t…Some checking showed we had a room with one king bed reserved for him, probably the best we could do on short notice when we’re sold out because the Interstate south of here is closed for the 23rd time this month.
The guy actually seemed bewildered that we weren’t able to produce a room – er, suite – identical to the one he’d reserved next door, which is actually one of those residence hotel deals and yours truly was obliged to show him a palm and advise him ol’ Sparrow wasn’t his problem – a seldom-used tactic, offered mainly in self-defense to save valuable time – and this was the best we could do for him on such short notice…He demanded to talk to the front desk at the other hotel and seemed peeved when there wasn’t a direct 24/7 hotline available…He managed to save some face, however, by producing a sticky note with the number on it and having me dial it for him.
The guy hung up on him…I can tell when front desk clerks hang up on guests because I’ve done it once or twice myself…He had me call him back tho, of course, there was nothing the hapless guy could do.
In the end, he favored us by deigning to take the room, despite the fact there wasn’t a full kitchen and after he left I put it at even money he’d call within five minutes to whine about something and he did, too!!!…I am not making that up…There wasn’t a freezer big enuff to hold the chicken he had brought, nor was there a wine opener…I told him we could keep the chicken for him in a back-office freezer and that we had a wine bottle opener for him.
More than one person copped an attitude, too, when they were informed we were sold out, including a two or three who asked what could possibly be going on in town that would deprive them of a night’s lodging…Well, you know, it’s Friday nite in a tourist town for one thing and for another you probably made a detour to get here and you hardly have an exclusive on that…I didn’t actually say that, tho, because that wouldn’t have been particularly gracious, as big a sin as there is for someone whose blood is half English.
My favorite, tho, was this broad who called and after being told we were sold out sighed and said thank you in the exact same tone spoiled adults use when they don’t get their way…The second favorite was another wizard who started off by asking “…if you could tell me if you have any vacancies…”
Uh, yeah, I could tell you…I wanted to add I wasn’t because her query didn’t ask if we had vacancies, merely if I would tell her whether we did or not, but she probably had enuff to worry about without dealing with a smart-ass nite auditor.
Then there were some technical problems running the nite audit…At the end, The System generates and files numerous reports but not tonite, there were error buttons for each one…After hitting the OK button three or four times ol’ Sparrow finally spots the trend and calls tech support…This takes an hour-and-a-half to clear up, including logging into the computer in the server room.
Then there were problems billing the departing rooms…The first one took forever and never did charge, so restarted the back office computer and that didn’t help, either…I went out front and tried it at the right workstation and BOOM, that’s billing rooms like a champ, but I went back and double-checked again because I don’t want to do billing on the front computer…I have to stand at the front computer, for Pete’s sake whereas in the back and I can sit down and bill in comfort…As it was, billing was done out front.
I got rid of the Push-Ups in the sundry strand freezer this morning…There were a couple in there, in between the Reese’s ice cream sandwiches and the original Klondike bars, but it turned out there was an almost-full box of those M&M ice cream sandwiches…Well, premium product like this has to be moved, of course, so ol’ Sparrow got it out there pronto because these sell pretty well and there really isn’t room for all four of them and ol’ Sparrow appears to have a prejudice against Push-Ups anyway…So in a raw display of my power, I got rid of the Push-Ups.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0930 Saturday until 1900 Saturday…9.5 hours for the day, 46.0 hours for the week and a weekly average of 48.0 hours per week for the month.
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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