Indeed, it’s Read Free Sunday (RFS) at The Diary. Enjoy.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, April 16
The big news is there are no longer 45 pennies in each of the two cash drawers…Finally…This is a modest pain in the arse because 90 is a lot of pennies to count and it’s rare, too…Usually there are 20 or so pennies in each drawer.
This brings up another Wonder of the Front Desk: how in theeee hell do 30 or so pennies get used???…It’s not likely all were needed as change and our laundry machines don’t take pennies and this one may never be solved.
At 0330 I’m on the can and the front desk cell rings…It’s a guy from IT calling asking whether our issues with The System from Wednesday morning have been solved…Well, thanks for caring three days later; that’s wonderful customer service follow-up.
Actually, first, he inquired as to whether or not I was GM Andy, which got a chuckle out of yours truly…No, I told him, I was not GM Andy, declining to add it was the middle of nite here and that GM Andy was home sleeping, and that yours truly was the only one here…It’s not an illogical question, tho, because it’s mid-afternoon Lahoristan or wherever he’s calling from and not everyone has an appropriate, accurate, grasp of time zones…As it was, ol’ Sparrow was pleased to report the problem had been resolved and the tech announced he was going to close the ticket on the word of a mere nite auditor and not the GM.
Later, yours truly swung one of his patented two-nite-one-rate deals…Recall these happen when someone wants to check in at oh-dark-thirty, but not check out until the following day…Technically, it’s a one-nite stay in the system because you’re checking in Saturday and checking out Sunday but – equally technically, you’re checking in Friday and leaving Sunday, which is a two-nite stay.
Regular readers of this crap know ol’ Sparrow customarily disregards such technicalities and quotes a rate good for immediate check-in with checkout tomorrow…This happened more than once this past winter, with the most famous one probably being the $350 rate that was charged to a truck driver who really needed some sleep and a day off.
It was the same circumstance tonite when this guy called me…He said he was scoping out rates for immediate check-in, but the quotes were all for later today, a Saturday check-in, and he and his buddy were tired right now and weren’t going to leave town until Sunday.
Hell, that’s no problem at all…I did some quick research and decided $139, plus tax, wouldn’t be too bad a deal for either of us and he was all over it…Later, when they showed up, yours truly neglected to change the rate in The System from $119 to $139, so $119 showed up on the registration I gave him to sign, so he ended up saving another twenty bucks.
Boy, one of the pilots with the 0600 United crew would not stop yapping…Evidently, this was his only second flight back after two years of medical leave and he wanted to leave nothing to chance…The flight to the big city is 29 minutes and evidently, he’d never had a flight this short in his 70 years of flying because he was quizzing the flight attendants about whether or not they offer beverage service which yours truly knows from experience is no, they do not, and he blabbed about other technical aspects of the flight as if this were a pre-flight briefing for the crew of Air Force One…Heck, the briefing wasn’t a whole lot shorter than the flight would be…Afterward, he noted that United was short of pilots and was offering double pay for some flights.
I signed up for Easter brunch at the restaurant, making a reservation for 0900, their earliest seating…Ol’ Sparrow has no particular religious beliefs at this stage of his life so Easter means little to him, but boy, they have prime rib on the menu and the last prime rib I had there ages ago was wonderful
I was curious as to whether or not prime rib would be offered that early, but a waitress assured me it would, saying it’s on the menu so yeah, it’ll be served…The chef usually comes in at 0600, hardly enuff time to get prime rib ready by 0900, but I’m a lousy nite auditor and not a chef so what do I know???…Maybe they’re having a chef come in early Sunday morning.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0900 Saturday until 2130 Saturday…12.5 triumphant hours for the day and 54.5 hours for the week, a splendid follow-up to last week’s 55.5 hours PB.
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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.
