It’s Read Free Sunday (RFS) at The Diary.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, July 23
While my powers as nite auditor are as sweeping as they are broad, I am human and not an image on a stained glass window and, consequently, cannot do everything for Pete’s sake…There were two examples of this tonite.
First up was this tedious broad from 117 and it was not a surprise to find out later that she was the GM of a hotel…Tired of doing things for people, she felt like having people do things for her, and doing so in in a way that makes her seem a pompous snot.
I had first dealt with her while Amy was still here…She had come to the front desk looking for a bag for her ice bucket and asked if we had any “water bottles”…Yours truly advised we did and pointed toward the sundry stand, advising her the small ones were a dollar, the large ones two dollars and like a stuck-up princess she advised that she thought they’d be free for rewards club members.
Well, we don’t offer freebies as a matter of course (tho, of course, we give enuff water away anyway) but even if we did ma’am, how in the hell am I supposed to know you’re a rewards club member???…It’s not as if we issue lapel pins…I offer a freebie, of course, and even insist she take one for her husband and you don’t have to be Dr Phil to know that – based on this interaction with his wife – he’s probably putting the bullets in the revolver right now because they cannot be Couple of the Year.
Later she comes back with video and audio coverage of her a/c unit, which is running a bit too loud – louder than company specs call for – and what can I do because she can’t sleep and she would love to get this resolved forthwith…I wanted to smack her, but instead was gracious, advising her I had no way to solve the problem now, but I could offer ear plugs…She asks for a fan (I’ll wait here while you go get it) and I go get one and leave it by her door.
I’ll tell you what, when we got back she had done a complete 180; it was as if she was my vassal…She thanked me repeatedly, without any class or grace whatsoever, and even shook my hand and we don’t know if she began feeling guilty about acting like a snit or what.
The other time my uselessness came shining thru was when a travel agent called to request a cancelation…It seems the guest had used her site and had booked rooms at two hotels and didn’t require the room here…Could she cancel it for her without penalty???…No…Not at this late hour, I’m sorry, we can’t authorize that…We reserved the room in good faith and we can’t help that either your website is too confusing or your customers are dolts…I did say she could call during business hours and maybe she could get someone to refund the charge and she said OK.
A bit later I get a call from the booking website they utilize…It’s the usual third-world chick and she reviews the situation and eventually states that she is going to put this one down as a courtesy cancelation, with all charges refunded…I told her look, you can do what you want, but I am going to check her in and bill the card, in accordance with hotel policy…That got her attention…She paused and said OK, is there someone else she could whine to, and I trotted out the usual after-0700-our-time line.
Look, I’m not here to be walked over…If they want to refund her, they can, but we held the room all day on a sold-out nite when we could’ve easily sold the room during the day…As we’ve noted here before, I am not paid to cost the company money, so call during the day and chew on Tammy’s ear…Ol’ Sparrow isn’t budging.
We were swamped tonite…We were so busy Amy didn’t leave until 2320 and we didn’t start counting drawers until a bit before midnite and we weren’t back from walking the hotel until 0120, a time more consistent with penal servitude than a regular nite audit shift…The big news, tho, is that both drawers – Amy’s and Assistant Front Manager Q’s – were both spot-on $200…Now, regular readers of this crap know having one of them be spot-on would’ve been big news in itself…Having both add up is utterly unprecedented.
At about 0130 there’s a call from what turned out to be two brothers…They said their sister was wandering around our parking lot – either on foot or in her blue car – and could we help find her…They added she had “a bit of dementia”.
Indeed she did…She was easy enuff to find, the car being parked right out front, and we walk around and her door was open and she was in the driver’s seat, with her dog, staring at a floor mat…She appears to be in her 60s…I approach and ask if we could be of service and she looks up with a demanding look in her eye, mumbles something or other, and then, with some assertion, wonders why it had taken me so long to come out and greet her, a failure of mine she repeated several times…I apologize, even tho we don’t customarily greet people when they drive up, because we’ve learned over the years – mainly in Sin City – that it is sometimes best to deal with the demented in their element…So we apologize for this glaring breach of protocol, ask her to wait a minute, and head in to talk to the brothers.
Crap, there is really not a whole lot we can do here; we’re a hotel, not an asylum…Besides, we didn’t have a vacancy…Well, there was the room there was the no-show that we knew wouldn’t show up but boy, the truly demented could be tuff once you get them in-house because you never know when they’re going to call up and report a yak under their bed or demand room service deliver fresh ink for their fountain pens.
We tell the brothers yeah, there was some dementia displayed, but she was parked out front and (relatively) safe, but we didn’t have a vacancy…They really didn’t know what to do, but they said they’d call her and exactly why she was driving in a strange town at zero-dark-thirty wasn’t asked by me and wasn’t addressed by them, and when I checked on her ten minutes later she was gone.
At about 0530 this very pretty blonde woman, probably about my age tho it was tuff to tell, comes up and asks for scissors…Good gravy, she’s the type of woman that’s been in our wheelhouse since diapers and we were immediately in love, the first time I’ve fallen in love with a guest since that musician chick last week…Her name’s Sherry, and she is in town visiting her daughter who moved here recently and she needs the scissors for a bit of sewing she’s doing on a table in the back part of the lobby…I wormed my way over a couple of times to say hi and drum up typical Sparrow lame conversation, which she graciously tolerated…She paints, too, and I told her about my project work, two artists chatting, at least until this dolt guest came up and needed something.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log:
1030 Saturday until 1330 Saturday
1730 Saturday until 2130 Saturday
7.0 hours for the day and 42.5 hours for the week, a total that gulag prisoners would snarl at.
We don’t know what the deal is, either…We were exhausted when we got home, but the wholesale sleep we generally get on Saturdays simply wasn’t there.
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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.
Coming soon! Gaylon’s books in actual book form!
