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It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Wednesday, December 27
The Front Desk Supervisor (FDS) was, by his own admission, a failure tonite…First, there were ten arrivals waiting for me, a direct and flagrant violation of the unofficial Sparrow policy (USP) which dictates that all arrivals be in-house when we report for duty.
Not only that, he didn’t come close to selling us out, meaning no sold-out bonus (SOB) and leaving ol’ Sparrow with dozens of rooms to move, of which he ended moving exactly two of them, both at very attractive rates.
Gabby was there, too, and she still does not appear to be fretting over having declined my date invitation this past summer…She was yapping away, too, like only a Mexican girl can, which made us glad she said no…(Nobody yaps like Mexican women…We have street cred here…Russian and Jewish women come close, tho.)…We were in the back counting cash drawers, but with Gabby you could be in the next county and it would be as if she was right there next to you…Her talking points tonite were as various as they were longwinded, with my personal fave being her theory that extended breath-holding is good for your health…The FDS, ever sensible, was skeptical, and we stayed out of this discussion – to ward off stroke – when we were at the front desk swapping out drawers.
The big news is we were finally brought kicking and screaming into the third decade of the 21st century this morning when for the first time we accepted a pic of an ID when a guest checked in instead of insisting on the actual ID…Now we have a lot of experience checking IDs and there was a time when the idea of accepting a pic of an ID would’ve been preposterous…Not anymore…The trooper will accept a pic of my insurance card, so I guess I can accept a pic of an ID, especially because had he had the actual ID that he had a pic for we would have accepted it without question…Plus, he had pics of both the front and the back and the ID looked legit from the get-go and we concluded that to not have accepted it would’ve been petty on our part…We’re going seek some clarification on this one, tho.
It was dead slow at the veterans service office (VSO) today…There wasn’t a speaker at the weekly state VSO meeting, either, and while sometimes this could lead to a meandering, prattling meeting, today was pretty useful, with everyone more or less adding value to the festivities…Our buddy Ed – the VSO in the next county – chimed in, noting a surviving spouse he was helping received both Social Security and VA death benefit checks without having filed the appropriate paperwork…Ed was baffled and so were others until Marshall – who knows everything – chimed in noting that SS, of course, knew about the death and they are obliged by law to advise the VA when required which, of course, explained everything.
We were media whores today, too…There was an email from the state advising that applications for property tax exemptions are now available and due by July 1…To be eligible, you have to have a 100% disability rating, or be a surviving spouse of 1) someone who received that benefit or, 2) of someone who died in service or of a service-connected disability…The benefit is half off the first $200,000 of home valuation (some of you keeping score at home may – or may not – be interested in noting the state makes up the difference to the county) and not only did we put it up on the VSO website, but we sent press releases to the newspaper and assorted radio stations.
Also noted by one VSO was that the VA is now requiring a voided check instead of merely including routing and account numbers on the claim form…Almost interesting was that no other VSO has had this happen to them, tho everyone agreed if this ended up being a change in policy it would end up being a clusterf*ck because not everyone has checks nowadays…We also talked about how the VA continues to have problems retaining and hiring people and that there are still a lot of mistakes being made by new raters…One VSO even shared he sent in Form A for a claim – which was appropriate – but the VA said no, send in Form B and then later said no, dumbass, this should go on Form A, which had been sent in two months ago, but nobody at VA had read the veteran’s file.
There was a wellness survey sent out today by the Human Services Department…They had recently been allotted some money for employee wellness and there’s a vacant room in the new building that they want to put some fitness stuff in…The survey was optional and supposedly anonymous and we filled it out, but not too much because we’re the only guy in the department and answers to certain questions – like “are you a giuy?” – would give us away.
Anyway, we noted that we would not be interested in using such a fitness/wellness room, but that some of us belong to gyms and a subsidy for an annual gym membership would not be dismissed out of hand.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: As usual for Wednesday, there is no sleep to report today.
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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!
