It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Tuesday, October 10
When we reported for duty at the hotel, we asked Chris if there had been a Coke delivery today and he said his tendency was to think not…Chris – showing the insights that are taking him strait to the top in the hotel racket – noted that not only was there an obvious lack of new product lying around, but no one had put a receipt in his box…We received this information with our hands on our hips, looking strait down, while nodding solemn agreement, not completely unfunny there…Then we checked behind the back office door, where the cases of Dasani are kept, noted there weren’t any, and said we concur with his assessment.
Chris advised that we were one room away from a sellout, too, and regular readers of this crap know that this leaves the working nite auditor with a tuff call: do you stick to your normal routine and risk missing a late, after-audit arrival or do you wait and throw your nite’s timing off….Sometimes we spend no small amount of time fretting over this but this time we didn’t even blink: Chris said there had been in action at all so the decision was easy: we’d forge ahead on schedule.
Then – with Movie of the Week timing – immediately after we had, irrevocably, started the nite audit the phone rang…Crap, crap, and triple crap, it was probably someone looking for a room and there goes Sparrow, blowing the sellout…This is regrettable because sellouts are good for management’s morale and, of course, us front deskers get a bonus when we’re sold out and while tonite’s bonus would’ve been relatively modest it, too, would’ve been good for morale.
As it was, tho, it was a guy calling from the front desk extension…We saw that on Caller ID and didn’t even bother to say hi; we hung up and went out front where ol’ Sparrow’s finely-tuned instincts were put to use because there was a guy there who immediately gave the impression of one who was in the mood to put one over.
He said he was having problems with the ATM and he wanted me to do something about it…Well, we told him, we don’t own the ATM and outside of providing electricity and internet access we don’t have jurisdiction over it and even if we did, we didn’t have the skills to do anything about it, our experience with the armored truck company here notwithstanding…We asked what the problem was and he said it wasn’t dispensing cash, with further querying on our part yielding the tidbit the machine had the gall to tell him he didn’t have any money in his account, a blatant lie because any idiot knew there was loads of cash in the account.
– Oh, sir, that’s not an ATM problem, that’s a bank account problem…We really can’t do anything about that.
He didn’t want to hear this at all and it was plain he still wanted me to do something and he asked if there was another way he could get some cash because he needed quarters for laundry…In the spirit of helpfulness, he wondered if we could give him the cash and charge the advance to his room, which more or less confirmed he was trying to put something over…This was a dumb suggestion for three reasons: 1) we don’t do that here; 2) even if we did ol’ Sparrow doesn’t know how to do that; and, 3) even if one and two were in play we’re not going to do that when you admitted your account has no money in it…Give the guy credit, tho, he knew when the tablets were coming down from Mount Sinai and didn’t press the matter.
Dray the Dairy Delivery Driver (D4) is reporting later and later for morning coffee, not arriving this morning until a bit after 0400…He said he had a good rest and was rarin’ to go, but he was having printer problems that really hadn’t been solved, so it could be a long day today…He added he still doesn’t have any help on his newly expanded route and once the snow starts falling it will be impossible to get his route done without it.
While we went to the gym, there wasn’t a workout today, it being waved off after the first two warmup sets of leg work…We weren’t entirely surprised by this…Recall that since our last workout last Tuesday we went an extended period with very little sleep and we know from experience (having been up 40+ hours several times) that this is not immediately recovered from…We had gotten a decent rest today (see Sleep Log below) and we felt OK when we got to the gym, but after the first couple of sets we knew: our body was still weary and not in the mood for even a light workout…So we headed home.
The big news is the temporary weight room is under construction…There were some studs, or girders, or whatever the hell they are, up in the middle of the room and you don’t have to edit Construction Digest to know a wall is being put up…Actually, the entire facility is being redone, tho we have some zero clue when the old weight room will be finished.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0930 Tuesday until 1530 Tuesday…6.0 hours for the day and 25.0 hours for the week, the first a rather pedestrian total and the second not too bad.
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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!
