Yeah, it’s Read Free Sunday (RFS) at The Diary.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, May 11
The Assistant Front Desk Manager (AFDM) was there when we reported for duty tonite and he was in a sour mood…Not too sour, but he certainly wasn’t Mr Warm & Fuzzy, either, and the problem turned out to be the backlog of pending maintenance issues…There are twelve, a really high number because things used to get done in fairly short order around here.
We commented that boy, we really must be missing Luke, but the AFDM shook his head and said no, the problem is the hotel isn’t spending the money they used to, so things that used to get fixed immediately – like, say, pool access doors – are deferred.
(Of the twelve, the oldest is for a broken treadmill in the fitness center that Tammy entered two months ago and most of the others were put in by Head Housekeeper Gloria who has a keen eye and prefers to run a tight ship.)
After about 20 minutes, GM Scott, of all people, shows up… It turns out he’s pulling the nite audit shift next door at Hotel B because Juan is on vacation…He said the choice was between him working it or paying some hapless, loser desk clerk some overtime…He added that even with the recent renovation the hotel still barely had 30 rooms and the whole nite audit is done in 15 minutes, so his nite’s work will be even more leisurely than mine.
Around 0100, 266 called with the nerve to ask for a late checkout…He said he was going to the hot springs in the morning and wasn’t sure when he’d be back, but he knew it would be later than the standard 1100 checkout time…I told I would be happy to offer him a 12 noon checkout, an offer greeted with no audible signs of rapture and he asked for a later one.
For some reason, we chose to circle the wagons here and we have no idea why, either…We were gracious, but firm, advising that noon was the latest we could do…He asked why and we said, truthfully, that we were very short of maids…Under further interrogation, tho, we allowed we could offer his preferred 1400 checkout time for a fee…He asked what that fee was and we said $50, a number pulled strait out of our ass right then.
Then he played the Diamond rewards club member card, a very wise play on his part because the highest-level members do get late checkouts…Presuming they’re available which, of course, ol’ Sparrow had categorically decided they weren’t.
After we hung up, we decided we had some zero clue why we were being a jerk about this…I mean, it’s not as if issuing late checkouts comes out of our bonus check…If we were sold out, sure, it’s reasonable to turn down late checkout requests, especially with a short housekeeping staff…In slow season, tho, it’s petty to say no because if Housekeeping can’t get to a room, you can merely mark it out of order until the following day, when they can get to it.
So when he called back, we were so sweet you could’ve poured us on your hotcakes…I told him it would be our pleasure to issue him the 1400 checkout he initially requested and – in finest Lutheran tradition – we apologized for the inconvenience of the prior phone call.
The big news at the gym is that, after 22 years of full-body workouts, we switched it up and started working specific body parts, known in the gym as a split workout…And it wasn’t as if this had been given a whole hell of a lot of thought, either…It was something we decided on the drive to the gym, done for the same reason we’ve done a lot of things in our life: it felt right.
Today we did shoulders and biceps, three exercises each, the same three sets: light, medium and heavy, with failure on the last rep still the standard for the last set…For shoulders we started with our usual side lateral raises, then threw in Arnold presses and the shoulder machine.
Arnold invented Arnold presses: you take a dumbbell in both hands (or one hand, if you prefer) holding it so your palms are facing you…You then lift it, moving your palm outward as you lift your arms all the way up and, done properly, the dumbbell should remain in the same plane…More or less…You also have the option of doing it either standing or sitting…We sit because 1) it’s better for morale to sit, and, 2) it provides more stability, especially for the heavier weights.
For bicep work, we did side lateral raises, z-bar curls, and those deals where you sit on a bench, lean over, and move the weight with a thigh supporting your elbow…These are called concentration curls because it largely concentrates that part of the bicep that sort of peaks when you flex…It should be noted, tho, that a lot of achieving the peak is genetic: either it’s there or it isn’t and some could do concentration curls for five days strait and not see the peak.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0930 Saturday until 1830 Saturday…9.0 hours for the day and 53.5 hours for the week, both really good figures.
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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.
The Diary of a Nobody was inspired by the 19th-century British novel of the same name.
Coming soon! Gaylon’s books in actual book form!
