Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Sunday, July 28
Friends, here is another ProTip for you: you do not need to bring the folio that is slipped under your door back the front desk…Now, this really isn’t the biggest problem we face working a front desk…It might happen once a month…Maybe…And it really isn’t a problem at all, not like people who don’t ring the bell, but there is no reason to return it to me…I put it under your door for your convenience, in case you do not want to stop by the front desk before you head out…It shows a detailed summary of your charges and the amount you paid and that you have a zero balance and are free to depart.
Almost interesting is the fact that not everybody returns the same thing…The guy today only returned the folder the folio was stuffed in, with his room keys inside, keeping his folio…Sometimes people will sign the folio and return it, thinking it’s required for checkout…It is not, both the folder and the folio are yours to keep…If you really don’t want your folio, leave it in your room…It’s no big deal…We’ll recycle it.
Our pools close before I get here, at 2200 I think, and good luck getting me to open it for you…Two pretty girls tried…Earlier, they had stopped by for a snack and about 20 minutes later they were so intent on an early morning swim they wore their swimsuits down, perhaps in persuasion, tho perhaps they were just hopeful…No dice…I lied and said it was insurance regulation preventing me, but that was no more true than saying it was the Eleventh Commandment…The truth is one, if I did let them in and something happened, ol’ Sparrow would have some explaining to do and my Employee of the Month designation might well be revoked…I am not paid to put myself in position to do any explaining.
Second, if I let two people in, I’ve got to let everyone else who wants a late splashie-poo in, too…Of course, this increases the chances of something bad happening, but as a practical matter, once people are in it takes forever to get them out and, as I like to say, you can’t get in trouble for enforcing hotel policy, so I always say no to extended pool hours.
About 0330 this rather flippant young man comes in, proudly and breezily announcing he had just made a reservation online…I apologized and told him we were sold out, and he held his hand out and shook his head as if he was shocked, which you see a lot nowadays and which is really annoying and I motioned for his phone…He showed his reservation and it was for arrival later Sunday afternoon…I don’t know if he thought he could actually scam a room under these circumstances or whether he made a genuine mistake and sometimes guest can cause problems in these circumstances, but, somewhat surprisingly, this guest did not, and he walked out muttering to himself if he could get his money back.
And since we were sold out, we had the usual wizard who thought I was satan incarnate because every hotel is sold out…As noted, this is not a constructive question to ask…Rather, look inward and ask why you did not book in advance…I’m sympathetic to you having driven all night, but it is not my fault others had the foresight to make a reservation and you didn’t…There is no reason to get smarmy with me.
Then at 0630 a woman calls and asks if we have availability but declined to give a date, so I inquired if she any particular dates in mind…She did!!!…Next Saturday, $289, plus tax, plus the $25 pet fee for Fido…$289, plus tax was not what she wanted to hear at all and he audible reaction, followed by a brief silence left me wondering if I was going to have to call 9-1-1…Then she spoke:
Why so high???
Regular readers of this crap know the only real answer to that, of course, is because that’s what we think people will pay, but I merely said that was what the system was asking and after some more quiet time she actually booked.
The big news for Sunday Spaghetti Nite (SSN) is that, at the request of The Wife, I only made half as much…There are always leftovers which The Wife was having problems with because she found herself consuming them at times your more classically trained dieticians would frown upon, like one in the morning…So I bought a smaller jar of sauce and only cooked half the spaghetti I usually do and there were no leftovers….The only downside – or upside, depending on your point of view – was that I did not similarly alter the amount of Sparrow’s Classic Sausage Chunks SCSC) that goes into my Secret Recipe Sauce (SRS)…The result was there were an awful lot chunks in there, more than I’m looking for, actually, which are words ol’ Sparrow never thought he would say…For her part, The Wife had no problems with the number of chunks and she remarked she thought tonight was the best SSN yet.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1000 Sunday until 1700 Sunday…7.0 hours, a great start to the sleep week and the new sleep month.
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.
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