Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Monday, January 20
Look, if you are going to ring the bell, then ring it, dammit…Don’t gently tap it so I can barely hear it…Go ahead and give it a good bang.
Actually, I knew this lady was out front because I heard her farting around the sundry stand before she meekly bleated “hey”…I heard that but regular readers of this crap know standard Sparrow policy: you gotta ring the bell to get me out there…Well, to her credit, the lady almost immediately sees the bell and utters a sound then barely touches the bell!!!…You could barely hear it and I was about to get snitty and stay in the back office, but I didn’t, she was in step with the spirit of bell procedures even if it was a lame-o ring.
The lady had been by the night before and I could tell she liked me…She came back twice more this morning, for water and then to get her key redone and she did everything but order me to make a copy for myself…This happens from time to time in the hotel racket and you must remember Sparrow’s First Law: you do not, under any circumstances, mess around with guests.
About 0615 I went out front to check on morning coffee service and a regular guest was out there, as he has been every morning for his stay…He’s a chatty sort and usually gets some coffee and sets his wheelchair up in the middle of the lobby and I made the mistake of making small talk…Of course, this was seized on as an invitation to chat and I was almost in for it except I took advantage of a half-second respite to apologize, point to the back office and claim I had duties to attend to, a time-honored night auditor trick for getting out of a conversation.
It’s usually a lie, too, tho only half a lie in this case…Yes, I was working, but it was nothing too important and certainly not anything timely: I was merely putting WiFI code stickers on some key packets – a reasonable night auditor function – but more importantly, I had an episode of an Aussie TV show about chicks in prison on…It’s a hell of a show…Pa Sparrow and I used to watch it when I was, I think, in eighth grade or so on Channel 5 in LA…Mom couldn’t see the point to watching a soap opera about chicks in prison, but dad and I could and we never missed it…I came across it a few months ago by chance, still liked it, so I went and started at Episode 1…I’m up to 102 now with only 570 or so more to go.
The big news from the back coffee room is the new box of coffee packets are the large 9-ounce ones and not our usual 3-ounce packets…Assistant Front Desk Manager Devani said it was her fault, noting she made the order on the weekend and evidently the weekend help at the distributor for some reason thought we needed 9-ounce packages…Fortunately, we still had some 3-oz packages left when I opened the box of 9-ouncers, so it was a simple matter to pour a regular package in a paper coffee cup and make a mark at the fill line.
It was cold tonight, minus-8 on the dashboard thermometer of the new ride at the end of my shift, so I started it and then went back into the lobby to give it time to warm up because it’s no fun sitting in a minus-8 car…That’s pretty cold, but still 21 degrees warmer than the coldest I’ve experienced…Just for funsies I went out in the minus-29 cold without a jacket which was really dumb, but I was only out there for a few seconds.
At the Veterans Service Office (VSO) I kept trying to get information for Mr G with no luck…Recall he came in last week and said he’d had some exams last summer and hadn’t heard squat from the VA yet…Well, my all-access VA pass hasn’t been stamped yet, so I put out some phone calls and emails and haven’t heard anything back yet…Mr G called Friday and had a message waiting for me this morning.
There are two problems here: one, I am here to serve veterans, not tell to stop pestering me and, two, older vets aren’t really on intimate terms with the Internet because VA medical has a pretty useful site where you can order prescription refills and view medical info and whatnot…Now, it is a government site and registration is a bit more complicated than simply signing up with an email – which some older vets don’t have – but with some persistence, it can be done…Most older vets don’t want to bother with that, tho, and this is one of the reasons I have a job.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1730 Monday until 2030 Monday…3.0 hours for the day and a paltry 12.o hours for the week.
I’m not really complaining tho…You average almost 9.0 hours of sleep for five or six sleep sessions and you’re bound to run into a session where you don’t need all that much sack time…In fact, I needed so little sleep 2030 was a full hour or so before the alarm was set to go off…Besides, the Tuesday Sleep Session (TSS) is all you can get so I can catch up there, if needed.
I did get out of bed at 2030 tho, to see if ol’ Sparrow would be required to shovel snow but none had fallen, which doesn’t mean anything because it could dump four inches in the next hour…It didn’t tho…When I eventually rolled out of bed at 2130 it was still clear.
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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