Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Tuesday, June 9
You would think, after enuff time knocking around front desks, that you would have heard everything on the phone.
I got a new one this morning…About 0300 the phone rings and, pretending to be peeved, I stare at it for a few rings opening it would stop…It didn’t and there some girl on the other hotelswhatever dot com…Do we offer breakfast???…Yes, a rather modest one, frankly what with our restaurant still closed, but it’s something to show we’re thinking of you…Fine, she says…Is your pool open???…Our outdoor one, sure, but the indoor one is closed…Excellent…Then this:
How close to the protests are you???
Excuse me???
How close to the protests are you???
Well, word had obviously reached hotelswhatever.com that our small ski town is ground zero in the George Floyd protests…Forget the inner cities, are how are the future ski bums of the Rockies taking this???
And why does she want to know???…Are they getting queries from potential guests on this???…And if they are, are callers demanding to be close to or far away from the protests???…Or, are they working package tours of protest sites???…Not that there is much to see up here…A couple of times last week some high school kids held up signs outside the county the building, but that’s been it…I told her that and he said thank you in a manner that indicated I wasn’t the first hotel she’d called on this matter, and I hung up.
58 rooms tonight, the highest of the Virus Era…And we’re starting to see the signs of increased occupancy: phone calls on graveyard, more folios to deliver and early rising guests…There were so many, in fact, I had to change both coffee pots before Candace came in at 0700, something you only get during the busiest of times.
Towards the end of the shift, I got off a funny line…This friendly sort came down and said he left his key in his room and after I verified his room number he mentioned he would like to extend his stay, too…I tell him, only half-jokingly, one thing at a time, sir and he says sure and I make him his key and then start in on extending his stay…His car’s engine gave out here and now it won’t be ready until Thursday morning…Well, I tell him how about we make it good thru Friday morning on the extreeeeeme off chance it isn’t ready Thursday…If it is, he could cancel the last night at no charge…He sees my point because we’d both hate for him to need the extra night and us be sold out, so I book him for a Friday morning checkout…While I am doing this he asks if he can have a pen…Feigning exasperation, I step away from the computer, rubbing my forehead like I had one of those tension headaches people in certain aspirin commercials got when we were kids…The line, perhaps inevitable, from Sparrow:
You’re really starting to get on my nerves now, sir.
Call it the instincts all the great ones have if you must, but I knew – knew – I could pull this line off…One, you’ve to know your guests…If you waste this line on a dullard you look like an idiot…Two, you’ve got to have the timing and in this case, it was a line drive, centerfield, base hit…I knew the guy would laff, as he had to because my timing was spot on…I think this might well be a Line of the Year candidate.
I headed to the big city immediately after my shift…We’d had some snow at the hotel of all things and there no small amount of it on the pass…Good thing the snow tires are still on the new ride.
39.429!!!
Even the big city is mocking me now at the gas pump, as I was teased with getting this close to the magic 40 MPG mark for the new ride for the third consecutive week…Maybe I should take th 40-pound sack of birdseed out and actually start feeding it to the birds…We are close enuff to 40 MPG that the extra weight might make the difference.
The Sparrow For US Senate appearance went very well…It was actually a meeting of a county chapter of the Minor Party and everyone knew me and I think everyone of there was a candidate for something or another, county commissioner, the state legislature, what have you and as always happens when I get to talk with people face-to-face I had them getting their wallets out in short order and the campaign fund showed a modest increase…I scammed some new sunglasses, too…Someone had left them at the last gathering Kevin and Melissa (longtime supporters of mine) had hosted and all it cost was a modest donation to the county party’s general fund, which I took out of personal funds and not campaign funds.
As we were leaving I was talking with Victoria and Bennett and they both wanted to know why they should vote for me instead of my primary opponent and I told them why and afterward Bennett pulled out another $20 and gave it to me, saying he was glad and impressed I hadn’t slung mud at my opponent.
I think I set a personal best today for the highest temperature range in one day…On the pass heading out of town this morning it was 28 degrees and here in the big city it was in the low 70s, so call it a 45-degree range…I’m not entirely sure, tho.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: There was no sleep to report today.
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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