It’s Read Free Sunday at The Diary of a Nobody.
Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, September 26
The big news is the new freezer at the sundry stand has been installed…It’s a bit noisier than you’re looking for, but that’s only in relation to the old one and it’s not as if you can hear it throughout the whole goddamn lobby.
There weren’t instructions about stocking it, either, nothing in the logbook and nothing passed on from Q, who’s so thorough you know he would have said something had instructions been left.
As it was, I stocked it because there seemed no reason not to…I opened it and it certainly appeared cold enuff and let’s remember Sparrow’s 2nd Rule of Nite Auditing: don’t give those bastards on day shift a reason to wonder what the hell’s going on overnight: we don’t need anyone wondering why the freezer wasn’t stocked.
This is one of two trains of thought here. The other train of thought – the one taken by lazy nite auditors (of which I’m one, but you know) – is there were no instructions to fill it, so we’ll leave it alone…This isn’t a good attitude…I mean, it’s going to get stocked eventually and we’re going on two consecutive weeks being sold out and they’re busy enuff on day shift.
Speaking of the sundry stand, ol’ Sparrow did what had to be a record sale: $18.50 to this guy who had just come in from smoking some weed, a figure that does not include some popcorn thrown in with my compliments…It was like he was loading out for a cruise: hot pockets, two breakfast sandwiches (both of which had to be retrieved from the back office freezer because the new one hadn’t been stocked yet) two sacks of chips and several candy bars…Almost interesting: no beverages…I was going to ask about this but instead asked if it was all for him and he said no, which I didn’t altogether believe.
There were six arrivals when I reported for duty and none of them had arrived when I was ready to start the audit…Four checked in normally but two had their credit cards declined…Well, actually one was declined and the other reservation was made without a credit card.
Well, regular readers of this crap know this is one of those famous tuff calls us night auditors are paid to make: do you check them in and hope they show up with acceptable payment or do you cancel their reservation, rent the rooms to someone else and hope they don’t show up???…It’s all up to you, too, because Lord knows there isn’t any hard and fast hotel policy on the matter tho, to be fair, they never say anything about this.
My instincts, usually trusty, said check them in, they’ll be arriving with payment and some research reinforced that: they were both part of a wedding party and these people tend to show up so I checked them in and BOOM, they turned out to be mother and daughter and they both had valid credit cards and everything worked out.
Despite only a few hours of sleep, there was good strength in the gym…Towards the end, the lights went out but there was still enuff daylight to carry on and the power was on at The Shire when I returned so maybe it was a fairly localized outage, or maybe Ryan forgot to pay his power bill…The walk was the River Route, which will be the Primary Daylight Walk until winter sets in because it’s really nice to watch the colors.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0830 Saturday until 1330 Saturday…5.0 hours for the day, 47.0 hours for the week, an average of 47.625 hours per week for the month and a rolling three-month average of 46.65 hours per week.
I could have slept longer…I was up at 1330 to use the can and then crawled back into bed and the cat soon enuff stood post on my back but – in what has to be considered the Upset of the Year – I didn’t really want any more sleep…There was project work to do and weights to lift and a route to walk and other things, too, and ol’ Sparrow really wanted to get at them.
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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