Bad Mojo

This night is full of it.

Everyone is in a pissy mood, and I'm trying my hardest not to let it rub off on me.  Breathe.  Breeeeathe.  Get home and drink.

So here's the deal this time:

I come in for my shift and the last shift lets me know that there's a fellow requesting a shuttle ride to the airport at 5:30 AM.  Unfortunately, we don't offer the shuttle that early, and at 11 PM at night (with a 4:30 AM wakeup call) it's too late for me to call up to his room and inform him.  SO.  I do the next best thing and call a cab to pick him up in the morning instead.  It's not ideal...but it's a way to the airport.

There's a legitimate reason the shuttle isn't available that early.  For starters, the shuttle is a van with the hotel logo on the side.  Certain people are allowed to drive this van.  Those people are awake in the daytime.  Without prior arrangements, no one is here at 5:30 AM except moi, and I can't exactly drop everything at the front desk to run a guest to the airport in the company vehicle.

So yeah.  Kinda no wiggle room on that.  Nothin' I can do.

And did I know this fellow would be angry about it?  Absolutely.  I guess I just wasn't REALLY prepared.

You know...actually...I'm too frustrated to pen it all down.  Let's put it this way.  He came down ten minutes early, implying he was already checked out because he received his receipt (bill) under the door.  I explain about the shuttle/taxi situation, after which point he becomes extremely upset, specifically at the last shift.  I tried explaining that they were new, tried pointing out that he still had a ride, but all I got was that he'd have made other arrangements had they told him that.  He insisted that it didn't matter that they were new, saying that he's been a teacher for 46 years and he teaches people like that.

I was so shocked at that, that I actually asked him specifically - people like what?

He replied, people who don't get it done.  I tried making conversation about teaching, asking him what level he taught.  He said all of them, and when I started to say that my mother taught high school and they frequently gave her students that- he cut me off saying that it didn't matter, people who don't get it done, don't get it done.

That part pisses me off more than anything.  More than him coming back in repetitively to ask me where the late taxi was or for different taxi business cards.  More than him implying that there was somehow something I should be doing to make the ride come faster, raising his eyebrows and ducking his head at me, throwing out his arms.  More than his other arrangements, how angry he was, anything he had to say.  That haughty assumption that they were all-around fuck-ups because they didn't know something and made an honest mistake because of it.  It wasn't a mistake in his eyes - it was a sign of total failure.  They were defined in his eyes as things, objects, lazy, not driven, losers.  I see this in teachers a lot.  They stop relating.  Students who don't turn in their homework assignments, who stop trying because they don't care, because they're scared, because they're shamed, because they're told they're stupid - become things that are defined as stupid, instead of people.  To this old man, the last shift was composed of two things.  Those two things dropped the ball, and he feels he should have expected it, and that they would continue to drop the ball for the rest of their lives because they aren't living, breathing, thinking, learning people anymore.

I just hate that.

Yeah...I did get all of that from a rude, five minute, half-heated conversation.  I'm good at observing people.

In any case, he got his damned ride from a late taxi driver who is probably still reeling from whatever black, sticky, abysmal atmosphere he bubbled from his face hole.  God.  I hate people who DO that - who fill the room with dark, depressing, condescending poison.  Right before he left, when he'd come to a pause in ranting about people like that, I told him well, thank goodness we have teachers, right?

I think he knew.  I hope he knew.

The girl from last night came in just as he was packing his bags into the taxi.  I warned her so she could hide in the back until he'd gotten in.  I don't even want to think about how he'd have laid into her had he seen her again before leaving.  The world doesn't need bullshit like that.

Some people never grow out of tantrums.  I hope his world is brighter at its baseline.

-An extremely worn out and frustrated Wednesday.
TGIF.

P.S. - reading over it now, I realize that in skipping large chunks of the action I didn't really portray his behavior.  I'm too tired to go through and edit.  Just know he was pretty loud, rude, and pissed off.  Blah.  Just trust me.  -.-