So. BORED.

I left both my computer cord and my crocheting at home.

I filled the first two hours of work with work outrages, printing emails and attachments that I can't at home, and guests who pronounce "you" as "yew" and "hello" as "hah-looow??"  I spent about five minutes reading the printouts before I got bored of them and made a pretty stack of them instead.  Then I decided the stack was much too neat and the world needed a little chaos, so I threw them around the counter instead.

I pulled out the pregnancy books I've been meaning to read but haven't yet.  I apparently missed the last two months of pregnancy information.

Man, I sure hope I did it right...?

I got tired of the books and focusing my eyes in general about ten minutes in and decorated the stack of emails with them.  Much better.

I rode our exercise bike for 2.5 minutes before I decided that exercise was for wussies and if I was gone from the desk for longer thant 2.5 minutes I might miss something REALLY EXCITING.

I do not seem to have missed anything.

I eat pancakes.

I buy a soda.

The machine eats 10 cents.  I go to get my dime out of our stash of coins to give as refunds when such things happen.  Our stash is depleted.  I curse the soda machine gods.

I look up at the clock...4:30, YES!  Shit, no, I just suck at reading time.  3:30.  UGGGHHHHH.

I got on our guest computers and surfed, wrote a few emails, networked a bit, and checked my facebook.  I cautiously peeked through tumblr before deciding that the world is coming to an end if all people can post pictures of is duckfaces, pink hair, porn, and pictures of your legs in the bathtub.  I closed tumblr because I am A PROFESSIONAL AT WORK (ahuh).  I peeked in on twitter before deciding that I should follow more nocturnal folks.  A look at the clock.  3:40.

God.

Dammit.

I SIT ON THE COUCHES.  Nothing to do.  I play games on my phone.  I eat an apple.  I realize that my tenses during this entire post have been inconsistent.  I decide that if some omnipotent god really wanted/wants me to write properly he wouldn't have invented Blogger.  Also I don't need rules.  I live in anarchy, bitches.

I spend a little while writing this, examining my shoes, playing music from youtube on aforementioned guest computer, thinking about fishing, googling for pictures of people with boards on their heads, updating my google calendar with all the stuff I plan to do some other day, and reading some dude's blog.

I look down at the computer's clock.

5:55!!  ALRIGHT!  COWABUNGA DUDE!

Wait, that can't be right, our newspapers aren't even here yet.

*Checks phone*

Crap.  Nobody adjusted this thing for daylight savings time.  It's really 4:55.

Whatever, close enough.  I'm going to go put out breakfast REALLY SLOWLY and possibly build something out of apples, coffee filters, and plastic cups.

-Wednesday

They let the deer drive.

Elevator Says Nope

A group of college kids just walked in, two fellas and a girl. The girl had a very tall bump of hair on top of her head and was complaining about how cold our lobby was.

They get to the elevators and the door on the first one closes. The girl shouts "Quick, just stick your hand in it!"

The guy thinks better of it and chooses the other elevator. I figure the first had probably been called to a higher floor, but as soon as the other one with the kids goes on up...

It opens back up, ready for business.

Take that, cold girl with silly hair.

-Wednesday

Wake Up Call Success!

For those employees who are not aware of how to push buttons on a phone, OR who feel a guest who requests a 6:00 AM wakeup call is probably mistaken and actually wanted one at 8 AM instead, we have this handy guide now here at the LOL Hotel! It's taped right in front of our front desk phone, so everyone has a shot at wake up call success!

SUCCESS!

(Click the photo to make the success even bigger)

-Wednesday

Been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely lonely lonely lonelyyyy tiiiime

Since we had a TGIF post!

Tonight, we have a tale of karma being a drained and tainted bitchdog. I don't even know what I did, but it had to have been something epic.

Or you know, maybe just because it's Friday, and everything happens on Fridays.

Anyways!


First I come in and the volume is turned up on our lobby television. This is a gigantic no-no, from the a much higher level. There was quite a crowd around the tv, though, so I gave them ten or fifteen minutes into my shift before I turned on captions and the volume off. Immediately, you know there was uproar and calls of bullshit. The last shift was still there as I sorted through their strange handling of the fact that we were overbooked by seven rooms, and they both raised their hands in the air and told me the AGM had told them to turn the volume on for sporting events.

Let me explain. The AGM is not above corporate on the ladder of decision making, but he fully believes he is. Shocker, right? At night I am liable though, so whether he thinks he's the boss of everyone or not, TV volume go bye-bye. Besides. He has it on sports events 24-7. So yeah. Fuck 'im.

Of course, you know the bitching and shouting went on for about ten minutes, at least. Yeah, it was my own fault for messing with a huddled group of avid sports fans, but down the hall in the conference room, and upstairs in each of their rooms, the volume works perfectly fine. And the conference room TV is to be on 24-7 while one of our groups is in house. So it isn't like I lost the game for them.

Yeesh.

Seconds after this fiasco, a phone call comes in with a guy demanding to speak to the manager. It's still very noisy and crowded in our lobby, and the person on the phone wants to speak with the man in the "purple shirt." (WTF?) I swear, I kind of think he's calling from the lobby about the volume, but it turns out he's calling from a hotel the last shift walked him to.

When you have seven arrivals with no space for them (gee, thanks, sales), you have no choice but to walk them to another hotel that does have rooms. It's that or the couches in the lobby. I mean where else COULD you put them? Thankfully, kind of, last shift did that ahead of time for me. Walking someone angry when you are alone at the front desk is...well you'll see.

"I want to know why YOU put me in this FLEABAG MOTEL when you still have three guys coming in from my same group who haven't even gotten there yet!"
"Sir, we had no more space, and that was arranged by the last shift. Can I put you on the phone with him?"
"No. I am asking you why you put me over here when YOU told me you had a room. I want to speak with your manager right now."
"Sir, that's not possible, our manager leaves at 5 PM. Can I get you his contact information?"
"NO. I want YOU to tell me what the hell is going on! YOU! Put the manager on the phone right now!"
"Hold please."
"FINALLY. THANK YOU."

Oh my goodness. Well...technically the guy from the past shift is still signed in and is at the front desk...and he IS a day shift manager. So I ask him if he would like to speak with the guy. Or if I should just pick the phone back up and use a foreign accent. Or something.

Dude from last shift takes the call to the back and tells the guy to STFU. I am sincerely hoping he doesn't show up and get in my face. Sometimes they do that. No lie.

So next I'm counting the drawer to make sure we are correct, and we aren't, but it's close enough. I let the last shift go home after they tell me NO ONE ELSE is coming in and that we are completely squared and good to go for the night.

Then the arrivals that angry guy was talking about show up.

While trying to check them in I discover I can't, because even though last shift has left rooms for them, they have also pre-assigned other guests arriving tomorrow to those rooms. And the ones trying to check in are for multiple day stays. Yeah. Yeah, they got it all set up for me, dinnit they.

While I'm getting new arrivals their keys, a guy wants to buy a soda. I go to put his money in the drawer and get him change, and wind up having to short ourselves on change because the drawer WILL. NOT. OPEN. I try all the tricks I know, but something inside it is preventing it from opening. Joy. So I let the guy pay a little less for the sake of making him wait on me less, and come back to the drawer later.

When the fellas are checked in, and the lobby is quiet for two seconds, I go into the back to try and finally get my piercing retainer in (I have a couple of piercings the guests and my employers would rather not be obvious, but will close if I leave them out, and with a retainer in them they are pretty much invisible). I realize I've lost the ball to my actual piercing. It's the only one I have. New ones are expensive. I am broke. Getting your lip repierced is painful and even more expensive.

I come back out front and fuck with the cash register drawer. I finally manage to yank it open, and the reason it had been sticking was that one of the dividers was ever so slightly raised. I fix it so it won't happen again, then realize I can't slide it out ALL the way because all my fiddling has caused it to slip under itself in such a way that now the drawer itself is too high. I have to leave it open a crack so I'll be able to open it later in the night - but in trying to close it I realize I FUCKING CAN'T. Now the drawer is so fucked up I can't close it. I slide it half-shut and leave it there.

A guy comes down the elevator and wags his finger at me, saying he knows it was bullshit to turn off the TV volume and how I shouldn't be doing things like that. Then he asks if I can please get him a towel.

More flies with honey, jackass. Sure, I'll have that towel right out for you.

Dick.

When I get him the towel he decides he wants to buy some snacks from our snack area. I take his cash and try to get him change, but now the drawer won't budge open OR close - it's stuck half open. I squeeze out a couple of dollar bills and some change, and breathe out the biggest sigh of my life as soon as the elevator doors slide back closed again.

I reach into my bag for a xanax, because this all occurred in the first HOUR of my shift.



I have left my xanax at home.


Fuck.
My.
Life.


TGIF
-Wednesday

The Point...Is to Show Moving Pictures...

We're not allowed to turn up the volume on the televisions in the lobby. Seeing as how there are like...four...it could get pretty noisy and hectic if we did, not to mention people have a tendency to change the channels to less-than-breakfast-conversation channels. But what it really boils down to is that the rules say no. So no volume.

Anyhoo, we have to go through the menu and actually turn the volume option OFF, because guests have brains in their heads and will find the volume button otherwise. In working here as long as I have, though, I've never had a guest manually, from the TV, load the menu and successfully turn the volume option back on.

I mean...I didn't know you could even do that without the remote. I can't even FIND THE BUTTONS on those TVs.

But yes. This fella did!

Picture a grumpy old feller, kind of farmer-ish, fiddling with the controls like a pro.

"Sir, I'm very sorry, but we are not allowed to have the volume turned up on the televisions."
"What are you talking about?"
"It's our hotel policy, I can turn on captions for you, but we can't have the volume on. Did you need to change the channel?"
"What the hell good would that be if there's no volume??"

...XD
-Wednesday

Uh...

So...

Both sets of automatic doors just flew open at the exact same time and slid shut simultaneously. No one was around. No bugs, no stray cats, no people outside smoking. Both sets did it at the SAME TIME.



-Wednesday

Aw...My Poor, Violated Paper.

Jeez...we have such an odd group in tonight.


So, a fella comes over, says "Mildred Topplehouse." No he doesn't. He says a real name. But he doesn't say anything before or after it, and looks at me, waiting expectantly. I'm confused. I ask him...what...he wanted...in some kind of more-polite terms. "Can you connect me to Mildred Topplehouse?"

Gee...sure. Let me just transfer you right over. I mean, it isn't as if there was a guest phone around the corner, or even one in your room.

Just hang on a second, while I connect your call.

Same fella comes over a little bit later and, almost proudly, proclaims "McToodles!" But, you know, a real last name.

There is no one named McToodles in our system. Ah cannot a-transfah ya call.

Fella is outraged that no one is awake.



Couple minutes later, fella's friend comes over while on his cell phone and asks to borrow my pen. I'm trying to do credit card authorizations, and had just started writing out the list of room numbers, but I figure eh - just gonna grab another pen. It's a pen. So whaaat.

He does say thank you, to his credit, as he grabs my paper, too.

He brought me back the pen.

I needed that paper...



A little while later, a guy calls down asking about how to connect to our internet. This is a good, albeit complicated, question, since I can see on the phone that his room is near the elevator, which is the farthest you can possibly get from a router and still be inside the hotel. We place them at the ends of each hallway, so elevator rooms are sadly internet deficient.

Anyways, I walk the guy through how to connect, and he is very, very confused. It should be simple. Connect to any wifi signal with our hotel's name in it, open your browser window, and enter the password. Bam! Interneted. This guy is wondering if he should create some kind of profile...and it's confusing me, too. Finally we get him connected, and I tell him to open his browser. A long moment of silence passes. Eventually he says "okay, I'm coming down." *click*

Say whaaaa? I'm not IT. Y u come down to bother meeeee.

Actually, still haven't seen that guy. Must have figured it out. Meh.



Oh...and people who think they are funny. You know the ones. They happened tonight. They came in at 11:30 and started howling about how they caught me sleeping, I'd better stay awake! And then when they press floor 1 and the door closes and opens right back up again in the elevator, they take the opportunity to holler out and make sure I hadn't fallen right back asleep again! HAW HAW HAW.

I got here half an hour ago mothahfuckahs. YOU are going to sleep. I'm just gettin' this party started.



A guy just walked down the hall in a towel. There MIGHT have been shorts of some kind underneath...but I'm not positive. All I saw was a towel.

Then my eyes were burned out of my skull.



This is going to be an interesting night.
-Wednesday

Insatiable Chip Lust

My favorite kind of chip is Baked Barbeque.  Holy crap try them, they're amazing.

Tied for second place is Cooler Ranch Doritos, Nacho Cheese Doritos, Cheetos (do those count?), and Barbeque chips.  Third place is every other kind of chip except Fritos.

Last is Fritos.

Anyways, while going about my auditishness business last night, I noticed a bag of BBQ chips next to the guest computers.  It was folded over.  Meaning they probably weren't even stale.  I thought about these chips ALL NIGHT.

I wanted one.  Or all of them.  Would anyone notice?  They were just left there, unwanted and unloved.  Deep in my hobo-esque heart I desperately wanted to tuck them safely away in my bag, and then my belly.

I was ready to make my move in the early morning hours, ready to pounce like a wild cat on unsuspecting prey.

Then this fellow came walking down the hall, bucket of ice in hand.  He was giant.  This fellow was the second largest human being I'd ever seen, second only to memories of my obese grandparents (I'm pretty sure their weight was a little exaggerated from the mind of a six-year-old).  Okay, I'm not trying to be mean here - he was a very nice fellow who said hello and went on his way.  He made me think, though - whose hands were IN that chip bag before?  Were they sweaty?  Did they just pick their nose?  Were they sticky from licking off the bbq dusting?  If I continued to eat chips like I have a disease and chips are the cure, would my "few pounds higher than the number I want" turn into "few hundred pounds higher than the number I want?"


I left the chips alone.


I'm pretty sure that revelation's gonna leave me by the next time I go grocery shopping, but hey, I'll wash my hands first.

-Wednesday

If You See a Guy with 17 Papers...

So our papers come around 3 or 4 in the morning.  I am usually closing day at that time, so I typically let them sit until I'm finished up and then replace the old ones.

Today, however, I was having a particularly vicious fight with the scanner in the back office.  When I emerged (not done, but too frustrated to keep fighting with it - it took an HOUR to scan 13 pages.  An hour!) I noticed something weird.

Somebody stole mah newspapers.

They weren't completely gone, no.  The band had been removed and all but 8 papers were missing.

...What?

I'VE BEEN HAMBURGLED  NEWSPAPERBURGLED!

I'm sure it's completely possible that the newspaper dude was running short or something and decided to split an order between two businesses.  Or something.

OR there is a happy fellow wandering around town with his proud stack of 17 Wall Street Journals.


-Wednesday

Why Night Auditors Should ALWAYS Sleep 8 Hours a Day

Look...hotels are freaking creepy at night.  Yeah, sure, most nights you'll handle it just fine with your music, your computer, your phone, your studies.  But there WILL be those nights when it's just quiet enough for you to hear every spooky ass phantom tossing dishes around, every ghost stomping here and there, every shadowy figure sneaking up on you.

So for the love of god sleep, SLEEP.  These things are easier to handle when you aren't groggy.

But I don't sleep.  Nope.  I do my best and hey, I frequently succeed, but today...today I had a doctor's appointment.

Anyhoo, here, have the freaky-ass shit that has gone down tonight:

1. Starting at 4 AM the fire alarm control pad that we recently fixed (after quite the fiasco and a few weeks of patient waiting) started beeping.  No, not really, more like emitting a constant tone.  Only there was no message on the screen.  Normally it will say something like "crud, something's up on the third floor, guys!"  This time, all it says is System Idle.  Sometimes it randomly resets itself.  This is the weirdest and most annoying thing in the whole world.  I will literally sit one butt cheek down only to have to hop right back up and go stop it from screaming again.  My poor, right butt cheek is so unfulfilled.
   
2. Upon my first arrival in the lobby I noted a high pitch tone, but couldn't locate it.  The last shift didn't hear anything, but gosh darnit, I know I'm not completely crazy.  It's in here somewhere.  And it has been going since 11 PM.
   
3. I keep hearing voices just down the hall, but that might just be the music.  I keep checking because it really, really sounds like someone talking.
   
4. While sitting down on the other side of the lobby, only the inner set of doors slid open randomly and back shut.  There were no bugs, no people, no anything near them.  Creeeepy.
   
5. When I got in the elevator to deliver newspapers and bills it made a loud crack-thump sound and shuddered before taking me to the second floor.
   
6. Upon arriving on the third floor, I turned out of the elevator to see the fire alarm door shut.  They're magnetic, so I can't just open it.  I was pretty positive I was going to open it to find a bunch of zombies on the other side.
   
7. On both the third and fourth floors, a few of the doors were propped open but the lights out.  This is particularly disturbing to me, because I know nobody checked out early last night.  Technically I am supposed to shut them, but what if someone is in there??
   
8. On the fourth floor I look out the hall window from down the hall to see what looks like headlights.  On the fourth floor.  Alright, so it turned out to be the lights of the business next door, but it was really freaky, okay?
   
9. Someone/thing just made a loud clattery/shuffle sound in the kitchen.
   
10. The door to the back office keeps slowly opening by itself.

This is why you need good rest.
-Wednesday

Oh, the Drippy Sounds this Hotel Makes...

Who's got two thumbs and had to stick a bucket IN a cabinet to catch a water leak tonight?

THIS GAL!  XD

I think it rains more inside this hotel than outside!  :p


-Wednesday

Burnt Cookies

Actually, "Burnt Cookies" is the name of a webcomic I sincerely, desperately wished I'd gotten around to.  Of all the things ADD has allowed me to start, and that I've dropped the ball on finishing, that one's the worst.  The writer was awesome and the storyline and boards rocked, I just never took anything beyond a sketch.  Saaaad.  But that's not what this is about.

Actually, I just burned a cookie.

Normally our cookies are our very bestest thing here.  They're heaven.  Scrumptious.  Today, though, when I came into work our cookies were replaced by...lumps...of things that might be called cookies...in some other dimension.

They looked like oatmeal, possibly?  I had to try one, because I needed to know what to tell people when they asked what kind of cookie they were.  Plus there were tons of them anyways.  So I tried one, but it was cold.  So I microwaved it.

30 seconds is safe, right?

Everything certainly sounded like it was safe...the microwave beeped, and I opened it, prepared to cautiously touch a potentially hot molten "cookie."


POOF!

I disappear like a magician in a cloud of smoke.  I peer up through the haze and see a smoke detector on the wall.  Crap!  I try to fan the door, but the door won't budge.  What's it stuck on?  NO TIME!  I start running maniacally back and forth through the doorway trying to fan the smoke out of the room and disperse it.  It smells like burned peanut butter and poo.

POO.

I still haven't gotten my damned cookie, having had to close the door to the microwave quickly to seal in the smoke.  I make the foolish, rookie mistake of trying to open it fast enough to grab my treat.  I NEED to see if it's a charcoal brick or not.  Call it Science.

This releases another giant puff of smoke, so I resort to breathing in deeply, running to the hallway and blowing out, lather-rinse-repeat.  In the midst of hyperventilating, I remember my cookie, make one last attempt at grabbing it and, noting that the world hasn't ended yet, retreat to the lobby to enjoy it.

Oddly enough, only the VERY CENTER of the cookie is burned.  The outsides, top, and bottom are fine, though they do NOT taste like deliciousness.  They taste like peanut butter and possibly nuts.



No fire alarms, just massive cookie-disappointment.

Fuck you, cookie.
-Wednesday



P.S. - What do you do when you have to answer the ringing phone, but you have to sneeze REALLY bad?  ...You talk in a funny voice, that's what.  -.-

Brrrrr!

So it's that big wintery storm, right?  Pretty gosh-darned cold out there.  So cold and sudden, in fact, that we had a hard freeze warning while it was still 70 degrees outside.  Now it's 20 degrees, and let me tell you...  it's cold.

Texas has no idea how to handle that much cold.  We get days like this a few times a year, but it's always a shocker and we just have trouble going from 70 to 20 in the span of a few hours.  Call it a flaw.

Of course, our lobby heater has no clue about what's going on outside.  Or maybe it does!  Every now and then, on the very coldest days, when it senses it is MOST needed, the heater will break.

Maybe not completely, or maybe it's the abundance of other heaters keeping the lobby in the 60s, but when this occurs I have no shot at achieving the typical low-seventies of your average LOL Hotel lobby environment.

It's.  20.  Degrees outside.


Normally I get around such silly heaterish mishaps by ducking into the back office area, where the heater is usually turned WAY up to compensate and I can thaw out.  Of course, today, this is not so.  It's not exactly freezing back there, but the heater won't warm up more, either.

My other trick for staying warm?  When my fingers freeze up and it hurts to type, I pop open the little, perpetually-on oven and - no lie - stick my hands inside.  It's nice.  Like sticking your head in the freezer on a hot, summer day, but in reverse.

Guess what's broken?

"ERROR

Heater Failure

Allow Oven to Cool"

-Wednesday

Grah Is an Anagram of Argh.

Well.  Last night we had only 33% occupancy.  I should have learned to better appreciate that, because tonight we had 99%.  Technically it was supposed to be 100%...but weird things happened.

The last shift had two leftover arrivals but only one room, so they booked the last room for the person who was a part of a group.  Unfortunately, the other person was the one who came in for them, and they walked her and sent her to another hotel.  Well...that person who had the room never even came in, and a fellow wound up calling me at midnight or so to ask if the walked lady could be compensated, get the room free, something like that.  He intimated that she was extremely upset with the situation.  Awesome.  Of course, there isn't much I can do about it, so I asked him to call sales about it after 7 in the morning and that they'd let him know if there was anything they could do to make it right.  Le sigh.  At least I didn't have to speak with her directly!  :)

So we have one free room, but there's no telling for sure until 3 AM or so.  People have been known to go to the bars first, and check in after 2 when they close.  So at 1 AM when a fairly rude fella walks in, whips out his credit card, and demands a king room, I told 'im we were completely booked up.  He makes a face like someone just told him the moon wasn't made of cheese, and stomped back out to his great, big hummer.  He pauses halfway out, turns around, points his finger at me and informs me that there aren't that many cars in the parking lot.  He was driving off before I got to tell mooncheese man that they came in a bus.

Oh, and our bank's off by some 60 or so bucks...under, that is.  It was 100 when I started, which blew everyone's minds until the last shift realized they'd accidentally deposited a check's amount AND the check...leaving us quite short.  Ah well, at least the money's there.  Just not in the cash register.  Fridays, man, I'm tellin' ya.

Last thing - it turns out I should NOT have waited this long to do audit, because on Fridays here at the LOL Hotel, Murphy's Law runs rampant.  Right as I get started on close day...our system breaks and I have to call support.  I get a guy on the phone with a speech impediment, who my boss had actually warned me was not a very nice fella.

I only briefly considered hanging up and calling back before I sucked it up and explained my problem.

Only it took me forever to explain it, because every time he asked a question I had to ask him to repeat it, citing the "bad connection."  Couldn't be more awkward?  Oh, but it is.

He takes over the computer remotely and starts fiddling with it, then tells me to go ahead and close day, but to leave the connection open.  He says he's going to let me close it, then take over again once it's done and figure out what the problem is.  I say okay, but it does take it a few minutes to run.  (Should I get off the phone or does he want me to stay on the line?)  ...He says okay?  I say okay, sounds good.  Then...silence.

I have no idea if I'm supposed to hang up or not, so I leave the phone on just in case.  I hear silence and a few key strokes in the background.  I hear this for a good 30-60 seconds (time flies when in excruciating awkwardness, so I don't have an exact number for ya!) before *click!*

Wow.

Yeah...you read right - it just got all kindsa more awkward up in here.





All I can say is - TGIF!

-Wednesday

Stupidity Sandwich of Noise

Maybe I'M old-school.  And I don't mean I can't bring myself to hit bitches with big hammers, either.  Well I mean, I don't hit bitches with big hammers, but that's not what I'm talking about.  Really, it's cell phones.  Cell phones drive me mad.

Ear pieces are their own debate. I'm talking about full-on cell phone chatter.  Glued to your ear, talking away, making eye contact with the cashier/clerk/salesperson despite speaking to the phone.  It was only a few years ago that everyone knew that was bad manners.  Now you get to participate in idiotic discussions about who dissed who while crowded in W*lmart.  Now, if you have strong feelings about what that bitch said to you, you can rally the backup of the whole drive-through crew, the stockers, and the fuck-you-and-put-down-your-fucking-cell-phones.

Today, one such etiquette-murderess got exactly what she deserved, and despite the grating sound of it, I LOVED it.

First of all, she drives in at 2:45 AM drunk.  She DRIVES in drunk.  I actually thought she was the newspaper dude because it was the same kind of car.  When I saw her come in I hopped up to help her.  She asked, while on her phone, if I had a room available for the next few hours.  I now have a way to check people in without calling, but it's been so long since I learned how to use that program I'd rather ask someone to remind me first which fields to fill out so I don't mess one up.  I haven't done that just yet.  So I dialed up the number to central reservation.

Immediately she goes back to her phone conversation, speaking very, very loudly.  The walls behind me are actually echoing her voice back to me.  It's like I'm in a stupidity sandwich of noise.  It's hard to hear the recorded introduction to central reservations over the wind blasting out of her mouth and flinging my hair back.  I'm in a wind tunnel.  It's all I can do to remain standing straight and not be flung through the wall.  I think I've been connected to someone on the phone, but I can't hear anything over her voice.  It occurs to me that she is speaking so loudly and uninterruptedly that I can hear it again through the earpiece, and that someone in Europe must simply be very confused.  Then I hear very faint hold music.  Well, okay then.

I wait a little while longer hoping desperately that she'll hang up so I can at least ask for her license and credit card.  She finally says goodbye, in order to switch calls to someone else, who then asks if THEY can have room(s???), too.  I take advantage of the slight pause after her floating question mark to explain that I can't actually reach central reservation, and that because of the hour, it might be better for her to try next door.

She explains to the person on the other end of her phone about how weird it is that we would want her to go somewhere else.

Yeah...

Weird.


-Wednesday

In case you were wondering about the state of our floor...

It was once wet.  Very, very wet.

Also - do you ever mispronounce words in your head?  Mine just said "ruzzins."  Like raisins.

Or some miracle dried fruit related to the raisin.

That cures cancer, but only when correctly pronounced.  In your head.



You NEEDED to know that.
-Wednesday

When you're strange, when you're strange, when you're strange

Someone must have been quite irritated with their ice bucket last night, for they placed it in the exact center of the hallway filled with what I hope is melted ice:

Also, I REALLY have to pee, but there is a young, idiotic couple fucking in the bathroom.  I'd tell them to leave, but I'm actually kind of scared of them.  They're...they're not even guests.  They just came in from the cold.  To screw.

In the bathroom.

-Wednesday

Park It.

Today, as I was leaving, I noticed that the VERY closest parking spot next to the hotel's doors was unoccupied.  I parked in it on my way out just to see what it felt like.

It felt glorious.



Oh wait, something else that was interesting happened this morning, too.  I was just coming out of the office in the back, where I was faxing something for a guest, when I nearly collided with a woman who had wandered behind the front desk.

I supposed that she didn't know where I was, and was creeping stealthily back to knock on the door to the back offices.  I asked her what I could do for her as she slowly backed away, but she replied "Oh, no, I think he needed something" and pointed to the guy to whom I was returning the faxed papers.  I can't even remember what she needed - really, I can't.  It must have been something utterly inconsequential.

Why...why was she behind the desk?  @.o
This is going to bug me for the next several seconds.

-Wednesday

Blooger

Yep, I definitely just typed in Blooger.com.  Can you picture what a blooger would look like?  Glorious.  XD

Well, I'm glad the FIVE check-ins we were expecting tonight never came in, because if they had, I wouldn't have been able to get them into their rooms.  When I got here, the left computer was not communicating to the card machine.  Now neither computer will talk to it.  It tells you it'll make the card, but that message neeeever gets to the encoder machine you slide the card into.  Marvelous!

So this fellow comes in through the side door and intends to get into his room that is RIGHT THERE.  Instead, he finds he has to walk down to the front desk because his card will let him into the building, but not his room!  Weird?  Yes.

I can't encode him a new one, but wait!  There's a card machine in the back, with a computer full of permissions to make wonky-cool cards.  So I head back and try it out.  It does not allow me to make cards.  It goes through the whole form you fill out on what you want it to make, but when you click make card - zilch.

So I make the guy walk all the way back down to try my master card.  My master card does not work either!  So I search the front desk for the other MC.  Nothing!  So I wake my boss up, make him talk me through it on the phone.  He hath no suggestions but to make another MC.  So I do, I walk all the way back, and voila - access at last.  Not that he'll ever be able to leave his room again.

Hey, by the way!

HAPPY (early)  HALLOWEEN!!!

(photo from here)

Lata!

-Wednesday