Tweet
When I go into work tonight I will only be on the third night of a four-day work week. However, I have already experienced a full week's worth of weird and at the rate I'm going there can only be more.
186 people holding their poop
Our first story requires back story. You see, my Elongated Hexagon Inn is located in something of a development dead zone in my city. This is due to the fact that years ago an Enormous Commercial Venture was built on this road and after the initial burst of tagalong development, it died a horrible death. As such, this commercial strip doesn't have anywhere near the amount of shopping or restaurants you'd find in other suburban areas of my city.
That changed on Thursday when Wonderful Humongous Employment Extravaganza (WHEE) opened on the site of the old Enormous Commercial Venture. The WHEE is expected to employ about 1,000 people and draw hundreds of thousands of people a year, and is expected to cause this end of town to explode. It is very much a Big Deal.
Speaking of explosions, during the "soft" grand opening of the WHEE on Thursday, a major water main under the road that runs by it decided that was the perfect time to blow sky high. Nobody on this side of town had water, and the city was extremely concerned with getting water back on to the WHEE as fast as possible.
In the meantime though, five hotels, twelve restaurants, a nursing home, and God knows how many stores and houses had no water.
People were surprisingly understanding. The city had estimated they'd have the water back on by midnight, and so people settled in to wait it out. Midnight came and went, and people started to get cranky. One Cubic Zirconium member of our loyalty program demanded, and got, six bottles of water in case he'd have to use them to wash himself in the morning. The security guard and I had nightmare visions of toilets filling and going unflushed, people not being able to take showers or baths, not being able to make coffee or breakfast, the housekeepers not being able to do laundry...
The water came back on around 3AM. The first complaint about dirty water came in at 6:30.
Surprisingly, we didn't have to give a single Please Steal From Us Guarantee. I couldn't believe it.
No means no!
Last night, while I was on the phone with another property telling them about Thursday's excitement, a clot of young men came back from a night on the town. One of them came up and after listening to me on the phone, he said, "You know, man, you seem kind of intense. I was gonna fuck with you, but--"
"Try me," I said.
"Naw, man... You seem kind of pissed off."
"Not at all, sir!" I said brightly, with that smile I've perfected that usually makes people take a step back.
He begged off and went away. However, the security guard and I would see him many more times throughout the night coming and going along with a guy who looked enough like him to be his brother. At around 5:30 in the morning, though, he came up to ask if he could swim in our indoor pool, which doesn't open until 8. I refused, explaining that over a dozen rooms have windows directly opening onto the pool enclosure and we can't let people swim or use the hot tub because those people can hear it. He promised he'd be quiet, we hemmed and hawed a little bit, and he finally went away.
Not long after, he came back and asked again. Same song and dance, but this time he came armed with a thick wad of $20 bills and asked if that might persuade me. I said no, thinking that nobody had ever tried bribing me before and as new experiences go, I'd recommend it. It's interesting. More hemming and hawing, and he went away.
Not long after, he came back and asked again. This time I snapped and told him that the last time I let someone swim after hours they drowned and I'm not going through that again.
His response? "I'm a certified lifeguard and there is absolutely, positively no chance of that happening."
But no still meant no. I passed word along to the incoming manager and other employees in case a stink was raised later.
"Like a telenovela, but with more suturing."
That was the phrase I used to describe something I just witnessed, texting my partner about it.
Although, perhaps "overheard" is the better term and I say that because while I sit here with a deveopmentally-disabled kid looking at basketball shoes on the Internet (Imelda Marcos had nothing on this kid's shoe obsession), a woman sitting behind us at this coffee shop had a loud, long, extremely detailed phone conversation in which she gave an excruciatingly thorough play-by-play of her recent hysterectomy and about how the doctors had to cinch her bladder to her spinal muscles using excess ligaments. Meanwhile, her husband was having his own loud, detailed phone conversation about how he has recently become something of a Youtube sensation.
My main concern during all of this was the fact that the kid giggled every time the woman said the word "bladder." That made me giggle in turn, until we were hissing "Bladder!" at each other and giggling like fiends, and the woman kept giving us dirty looks.
As I write this, the dueling conversations are still going on.
186 people holding their poop
Our first story requires back story. You see, my Elongated Hexagon Inn is located in something of a development dead zone in my city. This is due to the fact that years ago an Enormous Commercial Venture was built on this road and after the initial burst of tagalong development, it died a horrible death. As such, this commercial strip doesn't have anywhere near the amount of shopping or restaurants you'd find in other suburban areas of my city.
That changed on Thursday when Wonderful Humongous Employment Extravaganza (WHEE) opened on the site of the old Enormous Commercial Venture. The WHEE is expected to employ about 1,000 people and draw hundreds of thousands of people a year, and is expected to cause this end of town to explode. It is very much a Big Deal.
Speaking of explosions, during the "soft" grand opening of the WHEE on Thursday, a major water main under the road that runs by it decided that was the perfect time to blow sky high. Nobody on this side of town had water, and the city was extremely concerned with getting water back on to the WHEE as fast as possible.
In the meantime though, five hotels, twelve restaurants, a nursing home, and God knows how many stores and houses had no water.
People were surprisingly understanding. The city had estimated they'd have the water back on by midnight, and so people settled in to wait it out. Midnight came and went, and people started to get cranky. One Cubic Zirconium member of our loyalty program demanded, and got, six bottles of water in case he'd have to use them to wash himself in the morning. The security guard and I had nightmare visions of toilets filling and going unflushed, people not being able to take showers or baths, not being able to make coffee or breakfast, the housekeepers not being able to do laundry...
The water came back on around 3AM. The first complaint about dirty water came in at 6:30.
Surprisingly, we didn't have to give a single Please Steal From Us Guarantee. I couldn't believe it.
No means no!
Last night, while I was on the phone with another property telling them about Thursday's excitement, a clot of young men came back from a night on the town. One of them came up and after listening to me on the phone, he said, "You know, man, you seem kind of intense. I was gonna fuck with you, but--"
"Try me," I said.
"Naw, man... You seem kind of pissed off."
"Not at all, sir!" I said brightly, with that smile I've perfected that usually makes people take a step back.
He begged off and went away. However, the security guard and I would see him many more times throughout the night coming and going along with a guy who looked enough like him to be his brother. At around 5:30 in the morning, though, he came up to ask if he could swim in our indoor pool, which doesn't open until 8. I refused, explaining that over a dozen rooms have windows directly opening onto the pool enclosure and we can't let people swim or use the hot tub because those people can hear it. He promised he'd be quiet, we hemmed and hawed a little bit, and he finally went away.
Not long after, he came back and asked again. Same song and dance, but this time he came armed with a thick wad of $20 bills and asked if that might persuade me. I said no, thinking that nobody had ever tried bribing me before and as new experiences go, I'd recommend it. It's interesting. More hemming and hawing, and he went away.
Not long after, he came back and asked again. This time I snapped and told him that the last time I let someone swim after hours they drowned and I'm not going through that again.
His response? "I'm a certified lifeguard and there is absolutely, positively no chance of that happening."
But no still meant no. I passed word along to the incoming manager and other employees in case a stink was raised later.
"Like a telenovela, but with more suturing."
That was the phrase I used to describe something I just witnessed, texting my partner about it.
Although, perhaps "overheard" is the better term and I say that because while I sit here with a deveopmentally-disabled kid looking at basketball shoes on the Internet (Imelda Marcos had nothing on this kid's shoe obsession), a woman sitting behind us at this coffee shop had a loud, long, extremely detailed phone conversation in which she gave an excruciatingly thorough play-by-play of her recent hysterectomy and about how the doctors had to cinch her bladder to her spinal muscles using excess ligaments. Meanwhile, her husband was having his own loud, detailed phone conversation about how he has recently become something of a Youtube sensation.
My main concern during all of this was the fact that the kid giggled every time the woman said the word "bladder." That made me giggle in turn, until we were hissing "Bladder!" at each other and giggling like fiends, and the woman kept giving us dirty looks.
As I write this, the dueling conversations are still going on.
Comment