If you pay any attention to the side bar of the blog, you will have already noticed the "Fake Names" section listing the motels I've worked at, under false names, along with the dates that I've worked there. You may also have noticed that the Gary Carter Express Inn has three different sets of dates with it. You'll also notice that I only worked at El Crapface Lodge for one day. Let me explain:
After working almost a year at the Pretty Good Inn, I left Lethbridge to work in Fort MacMurray, Alberta for a lawn care company. It was just a temporary job for the busy spring clean-up season. The reason I took the job up north was two-fold: it paid better, and I needed to hit the reset button on my social life. So when I was done with that job, and with a brief stay in Edmonton working for my sister, I returned to Lethbridge in August of 2003. I didn't want to go back to the Pretty Good Inn, so I sent resumes to several motels and hotels in town. None of those businesses were the Gary Carter Express Inn. I got two interviews. The first was at the Adlaw Inn (yes, that's another fake name), but they told me in the interview that they were hiring for the Gary Carter as well, since it was owned by the same guy. The second interview was at the El Crapface. I was pretty much offered the job at El Crapface immediately, and I accepted. My one shift (the 3-11 babysitter shift) didn't impress me at all. The lobby smelled like cigarette smoke. That was the first red flag. The next thing that alarmed me was a tour of the premises. The place was a run-down, smelly dump. The third strike against them was the fact that I wasn't allowed to sit down for the entirety of the 8-hour shift. Now, I know there are a lot of jobs that require the employees to stand the whole time. I've worked some of those jobs, and some of you are probably calling me a baby even as I type this (how you're reading it while I type it is a mystery, but I stand by my statement). But let me tell you about the hospitality industry, especially the cheaper properties. You work in little spurts, for the most part. You can go an eight hour shift and do as little as a half hour of actual work. You're mostly there to hold down the fort and be available for anyone who needs you. Every other motel I've worked in has allowed me to sit when I wasn't dealing with any guests. This one shift I spent at the El Crapface Lodge was spent leaning against a wall or a counter while my legs gradually got more and more sore, followed by a 45-minute walk home when I was done. (I had recently killed my car.)
The day after I worked my first shift at the El Crapface, I got a call from the Gary Carter Express offering me a job there. I took the job, and called the manager at El Crapface as soon as I got off the phone with the Gary Carter to quit.
The Gary Carter is the smallest of the four motels that I've worked at, with only 37 rooms. At first, I worked the morning shift from 7 until 3. It was a pretty good deal. I checked everyone out and ran the continental breakfast, and then I had four hours to do whatever the heck I wanted to. It was also a 30-minute walk from my apartment instead of 45. For that first two-year period, I worked every shift at one point or another. I spent quite a bit of time working the night shift, which was easy most days. There were nights that I didn't see a single soul for the entire shift. Not even a phone call. There was a cot in the back office for some reason, and I'm ashamed to admit that I would sometimes take a 45-minute nap at around 3:00 in the morning. After a year or so, the owner switched me back to the morning shift and made me the front desk supervisor. The turnover in motels is high, and I was by far the senior employee by this point. The problem with the promotion was that the owner - a Korean gentleman who didn't speak English very well - would often get me to do his dirty work. This soured my attitude towards the job. It didn't help the the owner had a bad temper. One day, after making me screw over a guest for $65 extra dollars, I gave my two-weeks notice, and shortly thereafter started working at the Birch Lodge.
I absolutely hated the Birch Lodge, but stuck with it for two years to put myself through college while my wife was on maternity leave. During those two years, the owner of the Gary Carter sold the motel to another Korean guy, this one much more pleasant than the first. My cousin, who I had hired a few months before I left the Gary Carter, had moved up the ladder to become the front desk supervisor himself. He called me up one day and, with the permission of the new owner, offered me a job back at the Gary Carter making $0.50/hour more than I was making at the Birch Lodge. I jumped on that like a fat kid on a Smartie. I gave my notice at the Birch and was working the babysitter shift back at the Gary Carter two weeks later.
I graduated from college with a management diploma in December of 2007. I applied for a paid internship in Municipal Administration, and I left the Gary Carter and Lethbridge behind in April 2008 to go to central Alberta to work for two small urban municipalities for a year. It was a start at a real, decent-paying career. After my internship was up, I got a job as the Assistant Administrator in the town of Picture Butte, which is where I still live today. I still live there, but I only worked there for five months. I grew to hate the sound of my boss's voice and started avoiding her, which ultimately led to me being fired for lack of communication. I spent a year on Employment Insurance, trying my hands at a couple of commission-only sales jobs that went nowhere because I'm a god-awful salesman. I'm pretty sure I was legitimately a little bit insane during this year. After my third child was born, and as the EI was nearing its end, I swallowed my pride and went back to the Gary Carter Express to ask if they had any openings. The second owner, Jin, had always liked me, so he hired me back as soon as I asked. And I've been here ever since, working the babysitter shift for two years now since returning. Jin sold the place back in August, but the new owner kept me on, and there's no end in sight. No end at all.
Oh God, I need to write a novel and sell it to a publisher.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Don't Book Online, You Foolish People!
So, yeah. The title really hits my point home there. Maybe booking online gets you sweet deals at big, expensive hotels and resorts, but booking online at small hotels and motels is the wrong thing to do. You don't believe me, though. I'm always telling people this, and they never believe me.
Prepaid reservations are the worst, but I'll get to them later. I've only had to start dealing with them in the past two months. I'll start with booking online without paying for it at the time the reservation is made (ie. you're paying the motel when you check in instead of paying the website when you book the room). In my ten years of experience, if there's a screw-up with a reservation, it's an Internet booking 9 times out of 10, especially if you book through a third-party website instead of the chain's brand website. The people you're making the reservation with through websites have never set foot on the premises of the motel you're staying at, and there's a good chance they've never even been to the city that you're visiting. All they have is a list of room codes and the number of how many are available. Most properties use a standardized coding system, but there are a few variations that differ from site-to-site. This can lead to confusion, such as asking for a non-smoking room and ending up with a smoking room instead. Pet rooms is an issue, too. Websites advertise us here at the Gary Carter Express Inn as being pet-friendly. By that, we mean we have two rooms out of 37 that we allow pets in. Nobody knows this except for the handful of people who actually work here at the motel. Expedia.com, Hotels.com, even garycarter.com, would book pets into all 37 of our rooms on the same day if the costumers asked. And I'll tell you right now, there's no way in hell (unless it's a service animal) you're taking a pet into our honeymoon suites.
There's also a decent chance that you're paying a higher rate for your online reservation than you would have if you had called us directly and made a reservation with us. These websites have to make money, and they do that by charging us a commission, which increases the rate that you're paying.
Sometimes the third party booking agent will completely screw up and book you a reservation at the wrong motel. People will show up in Lethbridge looking for their reservation, and we won't have any record of it. After some sleuthing, we'll discover that their reservation is at the Gary Carter in Red Deer or Medicine Hat.
Now let me talk about prepaid reservations. I've never had to deal much with these until the new manager here contacted the major travel websites and set up the option for guests to pay the website, and then the website, in turn, would pay us. (Do I even need to explain that the rate you pay the website is higher than what they pay us? That's obvious, right?) My biggest complaint with prepaids, however, is not the websites but the guests. There are three things that they can't seem to understand: 1) they can't show up and cancel the reservation because we're not as nice as they thought we were; 2) they can't make any changes at all to the reservation (change it from one bed to two, for example); and 3) they don't get a receipt from us. The basic answer to all three is "You've already paid for the room." If you want to cancel the room, you have to contact the website or travel agent you booked it through (ie. the company you gave your money to), and you have to do it 24 hours in advance. You can't add more beds, more people, or upgrade to a suite because you've already paid for the single, and the computer makes it physically impossible for me to make any of those changes. And you don't get a receipt from me because you didn't give me any effing money. I suppose I could print you off a blank receipt, but what good is that going to be to anyone?
I'm writing about this today, because I had two prepaid reservations check in within five minutes of each other, and both of them annoyed me. The first was a man in his late 60s or early 70s who walked in and, without telling me that he already had a reservation, asked me what our senior rates were. I quoted him our rates, and then he pulled out the confirmation page from his prepaid reservation and said, "My grandson said this was the best way to do it, but he was wrong. Can you give me the rate you just quoted?" The reservation quoted a rate $10 more expensive than I had quoted him. I would have liked to change the rate to give the guy a break, but he had already paid for the room, and it wasn't us that he had paid for it. I can't refund money that he didn't give to me. The second reservation was for one queen-sized bed for one person. The mother of the guest showed up (he was in his late teens) walked in with him and asked for a room with two beds instead, which costs more money. But again, she had already paid a third-party website for a single room, and the computer would not allow me to change it to a double, so she and her son are sharing a bed tonight.
So, in summary, more mistakes happen when you add a third, uneducated party dealing with hundreds or thousands of properties; prepaying severely limits your options for any last-minute changes; and prepaid guests are stupid.
Prepaid reservations are the worst, but I'll get to them later. I've only had to start dealing with them in the past two months. I'll start with booking online without paying for it at the time the reservation is made (ie. you're paying the motel when you check in instead of paying the website when you book the room). In my ten years of experience, if there's a screw-up with a reservation, it's an Internet booking 9 times out of 10, especially if you book through a third-party website instead of the chain's brand website. The people you're making the reservation with through websites have never set foot on the premises of the motel you're staying at, and there's a good chance they've never even been to the city that you're visiting. All they have is a list of room codes and the number of how many are available. Most properties use a standardized coding system, but there are a few variations that differ from site-to-site. This can lead to confusion, such as asking for a non-smoking room and ending up with a smoking room instead. Pet rooms is an issue, too. Websites advertise us here at the Gary Carter Express Inn as being pet-friendly. By that, we mean we have two rooms out of 37 that we allow pets in. Nobody knows this except for the handful of people who actually work here at the motel. Expedia.com, Hotels.com, even garycarter.com, would book pets into all 37 of our rooms on the same day if the costumers asked. And I'll tell you right now, there's no way in hell (unless it's a service animal) you're taking a pet into our honeymoon suites.
There's also a decent chance that you're paying a higher rate for your online reservation than you would have if you had called us directly and made a reservation with us. These websites have to make money, and they do that by charging us a commission, which increases the rate that you're paying.
Sometimes the third party booking agent will completely screw up and book you a reservation at the wrong motel. People will show up in Lethbridge looking for their reservation, and we won't have any record of it. After some sleuthing, we'll discover that their reservation is at the Gary Carter in Red Deer or Medicine Hat.
Now let me talk about prepaid reservations. I've never had to deal much with these until the new manager here contacted the major travel websites and set up the option for guests to pay the website, and then the website, in turn, would pay us. (Do I even need to explain that the rate you pay the website is higher than what they pay us? That's obvious, right?) My biggest complaint with prepaids, however, is not the websites but the guests. There are three things that they can't seem to understand: 1) they can't show up and cancel the reservation because we're not as nice as they thought we were; 2) they can't make any changes at all to the reservation (change it from one bed to two, for example); and 3) they don't get a receipt from us. The basic answer to all three is "You've already paid for the room." If you want to cancel the room, you have to contact the website or travel agent you booked it through (ie. the company you gave your money to), and you have to do it 24 hours in advance. You can't add more beds, more people, or upgrade to a suite because you've already paid for the single, and the computer makes it physically impossible for me to make any of those changes. And you don't get a receipt from me because you didn't give me any effing money. I suppose I could print you off a blank receipt, but what good is that going to be to anyone?
I'm writing about this today, because I had two prepaid reservations check in within five minutes of each other, and both of them annoyed me. The first was a man in his late 60s or early 70s who walked in and, without telling me that he already had a reservation, asked me what our senior rates were. I quoted him our rates, and then he pulled out the confirmation page from his prepaid reservation and said, "My grandson said this was the best way to do it, but he was wrong. Can you give me the rate you just quoted?" The reservation quoted a rate $10 more expensive than I had quoted him. I would have liked to change the rate to give the guy a break, but he had already paid for the room, and it wasn't us that he had paid for it. I can't refund money that he didn't give to me. The second reservation was for one queen-sized bed for one person. The mother of the guest showed up (he was in his late teens) walked in with him and asked for a room with two beds instead, which costs more money. But again, she had already paid a third-party website for a single room, and the computer would not allow me to change it to a double, so she and her son are sharing a bed tonight.
So, in summary, more mistakes happen when you add a third, uneducated party dealing with hundreds or thousands of properties; prepaying severely limits your options for any last-minute changes; and prepaid guests are stupid.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Finally, Some Recognition!
Two weeks ago, my sister, Jenny, phoned me and told me about a radio show on CBC Radio 1 that was asking for pitches for an episode of their show dealing with jobs. Specifically, the moment that you realized you either loved or hated your job. Since my current project was this blog and my related twitter feed (@hyperferrianism), she figured it was right up my alley. The show is called Definitely Not The Opera, or DNTO for short, hosted by Sook-Yin Lee. I watched a lot of Much Music in the '90s, so I'm familiar with Sook-Yin. My sister had also been on the show a bunch of times over the years, so I listen to the show pretty much every week on my way to work. So I wrote a pitch about the moment I realized that I hated working at the Birch Lodge and sent it off the next morning, which is when the deadline was. They e-mailed me back the next day and said they loved my pitch, and I talked to a producer on the phone the day after that, and I was in a CBC studio in Calgary that Friday recording the story. They also accepted Jenn's pitch, so we were both on the same episode. That episode aired this afternoon. My story was the lead, which was really cool.
While it's easily the most interesting event that has happened to me in my years in the hospitality industry, I haven't yet told it on this blog because I couldn't think of a way to make it funny, and humour is the main goal of this blog. You can listen to the story in the DNTO episode, but I'm going to retell it here, too. I wrote this a couple of years ago, but I've updated it slightly (changed the actual hotel name to Birch Lodge, updated my current age). It's not funny, but it goes into a lot more detail of the event, plus I analyze my reaction and feelings about it. Enjoy:
I arrived at work 15 minutes before my shift actually started, as is my habit, and found the girl working the 3-11 shift before me (Shaylene was her name) trying to solve a problem with her cash-out. I was somewhat of an old hand at this, and I quickly helped her find it and sat down in a chair off to the side while she finished counting the float and preparing her deposit at a work desk located on the back wall behind the front desk.
Shaylene’s friend, who had been there keeping her company during a relatively slow shift, was there with us, and we all chatted amicably while Shaylene counted out the money to deposit into the safe.
The chair I was seated in was situated in a place that was hidden from the front door by the pay phone alcove, so when the door opened, the woman who came in couldn’t see me and I couldn’t see her. She started yelling at Shaylene and her friend as she completely ignored me. I didn’t understand what the woman said, and I initially thought that it was someone who knew the two other girls and was either fooling around with them or was pissed off by something trivial. Shaylene’s friend—whose name I forget—had been standing in the lobby in front of the desk. Once the new arrival started yelling, she dashed around the side of the desk and hid on the floor. That was when I realized something was not normal, and the woman who had just arrived (Danielle) stepped further into the lobby, and I saw a pistol held in her outstretched arm pointing at Shaylene. She held out an orange canvas lunch bag in the other hand and demanded that Shaylene fill it with cash.
There was a split second in which rage tried to drive me to action, but something else more sensible took hold instead. All emotion accept for a sense of urgency seemed to drain out of me as I jumped to my feet. Shaylene’s reaction to the robber’s demand was to throw the deposit money, which happened to be in her hand already, on the front desk and duck behind the counter. Danielle could see the till drawer full of $600 in cash sitting on the work desk, so Shaylene’s hasty offering of $250 wasn’t enough to get Danielle to leave. She seemed surprised to see me stand up. The gun swiveled to point at me instead of at Shaylene, and I was ordered to fill the lunch bag. I took it from her and turned to the work desk.
I quickly began emptying the cash drawer of all of the bills: hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens, fives. As soon as my back was turned to Danielle and her gun, I heard the front door open, and a man joined Danielle in yelling and cursing at me to hurry. They crammed a lot of profanity and urgings to move faster in the five or ten seconds it took me to fill the bag. I distinctly remember the man saying, “Do you wanna get shot, you fat fuck?”
Once I was done shoving the paper money into the sac, I grabbed a handful of toonies and dumped them in, and then started scooping up the loonies. “That’s enough,” the impatient robbers ordered, followed by an expletive-rich demand to hand over the money. I turned around and handed them the sac with my head bowed in a show of utter meekness. It was as if they were wild dogs, and I was afraid that eye contact would be interpreted as a challenge, which would be met with brutal violence. Even as they took the lunch bag out of my hand, I started to kneel down behind the desk. “Get down on the floor!” Danielle and her male companion ordered.
“I am,” I said evenly. They were the only two words I spoke during the whole ordeal.
“Don’t touch the phone!” they ordered as I heard them open the door.
After the robbers fled, Shaylene, her friend, and I stared at each other in wide-eyed shock. “Did that just happen?” I asked.
I called 911, even though Shaylene was apprehensive about touching the phone after being ordered not to. As I hung up, a motel guest came in the lobby and found the three of us kneeling on the floor behind the desk. He was a young guy who had been flirting with Shaylene earlier, and they were supposed to go out for drinks, but Shaylene explained what had happened and cancelled the date. The police showed up just a couple minutes after I called them, and Danielle was apprehended within 15 minutes. The gun turned out to be fake, but we didn’t know that while it was pointed at our faces.
I always tell this story as if it’s something cool that happened to me at work once. And it is an interesting story that filled my dull job with a few minutes of excitement. I never really let on that the incident had a profound effect on me.
All my life, I have avoided violence. Not violence in movies, video games, and literature. That’s fake violence, which is fun. I enjoy R-rated movies and M-rated video games. It’s real violence that I find so disturbing. In elementary school, I was terrified of bullies, even though they rarely picked on me, and even forged somewhat of a shaky friendship with me at times. Nothing terrified me more than the possibility of being punched, especially in the face. The combination of avoiding violence and not being a nerd (that came later in life) made it possible to get through childhood without ever getting into a fist fight. Once I was a teenager, it was my uncanny ability to disappear into the background that kept me flying under the radar of most bullies, and the ones who did notice me relied on psychological bullying rather than throwing punches. As an adult, I generally don’t put myself in situations that I might have to punch my way out of, and I don’t hang around with people who will get me into that kind of trouble.
So here I am, 34 years old, and I’ve never punched a human being. I’ve never been punched, either. I still have the deep-seeded aversion to real life violence. It’s not just pain-avoidance, either. I have experienced a lot of physical pain in my life, from my son head-butting me in the teeth, to kidney stone attacks, to ingrown toenail surgery with no anesthetic, to a broken jaw. I have developed a respectable tolerance to pain, so it’s not the potential pain from a punch to the eye could cause that makes me afraid of violence. It’s more the idea of one person wanting to inflict pain on another person for no good reason that disturbs me. The primal urge to damage another person, to make him bleed.
Imagine how someone so terrified of being punched would feel with a gun shoved in his face.
It was 11:00 at night. Two people with at least one gun. (I never did see the guy, so I don’t know if he was armed or not. More on that later.) My only potential allies were two skinny 19-year-old girls who were quivering on the floor. This may sound cliché, but I could feel the gun pointing at my back as I filled the lunch bag with money and wondered if I’d ever see my newborn son again.
Shaylene took two weeks off after the robbery. She came back for one shift, during which she jumped in fear every time the door opened. She quit the next day. I, on the other hand, worked my entire eight-hour shift immediately after being robbed, and was back the next day for more.
Besides my ever-present fear of violence, something else disturbs me about that night. Who the hell was the guy who came in and supported Danielle while I emptied the till? My theory was that they were either working together, or he was her pimp or something. She would come in yelling and waving the gun around, get the employees to hand over the cash, and he would watch outside to make sure no one came in behind Danielle and to come in to assist if it looked like she needed it. When they approached the Birch Lodge, they didn’t realize I was there because I was sitting out of sight. Once I stood up to come to Shaylene’s aid, he realized that Danielle, who was no more than 100 pounds and armed with a fake gun, was up against a 250-pound man, and he came to back her up. This theory is very probable, and I would be surprised if reality proved to vary much from it. There’s something that has been nagging me for the past six years, though.
Does the guy even exist?
He came into the lobby while my back was turned. When I turned back to hand Danielle the money, my eyes were cast down, and my only visual memory of him is a dark shadow on the very edge of my peripheral vision. The only real memory I have of him is his voice.
When Danielle robbed a Mohawk gas station a few days before paying me a visit, there was no report of a male accomplice.
When Danielle was arrested, she insisted that she worked alone on both robberies.
Strangest of all, though, is that Shaylene and her friend don’t remember a guy being there at all. They never saw him, and they say they never heard him.
Were Shaylene and her friend so panicked that they didn’t notice a second, much deeper and forceful voice threatening to shoot us? When we were talking to the police, they recounted some of the things Danielle said, so they were coherent through the ordeal. Why wouldn’t they have noticed a second voice?
Did I imagine the guy? Was he some sort of hallucination? Why would my mind deal with being robbed by creating a second robber to yell at me? Maybe, deep down inside, I’m sexist, and can’t bare the humiliation of being robbed by a woman, so my subconscious created an imposing male to go along with the crack-whore with the gun.
In some of my more ridiculous moments, I wonder if I was hearing the devil urging Danielle on. Either that, or a foul-mouthed angel trying to make sure I didn’t do anything foolish. That is obviously not what happened, but there’s a small irrational part of me that clings to that.
But, as I said, I’m sure my mystery robber exists. So he’s still out there. And Danielle is out of prison by now. And I still work evenings at a motel.
While it's easily the most interesting event that has happened to me in my years in the hospitality industry, I haven't yet told it on this blog because I couldn't think of a way to make it funny, and humour is the main goal of this blog. You can listen to the story in the DNTO episode, but I'm going to retell it here, too. I wrote this a couple of years ago, but I've updated it slightly (changed the actual hotel name to Birch Lodge, updated my current age). It's not funny, but it goes into a lot more detail of the event, plus I analyze my reaction and feelings about it. Enjoy:
I arrived at work 15 minutes before my shift actually started, as is my habit, and found the girl working the 3-11 shift before me (Shaylene was her name) trying to solve a problem with her cash-out. I was somewhat of an old hand at this, and I quickly helped her find it and sat down in a chair off to the side while she finished counting the float and preparing her deposit at a work desk located on the back wall behind the front desk.
Shaylene’s friend, who had been there keeping her company during a relatively slow shift, was there with us, and we all chatted amicably while Shaylene counted out the money to deposit into the safe.
The chair I was seated in was situated in a place that was hidden from the front door by the pay phone alcove, so when the door opened, the woman who came in couldn’t see me and I couldn’t see her. She started yelling at Shaylene and her friend as she completely ignored me. I didn’t understand what the woman said, and I initially thought that it was someone who knew the two other girls and was either fooling around with them or was pissed off by something trivial. Shaylene’s friend—whose name I forget—had been standing in the lobby in front of the desk. Once the new arrival started yelling, she dashed around the side of the desk and hid on the floor. That was when I realized something was not normal, and the woman who had just arrived (Danielle) stepped further into the lobby, and I saw a pistol held in her outstretched arm pointing at Shaylene. She held out an orange canvas lunch bag in the other hand and demanded that Shaylene fill it with cash.
There was a split second in which rage tried to drive me to action, but something else more sensible took hold instead. All emotion accept for a sense of urgency seemed to drain out of me as I jumped to my feet. Shaylene’s reaction to the robber’s demand was to throw the deposit money, which happened to be in her hand already, on the front desk and duck behind the counter. Danielle could see the till drawer full of $600 in cash sitting on the work desk, so Shaylene’s hasty offering of $250 wasn’t enough to get Danielle to leave. She seemed surprised to see me stand up. The gun swiveled to point at me instead of at Shaylene, and I was ordered to fill the lunch bag. I took it from her and turned to the work desk.
I quickly began emptying the cash drawer of all of the bills: hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens, fives. As soon as my back was turned to Danielle and her gun, I heard the front door open, and a man joined Danielle in yelling and cursing at me to hurry. They crammed a lot of profanity and urgings to move faster in the five or ten seconds it took me to fill the bag. I distinctly remember the man saying, “Do you wanna get shot, you fat fuck?”
Once I was done shoving the paper money into the sac, I grabbed a handful of toonies and dumped them in, and then started scooping up the loonies. “That’s enough,” the impatient robbers ordered, followed by an expletive-rich demand to hand over the money. I turned around and handed them the sac with my head bowed in a show of utter meekness. It was as if they were wild dogs, and I was afraid that eye contact would be interpreted as a challenge, which would be met with brutal violence. Even as they took the lunch bag out of my hand, I started to kneel down behind the desk. “Get down on the floor!” Danielle and her male companion ordered.
“I am,” I said evenly. They were the only two words I spoke during the whole ordeal.
“Don’t touch the phone!” they ordered as I heard them open the door.
After the robbers fled, Shaylene, her friend, and I stared at each other in wide-eyed shock. “Did that just happen?” I asked.
I called 911, even though Shaylene was apprehensive about touching the phone after being ordered not to. As I hung up, a motel guest came in the lobby and found the three of us kneeling on the floor behind the desk. He was a young guy who had been flirting with Shaylene earlier, and they were supposed to go out for drinks, but Shaylene explained what had happened and cancelled the date. The police showed up just a couple minutes after I called them, and Danielle was apprehended within 15 minutes. The gun turned out to be fake, but we didn’t know that while it was pointed at our faces.
I always tell this story as if it’s something cool that happened to me at work once. And it is an interesting story that filled my dull job with a few minutes of excitement. I never really let on that the incident had a profound effect on me.
All my life, I have avoided violence. Not violence in movies, video games, and literature. That’s fake violence, which is fun. I enjoy R-rated movies and M-rated video games. It’s real violence that I find so disturbing. In elementary school, I was terrified of bullies, even though they rarely picked on me, and even forged somewhat of a shaky friendship with me at times. Nothing terrified me more than the possibility of being punched, especially in the face. The combination of avoiding violence and not being a nerd (that came later in life) made it possible to get through childhood without ever getting into a fist fight. Once I was a teenager, it was my uncanny ability to disappear into the background that kept me flying under the radar of most bullies, and the ones who did notice me relied on psychological bullying rather than throwing punches. As an adult, I generally don’t put myself in situations that I might have to punch my way out of, and I don’t hang around with people who will get me into that kind of trouble.
So here I am, 34 years old, and I’ve never punched a human being. I’ve never been punched, either. I still have the deep-seeded aversion to real life violence. It’s not just pain-avoidance, either. I have experienced a lot of physical pain in my life, from my son head-butting me in the teeth, to kidney stone attacks, to ingrown toenail surgery with no anesthetic, to a broken jaw. I have developed a respectable tolerance to pain, so it’s not the potential pain from a punch to the eye could cause that makes me afraid of violence. It’s more the idea of one person wanting to inflict pain on another person for no good reason that disturbs me. The primal urge to damage another person, to make him bleed.
Imagine how someone so terrified of being punched would feel with a gun shoved in his face.
It was 11:00 at night. Two people with at least one gun. (I never did see the guy, so I don’t know if he was armed or not. More on that later.) My only potential allies were two skinny 19-year-old girls who were quivering on the floor. This may sound cliché, but I could feel the gun pointing at my back as I filled the lunch bag with money and wondered if I’d ever see my newborn son again.
Shaylene took two weeks off after the robbery. She came back for one shift, during which she jumped in fear every time the door opened. She quit the next day. I, on the other hand, worked my entire eight-hour shift immediately after being robbed, and was back the next day for more.
Besides my ever-present fear of violence, something else disturbs me about that night. Who the hell was the guy who came in and supported Danielle while I emptied the till? My theory was that they were either working together, or he was her pimp or something. She would come in yelling and waving the gun around, get the employees to hand over the cash, and he would watch outside to make sure no one came in behind Danielle and to come in to assist if it looked like she needed it. When they approached the Birch Lodge, they didn’t realize I was there because I was sitting out of sight. Once I stood up to come to Shaylene’s aid, he realized that Danielle, who was no more than 100 pounds and armed with a fake gun, was up against a 250-pound man, and he came to back her up. This theory is very probable, and I would be surprised if reality proved to vary much from it. There’s something that has been nagging me for the past six years, though.
Does the guy even exist?
He came into the lobby while my back was turned. When I turned back to hand Danielle the money, my eyes were cast down, and my only visual memory of him is a dark shadow on the very edge of my peripheral vision. The only real memory I have of him is his voice.
When Danielle robbed a Mohawk gas station a few days before paying me a visit, there was no report of a male accomplice.
When Danielle was arrested, she insisted that she worked alone on both robberies.
Strangest of all, though, is that Shaylene and her friend don’t remember a guy being there at all. They never saw him, and they say they never heard him.
Were Shaylene and her friend so panicked that they didn’t notice a second, much deeper and forceful voice threatening to shoot us? When we were talking to the police, they recounted some of the things Danielle said, so they were coherent through the ordeal. Why wouldn’t they have noticed a second voice?
Did I imagine the guy? Was he some sort of hallucination? Why would my mind deal with being robbed by creating a second robber to yell at me? Maybe, deep down inside, I’m sexist, and can’t bare the humiliation of being robbed by a woman, so my subconscious created an imposing male to go along with the crack-whore with the gun.
In some of my more ridiculous moments, I wonder if I was hearing the devil urging Danielle on. Either that, or a foul-mouthed angel trying to make sure I didn’t do anything foolish. That is obviously not what happened, but there’s a small irrational part of me that clings to that.
But, as I said, I’m sure my mystery robber exists. So he’s still out there. And Danielle is out of prison by now. And I still work evenings at a motel.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Americans
The city I work in is only an hour away from the Canada/US border, so we get a lot of business from Americans. They're usually good for a chuckle, especially the ones who are visiting Canada for the first time. Nice people, for the most part, but often amusingly out of their element.
One question I'm asked at an alarmingly high rate by American guests is whether or not our prices are in US dollars. When they ask, I'll smile and say yes, sometimes with a jovial "We are in Canada" added if I think they're the type of person who can take a little good-natured ribbing. I find it funny, and it doesn't make me angry at them, but I'm in awe of how often it happens. Only Americans would go to a foreign country and think that the prices charged at businesses would be in US currency. Usually, they at least ask if our prices are in US dollars, but there are the people who say, "Your prices are in US dollars, right?" In their minds, of course local Canadian businesses charge people in US dollars! What else would they use?
There are other things that Americans do that make me laugh. I recently had a guy ask if I could give him a discount since it was his first time in Canada. Sorry, no. Nice try, though. Asking about metric conversions is understandable, so I don't begrudge them that. I think it's dumb that the nation as a whole hasn't gone metric, but I don't hold it against the individual citizens. Of course they don't know how fast 110 km/h is.
One time, when I was working at the Birch Lodge, a nice American woman checked in and said, "I was surprised that you guys have the same restaurants that we do, like McDonalds and Burger King." Seriously? You were surprised to find a McDonalds 65 miles outside of the States? McDonalds has been in freakin' Russia since it was still the USSR. I ate McDonalds in the Philippines a couple of times. I wouldn't be surprised if they opened a franchise on the moon soon.
Lately, whenever American guests find out that I'm a Mormon, they start talking about "your guy" Mitt Romney. I'm quick to tell them that he's not my guy, and that I'm liberal.
Okay, I'm gonna go on a little tangent here that has nothing to do with Americans. A guy once came in and asked me where the best place to go drinking was. I shrugged and said that I don't drink. "What?" he said. "Why not? Are you a Mormon?" He said it as if they idea of anyone being a Mormon was absolutely hilarious. When I told answered yes, he said, "Oh. Sorry." And then walked away.
So, anyway. 'Merica!
One question I'm asked at an alarmingly high rate by American guests is whether or not our prices are in US dollars. When they ask, I'll smile and say yes, sometimes with a jovial "We are in Canada" added if I think they're the type of person who can take a little good-natured ribbing. I find it funny, and it doesn't make me angry at them, but I'm in awe of how often it happens. Only Americans would go to a foreign country and think that the prices charged at businesses would be in US currency. Usually, they at least ask if our prices are in US dollars, but there are the people who say, "Your prices are in US dollars, right?" In their minds, of course local Canadian businesses charge people in US dollars! What else would they use?
There are other things that Americans do that make me laugh. I recently had a guy ask if I could give him a discount since it was his first time in Canada. Sorry, no. Nice try, though. Asking about metric conversions is understandable, so I don't begrudge them that. I think it's dumb that the nation as a whole hasn't gone metric, but I don't hold it against the individual citizens. Of course they don't know how fast 110 km/h is.
One time, when I was working at the Birch Lodge, a nice American woman checked in and said, "I was surprised that you guys have the same restaurants that we do, like McDonalds and Burger King." Seriously? You were surprised to find a McDonalds 65 miles outside of the States? McDonalds has been in freakin' Russia since it was still the USSR. I ate McDonalds in the Philippines a couple of times. I wouldn't be surprised if they opened a franchise on the moon soon.
Lately, whenever American guests find out that I'm a Mormon, they start talking about "your guy" Mitt Romney. I'm quick to tell them that he's not my guy, and that I'm liberal.
Okay, I'm gonna go on a little tangent here that has nothing to do with Americans. A guy once came in and asked me where the best place to go drinking was. I shrugged and said that I don't drink. "What?" he said. "Why not? Are you a Mormon?" He said it as if they idea of anyone being a Mormon was absolutely hilarious. When I told answered yes, he said, "Oh. Sorry." And then walked away.
So, anyway. 'Merica!
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Night Audit
When I was working at the Pretty Good Inn, early in my motel career, I worked the night audit shift from 11:00 pm to 7:00 am. To fill the early morning hours, I would often write. I once wrote a short story about working the night audit. I am going to include here part of that story. Every word of it is true:
***
The last night of January in 2003 wasn’t a typical off-season night shift. For one thing, it was a Friday. Weekends are always busier than weekdays. On top of this, we had two junior high basketball teams from Medicine Hat and a hockey team from Japan staying with us. I knew as soon as I got to work that it would not be a very peaceful shift.
“The guy in 303 is an asshole,” was one of the first things that the girl working the evening shift told me. “He and his friends were already drunk by 8:00, and he was hitting on me. He got me to call a taxi for them, and then he asked if they could go swimming naked. I was, like, ‘Um, no. Besides, your taxi will be here in less than ten minutes.’”
I smiled at the contempt in her voice. It was a feeling that I knew quite well.
“Are they still at the bar?” I asked. I had to speak louder than I wanted to because the basketball teams had just arrived from Burger King and were laughing, yelling, and stomping their way through the lobby. Most of them wore those cardboard crowns that Burger King gives out for free upon request. I’ve never understood why teenagers found those so cool, even when I was a teenager.
“Yeah, they probably won’t be back for a while,” my co-worker answered.
“I look forward to meeting them.” My sarcasm elicited a laugh from her. She left shortly after that. She needed to go home and sleep right away because she had to be back at work at 7:00 in the morning.
I set up my portable CD player–I hate the radio–and got right to work. As I had guessed, I was interrupted every five minutes in the first hour and a half of my shift, so it took me quite a bit longer to finish the audit. At first, it was the basketball kids asking for pillows, towels, blankets, wake-up calls, and cots. I couldn’t help them with the cots. We didn’t have any that weren’t already being used by the teams. Cry me a river. I was polite throughout all of this. Despite the anger and impatience that comes across as I tell this, I’m actually a pretty nice guy, and I’m very personable. I look non-threatening, too.
After the wave of basketball players, the Japanese hockey players paid me a visit. None of them spoke English. One of them came to the desk and held out a microwave dinner for me to see. It was covered with Japanese characters that I couldn’t even begin to decipher, but I picked out a 2, and, not far from it, a 5. He pointed to the 2, held up two fingers, and said what I assume is Japanese for two.
“Two?” I said.
He held up two fingers again and said the same Japanese word.
“Yeah, two,” I said. Then I guessed at the meaning: “Cook for two minutes?”
He walked into the kitchen just off the lobby and pointed at the microwave oven as he said another Japanese word which most likely means “microwave.” I don’t know what microwave ovens are like in Japan, but this guy obviously needed assistance with the Canadian model. He couldn’t even figure out how to open the door. I put his dinner in for him and set the timer for two minutes. Then I went back to my paperwork.
Two minutes later, the microwave beeped. My Japanese friend stuck his head out of the kitchen and said something else to me. I got back up and opened the microwave for him. I showed him where the plastic forks were and went back to work. He said what sounded like “Thank you”, but it was so heavily accented that I could be mistaken. I said “You’re welcome” anyway.
A few minutes later, a regular guest who had been at the hotel for the past few days came to the front desk. There are only two regular guests that I recognize by sight, and this wasn’t one of them. I don’t see a lot of regulars on the night shift.
“This doesn’t work,” he huffed and threw his magnetic key card in my direction. He stood with a pissed off look on his face and waited for me to pick up his card and reprogram it. Now, when a guest checks in, we program the card to work for the number of days that the guest is staying. This particular regular always tells us that he’s going to stay for two days, but he always stays longer than that. This means he has to keep coming back to the front desk to get the card reprogrammed.
I slipped into my polite attitude as if it were an article of clothing that I could cast on or off at will. “What room are you in?” I asked as I picked up the card. Like I said, I didn’t recognize him, so I didn’t know which room he was staying in.
His reaction to my simple, polite question surprised me. He looked shocked and insulted that I didn’t know his room number. “111!” he answered, sounding as if I were the stupidest man he had ever met.
I kept my cool. Be polite. He’s the guest; you’re the host.
“How many more days will you be staying?” I asked as I punched my password into the card coder.
“I have no f***ing idea!”
I programmed the key for seven days just to avoid future bitchiness. I ignored the list of possible rude remarks that came to mind.
As I was punching in all the necessary numbers, he said, “If I have to bring it back again, you can shove it up your ass.”
I took this as license to shrug off my politeness and don my smart-ass persona. “Okay, I’ll do that, sir,” I said, still using my polite tone of voice.
He must’ve picked up on the irony of my tone of voice, because he tweaked his threat as he took his card. “No,” he said, “I’ll shove it up your ass for you.”
“I’ll bend over for you, sir,” I said and walked to my chair.
He didn’t like that.
“Don’t you get smart with me,” he said. I could hear a fight in his voice.
As I sat down, I said, “I’m sorry, sir,” but I let the sarcasm and insincerity show in my voice and on my face.
He paused indecisively. I felt a small surge of adrenalin as I anticipated what would happen next.
Instead of a fight, I got an excuse. “I’m in a bad mood,” he said. He held up his cell phone. “I had my ex-wife on the phone, and I’m tired. I’m in a bad mood.”
“Okay,” I said. It was just one word, but I said it in a way that seemed to say, “Whatever, I don’t care. Why are you still here bothering me and wasting my time?”
He must’ve understood, because that’s when he left.
Well, now instead of just being mildly irritated, I was in a down-right sour mood. Maybe I could settle myself down with numbers.
Things slowed down a little bit then. I only had two people walk in before I finished.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I finished the last of my paperwork at 1:00. It had taken longer than usual, but it had gone smoothly. Everything balanced on the first try. I remember once, back in the summer when I was new to the job, I went over my numbers again and again looking for a missing 50 cents. I finally found it at 6:30 in the morning. It was a simple mistake, but those are the hardest ones to find because they’re easy to overlook.
I grabbed my paperback copy of Everything’s Eventual by Stephen King and started reading. I actually read most of a short story before a taxi pulled up in front of the glass lobby door. I closed the book, but kept my thumb in my place just in case the passenger of the cab was already checked in and just returning from a night on the town.
“Please, please, please,” I said, trying to will them to leave me alone.
Three men got out of the taxi. They looked to be around 20 years old, and they were dressed only in jeans and T-shirts. The weather was unseasonably warm, but not that warm.
The taxi pulled away, and I anxiously waited to see where the guys were going. One of them opened the lobby door. I heard him say, “We can get in this way.” One of his friends said something that I couldn’t hear, and the first guy closed the door without coming in. The three of them walked around the front of the hotel to go to the other side of it.
The hotel I work in has a main building and two separate wings, one on either side of the main building. These three guys were walking around to the other wing, and I realized that it must be the would-be skinny dippers from room 303.
I returned to reading my book. The desk I sat at was next to a window facing the walkway passing the front of the hotel. There was a knock on the window, and I groaned inwardly. What now?
I looked up with a neutral expression on my face. One of the three guys was on the other side of the window. He had lifted up his shirt and was rubbing one of his nipples with a stupid grin on his face. “Hello!” he said in a high voice that I think was supposed to be sultry. The expression on my face didn’t change. I didn’t want to give him the reaction that he wanted. I calmly reached up and closed the blinds.
I turned back to my book and finished reading the last couple of paragraphs in the short story. When I was done, I decided to see what was on television.
The TV was in the manager’s office. I went in, sat on her desk, and flipped through the channels. I found something on CBC that interested me. They were airing a hockey game from the playoffs in 1986. It was the Montreal Canadiens vs. the New York Rangers.
The phone rang a minute into the period. It was 303 calling. “Front desk,” I answered.
“Uh, yeah. How are ya?”
“Not bad. Yourself?”
“Good. Hey, how do I figure out someone’s number?”
I paused. It wasn’t a question that I was expecting. The answer was so simple that I wondered if I was understanding him correctly. “Um...411?”
“Oh yeah. Do I have to dial anything before it?”
“Yes, dial 9 to get an outside line, then 411.”
“Thanks.” He hung up, and I pressed the release button to break the connection.
I went back to the office to watch the game. Before I could even sit down, the phone rang again.
It was 303.
“Front desk.”
“Hey, I tried dialling 9, but it doesn’t work. It just beeps.”
“Just a second,” I said. I pushed the guest room button to see his telephone set-up. His line wasn’t open. I checked his registration form and saw that he had paid cash instead of credit.
“Your phone line isn’t open,” I explained. “We’ll need a $10 deposit if you want it open.”
“Oh. Okay. Never mind then. Hey, I was the guy rubbing his nipple for you.”
“Yeah, that was great. Thanks.” My voice dripped with sarcasm.
“I knew you liked it.”
I hit the release button and went back to the office. The game was still going.
The phone rang.
“Dammit, that better not be 303!” I said as I went to the phone.
“Front desk.”
“Hello, Front Desk.” It was 303. “What time is breakfast?”
“It starts at 6:00 and ends at 10:00.”
“Can you wake us up at 9:00?”
“Sure,” I said and programmed a wake-up call.
“If the phone doesn’t wake us up, just come up here and kick us and tell us to wake the f*** up.”
“I won’t be here at nine.”
“Could you leave a note telling whoever’s here to come wake us up?”
“No, I’m sorry. We don’t do that. I set a wake-up call for you.”
“Are there any hot girls working in the morning?”
“It’ll be the same girl who was working earlier this evening.”
“Okay. Good night.”
“You, too.” I broke the connection and went back to the game.
The phone rang a minute later.
“Front desk.”
“Hey, it’s me again,” 303 said. “Do you guys have a cot we could use?”
“No, they’re all in use tonight.” The basketball teams had all of them.
“Do you have a foamie we could use instead?”
I assumed he meant a foam mattress. “No, sorry.”
“How about an egg carton thing?”
It’s probably good that he didn’t see the look on my face. “No, we don’t have any of those.”
“Okay. I guess we’ll be fine. See you tomorrow.”
“It won’t be me.”
“Then we’ll see buddy tomorrow. Bye.”
I hung up.
I was relieved to see that the game hadn’t ended yet. I watched Patrick Roy make some acrobatic saves, and then two Canadiens broke into the Ranger’s zone. Claude Lemieux scored the game winner. Montreal is my second favourite team–Edmonton being my first–so I was quite pleased.
***
The rest of the story from this point on is completely fictional, so I left it out. My writing style still sucked in 2003 (or rather, it sucked more than it does today), but I like this story because it paints a good picture of the little annoyances that I put up with at times.
***
The last night of January in 2003 wasn’t a typical off-season night shift. For one thing, it was a Friday. Weekends are always busier than weekdays. On top of this, we had two junior high basketball teams from Medicine Hat and a hockey team from Japan staying with us. I knew as soon as I got to work that it would not be a very peaceful shift.
“The guy in 303 is an asshole,” was one of the first things that the girl working the evening shift told me. “He and his friends were already drunk by 8:00, and he was hitting on me. He got me to call a taxi for them, and then he asked if they could go swimming naked. I was, like, ‘Um, no. Besides, your taxi will be here in less than ten minutes.’”
I smiled at the contempt in her voice. It was a feeling that I knew quite well.
“Are they still at the bar?” I asked. I had to speak louder than I wanted to because the basketball teams had just arrived from Burger King and were laughing, yelling, and stomping their way through the lobby. Most of them wore those cardboard crowns that Burger King gives out for free upon request. I’ve never understood why teenagers found those so cool, even when I was a teenager.
“Yeah, they probably won’t be back for a while,” my co-worker answered.
“I look forward to meeting them.” My sarcasm elicited a laugh from her. She left shortly after that. She needed to go home and sleep right away because she had to be back at work at 7:00 in the morning.
I set up my portable CD player–I hate the radio–and got right to work. As I had guessed, I was interrupted every five minutes in the first hour and a half of my shift, so it took me quite a bit longer to finish the audit. At first, it was the basketball kids asking for pillows, towels, blankets, wake-up calls, and cots. I couldn’t help them with the cots. We didn’t have any that weren’t already being used by the teams. Cry me a river. I was polite throughout all of this. Despite the anger and impatience that comes across as I tell this, I’m actually a pretty nice guy, and I’m very personable. I look non-threatening, too.
After the wave of basketball players, the Japanese hockey players paid me a visit. None of them spoke English. One of them came to the desk and held out a microwave dinner for me to see. It was covered with Japanese characters that I couldn’t even begin to decipher, but I picked out a 2, and, not far from it, a 5. He pointed to the 2, held up two fingers, and said what I assume is Japanese for two.
“Two?” I said.
He held up two fingers again and said the same Japanese word.
“Yeah, two,” I said. Then I guessed at the meaning: “Cook for two minutes?”
He walked into the kitchen just off the lobby and pointed at the microwave oven as he said another Japanese word which most likely means “microwave.” I don’t know what microwave ovens are like in Japan, but this guy obviously needed assistance with the Canadian model. He couldn’t even figure out how to open the door. I put his dinner in for him and set the timer for two minutes. Then I went back to my paperwork.
Two minutes later, the microwave beeped. My Japanese friend stuck his head out of the kitchen and said something else to me. I got back up and opened the microwave for him. I showed him where the plastic forks were and went back to work. He said what sounded like “Thank you”, but it was so heavily accented that I could be mistaken. I said “You’re welcome” anyway.
A few minutes later, a regular guest who had been at the hotel for the past few days came to the front desk. There are only two regular guests that I recognize by sight, and this wasn’t one of them. I don’t see a lot of regulars on the night shift.
“This doesn’t work,” he huffed and threw his magnetic key card in my direction. He stood with a pissed off look on his face and waited for me to pick up his card and reprogram it. Now, when a guest checks in, we program the card to work for the number of days that the guest is staying. This particular regular always tells us that he’s going to stay for two days, but he always stays longer than that. This means he has to keep coming back to the front desk to get the card reprogrammed.
I slipped into my polite attitude as if it were an article of clothing that I could cast on or off at will. “What room are you in?” I asked as I picked up the card. Like I said, I didn’t recognize him, so I didn’t know which room he was staying in.
His reaction to my simple, polite question surprised me. He looked shocked and insulted that I didn’t know his room number. “111!” he answered, sounding as if I were the stupidest man he had ever met.
I kept my cool. Be polite. He’s the guest; you’re the host.
“How many more days will you be staying?” I asked as I punched my password into the card coder.
“I have no f***ing idea!”
I programmed the key for seven days just to avoid future bitchiness. I ignored the list of possible rude remarks that came to mind.
As I was punching in all the necessary numbers, he said, “If I have to bring it back again, you can shove it up your ass.”
I took this as license to shrug off my politeness and don my smart-ass persona. “Okay, I’ll do that, sir,” I said, still using my polite tone of voice.
He must’ve picked up on the irony of my tone of voice, because he tweaked his threat as he took his card. “No,” he said, “I’ll shove it up your ass for you.”
“I’ll bend over for you, sir,” I said and walked to my chair.
He didn’t like that.
“Don’t you get smart with me,” he said. I could hear a fight in his voice.
As I sat down, I said, “I’m sorry, sir,” but I let the sarcasm and insincerity show in my voice and on my face.
He paused indecisively. I felt a small surge of adrenalin as I anticipated what would happen next.
Instead of a fight, I got an excuse. “I’m in a bad mood,” he said. He held up his cell phone. “I had my ex-wife on the phone, and I’m tired. I’m in a bad mood.”
“Okay,” I said. It was just one word, but I said it in a way that seemed to say, “Whatever, I don’t care. Why are you still here bothering me and wasting my time?”
He must’ve understood, because that’s when he left.
Well, now instead of just being mildly irritated, I was in a down-right sour mood. Maybe I could settle myself down with numbers.
Things slowed down a little bit then. I only had two people walk in before I finished.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I finished the last of my paperwork at 1:00. It had taken longer than usual, but it had gone smoothly. Everything balanced on the first try. I remember once, back in the summer when I was new to the job, I went over my numbers again and again looking for a missing 50 cents. I finally found it at 6:30 in the morning. It was a simple mistake, but those are the hardest ones to find because they’re easy to overlook.
I grabbed my paperback copy of Everything’s Eventual by Stephen King and started reading. I actually read most of a short story before a taxi pulled up in front of the glass lobby door. I closed the book, but kept my thumb in my place just in case the passenger of the cab was already checked in and just returning from a night on the town.
“Please, please, please,” I said, trying to will them to leave me alone.
Three men got out of the taxi. They looked to be around 20 years old, and they were dressed only in jeans and T-shirts. The weather was unseasonably warm, but not that warm.
The taxi pulled away, and I anxiously waited to see where the guys were going. One of them opened the lobby door. I heard him say, “We can get in this way.” One of his friends said something that I couldn’t hear, and the first guy closed the door without coming in. The three of them walked around the front of the hotel to go to the other side of it.
The hotel I work in has a main building and two separate wings, one on either side of the main building. These three guys were walking around to the other wing, and I realized that it must be the would-be skinny dippers from room 303.
I returned to reading my book. The desk I sat at was next to a window facing the walkway passing the front of the hotel. There was a knock on the window, and I groaned inwardly. What now?
I looked up with a neutral expression on my face. One of the three guys was on the other side of the window. He had lifted up his shirt and was rubbing one of his nipples with a stupid grin on his face. “Hello!” he said in a high voice that I think was supposed to be sultry. The expression on my face didn’t change. I didn’t want to give him the reaction that he wanted. I calmly reached up and closed the blinds.
I turned back to my book and finished reading the last couple of paragraphs in the short story. When I was done, I decided to see what was on television.
The TV was in the manager’s office. I went in, sat on her desk, and flipped through the channels. I found something on CBC that interested me. They were airing a hockey game from the playoffs in 1986. It was the Montreal Canadiens vs. the New York Rangers.
The phone rang a minute into the period. It was 303 calling. “Front desk,” I answered.
“Uh, yeah. How are ya?”
“Not bad. Yourself?”
“Good. Hey, how do I figure out someone’s number?”
I paused. It wasn’t a question that I was expecting. The answer was so simple that I wondered if I was understanding him correctly. “Um...411?”
“Oh yeah. Do I have to dial anything before it?”
“Yes, dial 9 to get an outside line, then 411.”
“Thanks.” He hung up, and I pressed the release button to break the connection.
I went back to the office to watch the game. Before I could even sit down, the phone rang again.
It was 303.
“Front desk.”
“Hey, I tried dialling 9, but it doesn’t work. It just beeps.”
“Just a second,” I said. I pushed the guest room button to see his telephone set-up. His line wasn’t open. I checked his registration form and saw that he had paid cash instead of credit.
“Your phone line isn’t open,” I explained. “We’ll need a $10 deposit if you want it open.”
“Oh. Okay. Never mind then. Hey, I was the guy rubbing his nipple for you.”
“Yeah, that was great. Thanks.” My voice dripped with sarcasm.
“I knew you liked it.”
I hit the release button and went back to the office. The game was still going.
The phone rang.
“Dammit, that better not be 303!” I said as I went to the phone.
“Front desk.”
“Hello, Front Desk.” It was 303. “What time is breakfast?”
“It starts at 6:00 and ends at 10:00.”
“Can you wake us up at 9:00?”
“Sure,” I said and programmed a wake-up call.
“If the phone doesn’t wake us up, just come up here and kick us and tell us to wake the f*** up.”
“I won’t be here at nine.”
“Could you leave a note telling whoever’s here to come wake us up?”
“No, I’m sorry. We don’t do that. I set a wake-up call for you.”
“Are there any hot girls working in the morning?”
“It’ll be the same girl who was working earlier this evening.”
“Okay. Good night.”
“You, too.” I broke the connection and went back to the game.
The phone rang a minute later.
“Front desk.”
“Hey, it’s me again,” 303 said. “Do you guys have a cot we could use?”
“No, they’re all in use tonight.” The basketball teams had all of them.
“Do you have a foamie we could use instead?”
I assumed he meant a foam mattress. “No, sorry.”
“How about an egg carton thing?”
It’s probably good that he didn’t see the look on my face. “No, we don’t have any of those.”
“Okay. I guess we’ll be fine. See you tomorrow.”
“It won’t be me.”
“Then we’ll see buddy tomorrow. Bye.”
I hung up.
I was relieved to see that the game hadn’t ended yet. I watched Patrick Roy make some acrobatic saves, and then two Canadiens broke into the Ranger’s zone. Claude Lemieux scored the game winner. Montreal is my second favourite team–Edmonton being my first–so I was quite pleased.
***
The rest of the story from this point on is completely fictional, so I left it out. My writing style still sucked in 2003 (or rather, it sucked more than it does today), but I like this story because it paints a good picture of the little annoyances that I put up with at times.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Winner: Most Awkward Moment Award
Back when I was working at the Birch Lodge, we had pay-per-view movies. As is the general practice in the industry, the guest orders the movies from the room using their remote, leaving me out of the equation. Every now and then, though, a guest wouldn't know how to order a movie.
One evening, I checked in four Hutterites into one room. They were two unmarried couples in their 20s, in a room with two beds. I didn't really think much of it when they checked in. People of all types come to motels to have sex. Two couples in one room is a little awkward, I guess, but I didn't care. I didn't even know for sure that sex was their plan. They could have just been travelling and didn't want to pay for two rooms.
A few minutes after they checked in, they called down to the office and asked me how to order a movie. I tried to talk them through it, but they weren't having any success, and asked me to come to their room and show them how. This wasn't an unusual request. I always found it a little annoying, but it was part of my job, so I went to their room. That was when things got awkward. The two Hutterite women sat on the edge of one of the beds looking anywhere but at me, while the men had me order them a porno. They didn't just have me show them which buttons to press and then do it themselves. I had to do everything. And the whole time I was doing it, I was picturing the four of them having sex. I didn't want to. It was one of the last things I wanted to imagine. But there it was, running over and over again in my mind. I couldn't get out of there fast enough.
Bonus Porn Story:
This was still at the Birch Lodge. A tough, 40-something blue collar worker checked in late one afternoon, and then checked out again 45 minutes later. As I checked him out, I noticed that there was a movie charge on his account. "That's obviously porn," I thought to myself. After he left, I was curious what porn was worth it to pay the full price of a motel room (we didn't charge by the hour; it was all or nothing), plus almost $15 for pay-per-view porn. I went to the computer that controlled the pay-per-view system, and looked up what he watched. I forget the exact title of the movie, but it was something like "Young, Muscled Hunks." Poor guy. It can't be easy to be a gay middle-aged blue collar worker in southern Alberta.
One evening, I checked in four Hutterites into one room. They were two unmarried couples in their 20s, in a room with two beds. I didn't really think much of it when they checked in. People of all types come to motels to have sex. Two couples in one room is a little awkward, I guess, but I didn't care. I didn't even know for sure that sex was their plan. They could have just been travelling and didn't want to pay for two rooms.
A few minutes after they checked in, they called down to the office and asked me how to order a movie. I tried to talk them through it, but they weren't having any success, and asked me to come to their room and show them how. This wasn't an unusual request. I always found it a little annoying, but it was part of my job, so I went to their room. That was when things got awkward. The two Hutterite women sat on the edge of one of the beds looking anywhere but at me, while the men had me order them a porno. They didn't just have me show them which buttons to press and then do it themselves. I had to do everything. And the whole time I was doing it, I was picturing the four of them having sex. I didn't want to. It was one of the last things I wanted to imagine. But there it was, running over and over again in my mind. I couldn't get out of there fast enough.
Bonus Porn Story:
This was still at the Birch Lodge. A tough, 40-something blue collar worker checked in late one afternoon, and then checked out again 45 minutes later. As I checked him out, I noticed that there was a movie charge on his account. "That's obviously porn," I thought to myself. After he left, I was curious what porn was worth it to pay the full price of a motel room (we didn't charge by the hour; it was all or nothing), plus almost $15 for pay-per-view porn. I went to the computer that controlled the pay-per-view system, and looked up what he watched. I forget the exact title of the movie, but it was something like "Young, Muscled Hunks." Poor guy. It can't be easy to be a gay middle-aged blue collar worker in southern Alberta.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Where's my hoodie?
This story happened years ago, before my wife and I had even started dating. I was working the night shift, midnight to 8:00 in the morning. Most times, this shift was a dream at this particular motel, which is the same one I'm working in now. (This is my third time working here. This story happened during the first time I worked here.) It's the smallest of the four I've worked in, and the least busy. This happened on a weekend in the summer, though, which brings the weirdos and a-holes out of the woodwork.
Around 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, things had settled down, and I was hanging out with my cousin and roommate Noah. A guy in his earlier 20s walked in and asked me to call his dad for him. He wasn't a guest or anything; he just wandered in off the street. He was obviously drunk, and he had cuts and bruises on his face that looked like they were from a recent fist fight. I didn't want to make the call for him, so I handed him the portable phone from the office so he could call his dad himself.
"Dial 9 for an outside line," I told him. He took the phone outside to the front step, where he sat down to use the phone. Keeping on eye on him to make sure he didn't leave with the phone, I resumed my conversation with Noah.
A few minutes later, the guy came back in, threw my phone on the floor, and told me that it doesn't work.
"Did you dial 9 for an outside line?" I asked as I checked to see if the phone still works. He answered with a blank stare, which means no. When he asked for the phone back to try again, I told him in very colourful terminology that he couldn't because I didn't want him throwing my phone around, and that I wanted him to leave.
"Well, give me my hoodie back," he said.
"What hoodie?" I asked.
"My hoodie. I gave you my hoodie when you came in."
"No you didn't."
"Yes I did. Give me my hoodie!"
"Why would I steal your hoodie?"
We went back and forth like that for a little while, and I actually took him into the back office to show him that there was no hoodie stashed away in there for me to sell on the black market, but he still didn't believe that I didn't have the hoodie that he wasn't even wearing when he first walked in the door. It was probably at the bar that his ass had been kicked in, but he wouldn't accept that I didn't steal his stupid hoodie. I'm pissed off at him right now simply for making me type the word hoodie so much in this one short blog entry. I finally started yelling and cursing at him, and he decided to leave. I hope he never found his hoodie.
Around 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, things had settled down, and I was hanging out with my cousin and roommate Noah. A guy in his earlier 20s walked in and asked me to call his dad for him. He wasn't a guest or anything; he just wandered in off the street. He was obviously drunk, and he had cuts and bruises on his face that looked like they were from a recent fist fight. I didn't want to make the call for him, so I handed him the portable phone from the office so he could call his dad himself.
"Dial 9 for an outside line," I told him. He took the phone outside to the front step, where he sat down to use the phone. Keeping on eye on him to make sure he didn't leave with the phone, I resumed my conversation with Noah.
A few minutes later, the guy came back in, threw my phone on the floor, and told me that it doesn't work.
"Did you dial 9 for an outside line?" I asked as I checked to see if the phone still works. He answered with a blank stare, which means no. When he asked for the phone back to try again, I told him in very colourful terminology that he couldn't because I didn't want him throwing my phone around, and that I wanted him to leave.
"Well, give me my hoodie back," he said.
"What hoodie?" I asked.
"My hoodie. I gave you my hoodie when you came in."
"No you didn't."
"Yes I did. Give me my hoodie!"
"Why would I steal your hoodie?"
We went back and forth like that for a little while, and I actually took him into the back office to show him that there was no hoodie stashed away in there for me to sell on the black market, but he still didn't believe that I didn't have the hoodie that he wasn't even wearing when he first walked in the door. It was probably at the bar that his ass had been kicked in, but he wouldn't accept that I didn't steal his stupid hoodie. I'm pissed off at him right now simply for making me type the word hoodie so much in this one short blog entry. I finally started yelling and cursing at him, and he decided to leave. I hope he never found his hoodie.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Racist Guests
I never know what to do with racist guests. In any other situation, if someone started telling me the difference between prairie n*****s, sand n*****s, and regular n*****s, I would call him (I find it's always a dude, for some reason) an asshole and walk away. But when I'm in a customer service role, I can't really start calling my guests assholes. I usually end up laughing nervously and waiting for him to go to his room. The worst offender - the one with the N-word classifications - was a regular a few years back. He was planning on moving to Lethbridge, and he asked me to help him move. I was terrified of this man, so I said yes. Thankfully, before the day came for him to move, I moved instead. (This was when I took the brief time-out for working at motels to unsuccessfully pursue a real career.)
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