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!
Sunday, September 16, 2012
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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