i just got a job working overnight at a hotel front desk

i have managed to overbook the house-- i'm not sure how it happened but i feel like it wasn't my fault.

every guest that walks through into the lobby, i feel a spike of dread in my constant low level buzz of apprehension.

but i only need one no show to make it through.

villian

i'm not sure how i'll play it if every guest arrives. i'm thinking i'll just, "oh dear, we don't seem to have that reservation on file," and put on an expression of severe exasperation that will cause them to be sympathetic to my situation.

this is the night you learn what it means to work the front desk. this is the night you make that leap from ingenuous clerk to family murderer.

they'll have crying toddlers

blame the fuckups at corporate

i'm not sure how i'll play it if every guest arrives.

Can you go watch some Fawlty Towers real quick?

if two singles come in better figure out how to play matchmaker quick

exactly, i've got rooms with two beds, and even two rooms, and one person staying in them! "listen, i've got this guy down at the front desk, he really needs a room.... i was thinking... if you don't mind-- he's checking out really early. and don't worry, he's going to cover half of the cost of the room. great guy, too."

i'm also going to claim it's my first day.

well it sounds like no matter what you do it's gonna end in murder, better get your alibis straight

who would i be murdering? are you saying i should clear out a room by brutally slaughtering the occupants?

Just don't rule anything out. That's all we're saying.

i'm feeling confident. past midnight, five arrivals are still missing.

HOOS TO THREAD

either you murder someone or you set two people up together who then murder each other or everyone murders everyone it's a big murder party, sorry i wasn't clear

i made it through.

i just put on my sweater and walked around the hotel once. hazy pink mountain sunrise. i just ordered a plate of waffles, bacon, and yogurt with saskatoon berries. a german tour group is mounting their bus in the parking park. they're all dressed in grey and blue arcteryx and northface jackets and plastic pants.

thanks for the support.

Should read this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/517s5A%2BsVRL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

Basically boils down to: person at the front desk wields all the power.

between may and september, the hotel is mostly booked. a few weeknights are still free. we have a few suites set aside on scattered weekends. there are cancellations and no shows. but you can't really get a room just by walking in the door.

tonight, a man with one arm came into the hotel to ask for a room. i said, "we don't have any suites available for tonight."
he asked, "do you need a credit card to book a room?"
"yes, you do need a credit card to book a room."
"okay. you need a credit card?"
"but, unfortunately, we don't have any rooms available tonight."
he asked me, with real bitterness, "is it because of the way i look?"

This thread has strong potential to be a black and white Jim Jarmusch short featuring John Lurie and filmed in 1983. Which would be odd, because someone would alert dylannn to its existence via social media, and he would (after much postponement, because who needs a busman's holiday?) watch it with a growing sense of deja vu.

I lived that very scene, man! The one-armed man [in movie, inevitable Tom Waits cameo] really did croak: "Is it because of the way I look?"

You are the overnight desk clerk, Dylannn--you've always been the overnight desk clerk.

(Looking forward to checking in on this thread in about a month.)

a few hours ago, a guy with a cowboy hat came in, looked a lot like don imus, and asked me questions about my life and he also told me: "i've got a son named dylan," bob dylan's birthday was on may 24th, and bob dylan is 72 years old. he told me that he divorced his wife on bob dylan's birthday. his wife was a canadian public radio personality whose name i recognized. he asked me if i was a musician. he gave me a cd, broke out the back sheet from it and signed it with a sharpie, THANKS FOR LISTENING. i'm listening to it right now and there's a song on the cd called "a lonely place called divorce" and there's a line on it about divorcing his wife on bob dylan's birthday. there's another song warning women to treat him well or they'll end up as a line in his suicide letter.

i was impressed with his commitment to his personal vision of his own character. but it made almost too neat an anecdote to share, black and white jim jarmusch short neat. maybe the one armed man story should have been filed in the same category.

what's happening in a month?

http://www.awardscircuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/jack_torrance_jack_nicholson_the_shining_warnerbros_16anof7-16anoga1.jpg

(Just kidding--good luck.)

No bellhop sidekick?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNNKOXJ2PqI

the boredom, killing six or seven hours of deadtime a night
is grinding me down.

a guy came to the desk a few minutes ago, he said, "you want to do a good gag with me?"
"sure, okay... what are we doing?"
"you come up to our room in about fifteen minutes, tell us we're too loud--"
"okay."
"--and i'll freak out on you and you tell us that we're all outta there."

this doesn't sound like a good idea. i don't trust his improv skills.

okay. he just came by the desk and said, "don't worry about it. they went to sleep."
"alright!"
"it was a good idea, though." thumbs up.
"have a good night!"

dylann that is my favorite story in forever you are the king

It sounds like something out of an episode of My Name is Earl!

which step is the "hey wanna do a good gag with me" step

is dylan Tao Lin?

i don't have the heart to rewrite it in the style of people writing in tao lin style on the internet.

but that will be the only thing that happens tonight. last night or the night before, i only slept a few hours during the day and came into work and, when everyone was gone, made a bed of towels on the floor in the back room and fell asleep until quarter to four. the night before that, i set myself up in an empty room and sat at the desk and wrote on the hotel stationary and drank a can of kokanee. i took a shower in another room, an early checkout. three women came in around two in the morning and i gave them a free room for no reason and they checked into their room and one of them came back and put two twenty dollar bills on the counter (american currency). there's a girl that works in the laundry room until midnight and she's started stopping in to chat before she goes home and i don't want to discourage her because i enjoy the ten or fifteen minutes she's here--in order to drive conversation with her, i checked her out on facebook but she seems to be really interested in soccer, and i found an introduction to sudanese arabic on youtube and i practiced the phrases with her, and we talk about cities in the united states that would be good to live in and food--but i simultaneously resent it because it subtracts time by myself from the night. with nobody coming by, no slow darkening of the day, the natural rhythms of life are absent and every hour feels like an hour but it still goes by too fast.

But Scheer and other experts believe a significant part of the problem with shift work is physiological. On a fundamental level, being awake at odd or irregular hours fights with our biological rhythms. Shift work disrupts the circadian rhythm -- our internal body clock that is keyed to natural daylight and darkness.

Because circadian rhythm affects how the body functions, disrupting it can throw everything out of whack -- including our cardiovascular system, metabolism, digestion, immune system, and hormonal balance. That appears to have serious consequences.

The short-term health effects of shift work are clear. ... Aside from the obvious fatigue, effects include:

Gastrointestinal symptoms like upset stomach, nausea, diarrhea, constipation, and heartburn
Increased risk of injuries and accidents
Insomnia
Decreased quality of life
General feeling of being unwell

http://25.media.tumblr.com/4fa46499a219ee621ad687eb3b0544bc/tumblr_moqh1ysvg71qzb8z0o1_500.png

I worked a summer on the noc shift back when, in a hospital. it does mess with you for sure. though I've known noc shift lifers, too. I couldn't be one but when I thought of my time on the noc shift as a waystation then I could get into it, like it was a quest or something.

Strange that brodie didn't show up for this thread.

I noc shifted for over a year full time at a truck stop. I remember once my cousin's husband sent me a copy of 2666 for Christmas, and I ended up reading it during my down time at work and got through it in a week.

i tried just dividing each 24 hour period into 8 hours of work, 8 hours of non-work waking time, and 8 hours of sleep, but the system is destroyed by my inability to mark out 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep and the necessary slowdown and wakeup periods at the beginning and end of the sleep cycle. with a day off, i ended up sleeping from 2 pm until 7 am the next morning, 17 hours of hard, hard sleep. like, this morning, i was up at 6 am again, after a solid ten hours of sleep the night before, and i slept from 10 am to 11 am or so, and now i'll be awake until at least 9 am, which means i'm looking at 22-23 hours awake. i'll be able to correct slightly by sleeping, hopefully, 9am-3pm and then maybe 7pm-10pm-- that's 9 hours budgeted for sleep but time has to be allowed for falling asleep and if i aim to wake up at 9 pm, i'll set my alarm for 8:40, and then it's cut back to 7-7.5 hours of sleep. but that's enough sleep.

working late, i only have the vaguest sense of the rest of the staff, especially the heavyweights of guest services that control the lobby during the day, the staff of eight or nine that are here behind the desk and behind other desks during daylight hours. when i come in at 11, sometimes it's a guy named daniel, who is from toronto, went to school in vancouver and actually did some sort of degree in working at hotels. things that drive our conversation: gossip about other staff members, 'ryan gosling or channing tatum'-style pick only one games. but this information is out of date because he got fired for stealing money. now, it's this girl named nicole or a girl named rebecca. rebecca is a coolly religious girl from some fucked up town in northern ontario. the first time i met her, i asked her, "a lot of gas huffing going on up there?"-- that's not a funny thing to say but in my memory of the conversation, i asked it sincerely and quickly realized it wasn't a good first conversation question. i followed that question up with, "how's the moose hunting up there?" she's a singer. after the conversation where i asked her about huffing gas, i had several very sincere, serious conversations with her. nicole is in her late-30s and also went to school to learn how to work at a hotel, an educational choice that i'm mentioning again in the same slightly disparaging tone. she's got a pompadour and seems like she'd be interested in a local roller derby league forming. she likes to touch while talking and also shared with me that she has sex with men and women. she's very short and... i'm a gentleman, okay? i don't know quite how to put this but... she has a nice figure. when i talk to her, i adopt a mumbling, old fashioned masculine character, alberta accent, spitting molasses through the slit in the lid of a styrofoam coffee cup. tonight, she mentioned that she couldn't find weed and said that the reason was the flooding in southern alberta and highway closures in the bc interior. we sat in the front seat of my car and smoked a joint. i mentioned that i really enjoyed working with rebecca. nicole asked in a flirty way, "ohhhh, you're feeling a little something for her, huh?"
"no no no, nothing like that."
"she's a pretty big girl."
"that's not a problem."
there was some segue to this but i can't remember what it: she pulled open the top of her shirt and showed me the strap of her bra. it was leopard print, or some other animal print. for some reason, i said, "come on, let me see the whole thing."

that's not the right way to build a healthy relationship with co-workers.

for some reason

mysterious

the first guest that came in while i was working also worked our conversation over to flooding in southern alberta. i made some throwaway comment about the tragedy of it.
she said, "it can stay flooded for all i care!"

nah, man. it's like, i mean i was unable to be cool and harness my desire to see her titties and stay in character.

the second guest that came in was named van nostrand. she said it might be tough to spell but i reminded her, kramer as dr. martin van nostrand. she said that her family was very proud of the name and that they've traced their family tree back to the 1630s, friesland. she said that when her second son was born, they let their first son choose a name for him. he chose the name jacob. turns out, they learned this later, their first son had no idea, their first ancestor that came over to canada and settled in toronto was also named jacob.

dylannn i want you to know that i am thinking about you and your sitch and that your stories, while perhaps sad to you, or even irritating, are tremendously beguiling from my POV. hang in there.

This is great reading. Thanks, Dylann.

really enjoying the stories dylannn -- pretty fantastic stuff.

Seconding that, love the stories <3

that's good to hear!

although i wish there was more to say. i've related nearly every incident that has occurred. the only events i've omitted are those that might strain credibility-- even if they're true, they sound a little too good.

:D

i want to marry that hotel

keep thinking about this thread

Had almost forgotten it, thanks.

it's one of the best

Meh.. Just some inconsequential life through a monacle shitjob tourism with all the despair filtered out!

Didn't HOOS have a similar thread at one point?

i recall HOOS had to put someone in they place

My bartender, myself, and my general manager will not tolerate your hate speech on our property. Please leave.