Manifesto

We work for corporations whose idea of customer service is to build a karmic dam where the customer who throws a tantrum like a three-year-old is rewarded for it.  Where the customer has paid for the right to treat the company's employees like shit.

What does that do to the employees?  They must be either false, or they must be perfectly spiritually evolved in order to turn the other cheek and reward the demanding demeaning behavior with a free upgrade at a hotel, fines waived at a library, empty products returned for cash at a health food store.

On the other hand, the people who yell and throw a fit and act like not having their every whim catered to is a gross injustice - they are raging against the corporate machine and may genuinely feel that they must debase themselves and the employees they speak to in order to get their due.  The bottom line of a company - make x amount of money at a profit - that's a tricky thing to find.  The easiest way to make a profit is to gyp people.  People are sick of getting gypped, sick of working themselves to the bone to go home and deal with, for instance, Verizon, a mega-company that cares not a whit about the absurd bureaucratic hoops people sometimes have to jump through in order to give Verzion the money they earned at a job they despise.

Oh, the whole system's screwed.  I am not one to get free upgrades, generally, and I wonder if it is because I empathize too strongly with the employee who's telling me no, these are the rules, no, this is what you paid for, no.  I try to pay attention to the people who manage to get more for their money, more than they've paid for, without screaming and yelling and splashing in the karmic dam of the corporation, but so far I haven't been able to deduce their method.  Maybe a calm still feeling of deserving it.

Sometimes I feel like my friends who work in customer service, bowing to the will of tantrumey customers, have had their personalities deformed just as truly as a factory worker gets his hand mangled in a machine.  To grit your teeth and smile, and give, to someone who rightfully deserves to be told to stop behaving like a spoiled brat.  It wears on you after ten, twenty years.  Especially if you're trying to care about your job, invest some meaning in it even though it's menial.  If you choose the false front over spiritual evolution the false front can meld itself to your real self without you realizing it. 

I leave you with an anecdote.  Once my friend who worked the graveyard shift at a diner told me that her friend spit in a terrible tyrant's side of ranch, and my friend helped by stirring in the spit bubbles with her finger.  Think about that if you're ever tempted to snap your fingers at a server like they're scullery maids on the Titanic.  If what I've said about the spiritual disfigurement of not standing up for what's right is not enough to dissuade you from throwing a tantrum in a business establishment: consider some 20-year-old tweaker's spit in your side of ranch.  Mmmm.

Cauls and feral children are my two favorite topics, but I will consent to read about offal and the golden poison frog as well

Caul
Offal
Golden Poison Frog

Who came up with the name Walkie Talkie? Should I start calling my laptop Sittie Typie?

A fun thing to do is look at the security guard across the lobby, and then use the walkie talkie to tell him something, and when he just raises his voice slightly to answer me I pretend like I can't hear him unless he uses the walkie talkie too.

In Which I Lie

Guy Who Is Nothing Like the Fonz: People in high school* always told me I reminded them of the Fonz. 

Me: Oh yeah...?

Guy Who Is Nothing Like the Fonz: Yeah, but I don't even know who that is. 

Me: Yeah, me neither.  [winces inwardly at the terrible lie]

Guy Who Is Nothing Like the Fonz: I think he was on like Three's Company or something.

Me: Hmm.  [dies inside]

*High school was like two years ago for him.

Secret Room Sects

There's a secret room in the hotel.  If you push on a wooden panel in the wall in one of the lobbies, it opens into a small room, maybe more of a closet, that's for some reason very hot.  Actually the reason it's very hot in there is that it's a portal to hell.

Who loves secret rooms?  I love secret rooms.  My best friend in elementary school lived in a house with a secret room for awhile.  You'd open the hall closet and push past all the jackets to an alcove beneath the stairs.  When her brothers ran up and down them it sounded like thunder.

---

Someone left a book titled The (New, Illustrated) Great Controversy in the lobby.  It's written by Ellen G. White and is the basis of the 7th Day Adventist sect of Christianity.  It's kind of interesting that this book and the book that is the basis of Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, were both written by women.  Should I write fanfiction of Ellen G. White and Mary Baker Eddy as friends? lovers? enemies?  Spies who frequent secret rooms in hotel lobbies and coat closets?

Let's see: Mary Baker Eddy was born in New Hampshire in 1821.  Ellen G. White was born in 1827, in Maine.  That would totally work.  Stay tuned!*

---

*I will never actually write this.

"She is NOT a Sagittarius" --from a different conversation at a different job I was eavesdropping on and laughing at

It's my birthday on Friday, I said, and rambled a little.  Then I said, "When is your birthday?"

"November 23," he answered.  This co-worker I only see once a week at 5:30am. 

"So then what's your sign?" I asked.

"Uh... Sagittarius."

"Do you feel like a Sagittarius?"

"Ah... no, not really.  I don't know.  No.  I don't let other people tell me who I am."

-----

Two thoughts:
1. Do people realize my (impertinent) sudden interest in them is not out of nowhere, but out of a self-conscious feeling that I have been talking too much about myself and I would like to immediately balance the conversation back out?  If so, does it make my interest seem insincere?  If so, do they care?
2. That's a good answer.  I DON'T LET OTHER PEOPLE TELL ME WHO I AM.  That's like something Coco Chanel would say.

Recipe Corner

The security guard (not Liz Taylor, a different one) brought me warm, home-cooked food tonight.  I exclaimed over it and was like, "Mmmmm" a bunch of times. 

It was genuinely good, but what made it better is that 1) it has been a long time since I ate non-restaurant food, and 2) I ate it at 3am.

HOW DID YOU MAKE THIS, I asked him. 

Here is the recipe:
1. Brown Italian sausage in olive oil
2. Chop up bok choy, throw in big stem pieces
3. Add a dash of soy sauce
4. Add the smaller leaves of bok choy, along with sliced jalepeno
5. EAT.

Variations we discussed:
Balsamic vinegar instead of soy sauce
Add chopped garlic
Add chopped ginger

Variation I vetoed:
Add pasta

What we discussed while we ate:
1. How Apple Cider Vinegar is wonderous
2. How it tastes good on salad, mixed with olive oil
3. How at Latitude 62, a restaurant/bar/lodging in town, they give you like a bucket (exaggeration) of ranch with your salad
4. How ranch ruins salad
5. How when I was studying abroad in Italy there was this girl who insisted she could not eat pizza without ranch to dip it in, and embarrassed everyone by asking for it everywhere, to the mystification of the Italian waitstaff, and her mom finally mailed her a bunch of ranch packets, which she would MIX AT THE TABLE, in Florence and all other major cities in Italy, and dip her authentic Italian pizza in.  To the disgust/dismay of the Italian waitstaff.
6. How her nickname was Ranch Packets.

Vogue

There's a full-length mirror in the back room of the front desk, and it's right next to the doorway of the managers' office, and I checked myself out as I walked by it, and my manager saw me out of the corner of her eye and was like, "What??" all weirded out/anxious, and I was like, "Oh, what.  Nothing, I was just looking at myself in the mirror.  Haha."  And she laughed with relief and was like, "Oh my gosh, I was like, 'Why is she looking at me like that?!'"

I really don't know what expression I had on... or since she only saw me out of the corner of her eye, what my aura was, or whatever... but I guess it was alarming.

First sentence

Last night, as I donned my ceremonial Night Audit robes, I thought to myself...

Australopithigus or Something

A short list of people I have noticed think they are superior to me, because our culture supports them in this belief:

• Neat/orderly people
• People who have no problem writing small
• Morning people

I can't even imagine waking up in the morning like "LAAAA!  Ready to start my DAAAY!" and then getting dressed without throwing any article of clothing on the floor and then writing down an idea in tiny fontlike writing.  That person, as I imagine her, seems like an entirely different species of human.

Front Desk Snacks, 2:30am **UPDATE**

Janitor: Can I buy some Skittles?
Me: Yeah but we only have bullshit Tropical Skittles.

---
A week later:
Janitor: It's too bad you still only have these makeshift Skittles.
Me: Shantytown Skittles.

He's covered in mosquito bites

"How's your chubby baby?" I ask the morning restaurant supervisor.  I met him a month ago when he was six months.  He had the chubbiest baby legs I had ever seen.  I only held him for a couple seconds before he got fussy and started kicking his chubby little legs around.  It was almost unbearably adorable.

You can only say that about a baby.  For the record she grinned when I asked that question.

Questions that would not make a person grin:

"How's your chubby boyfriend?"
"How's your chubby wife?"
"How's your chubby daughter?"
"How's your chubby dog?"
"How's your chubby uncle?"
"How's your chubby life?"

FYI

If you have a wedding and reception at a hotel in rural Alaska, the hotel employees will eat all of the leftover food and cake afterwards as if they are feral children and/or Oliver Twist.

P.S. When I thought of Oliver Twist I tried to think of the Artful Dodger but instead the phrase that came to mind was "Grateful Dodger," which then made me think of like a Grateful Dead cover band that wears Dodger baseball shirts and hats and pickpockets their fans.  Also, half of the band members were wolves and half of them were foxes, for some reason, but they were human-sized.  Probably because I just typed "feral children," and I think if you're going to be a feral child, the two best species to have as parents would be wolves and foxes.  Ideally your mom would be a wolf and your step-dad would be a fox, but I guess that's unlikely.

The State Dog

The worst is when I am at work by myself and idly scratching the two mosquito bites on the left side of my scalp when all of a sudden I look over and see the mosquito flying near my head, and I know it's THE mosquito because when I kill it, bright red, fresh blood spurts out of its tiny smashed body.  And I stare at it, because it's my blood.

This Here Gun Says I'll Take My Love to Town If I Want (or, How to Make Me Giggle)

The security guard walked through the lobby last night swinging his radio and singing, "Janie's got a gun," (Aerosmith) except with my name instead of Janie.

He walked through the lobby again this morning and sang, "Janie, don't take your love to town," (Bon Jovi) except with my name instead of Janie.

Hospitality

At the hotel we have a radio code for when a toilet is clogged up. 

"Front desk to janitorial."
"[Bulgarian accent] Janitorial here, go ahead."
"We've got a code 917 in room blah blah."
"[Bulgarian accent] Room blah blah, copy that."

917 is the only radio call we have, other than "code red," for an emergency.  But I don't think "code red" is really a code, because it is obvious that it indicates an emergency.  (Or that someone needs tampons I guess.)

Sometimes I wish we had more radio codes to save guests from other kinds of embarassment.  Here is one half of two conversations I just had:

Answering the phone:
"Front desk!"
...
"To cool the room down?  Um, just - if you turn the thermostat down, the room will get cooler."
...
"Just like um, turn the knob to the left?  And the room will cool down.  Do you see the thermostat?"
...
"Okay, so turn the dial on the thermostat... the dial?  The thermostat dial... do you want me to send someone to your room to show you?"
...
"Okay.  No problem... bye."

Into the radio:
"Front desk to janitorial."
...
"Can you... go to room blah blah and show them, uh... how to turn the thermostat down?"
...
"Thank you."

He's Seen It All

The man whose life is a complicated word problem of math came up to the front desk this morning and said, "So I told my wife the idea of me talking about my life into a mini-recorder and she thought it was really cool."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah.  Because you know, I have stories even from birth.  Like I was born at six months."

I frowned slightly.  "Really?"

"Yeah," he said.  "I was born without eyelids or fingernails."

"What."  I looked at him, astounded.  "You're the Liz Taylor of the lodge!"

Eight Interesting Facts About This Man I Work With

1. He has been married seven times.

2. He is 53 years old.

3. None of his marriages were less than four years long.

4. He has never had children.

5. His current marriage is in its ninth year.

6. His current wife married him when she was 45.

7. She had never been married.

8. He has broken every limb (arm, arm, leg, leg) at least four times.

---

I told him that I am coming back next summer and that I am going to write "at the very least an article or interview" about him.  He's lived all over, had a ton of different jobs, including security guard for famous people who came to this one casino in the 80s, cop, boxer. 

He agreed to this idea of me writing about him even though when he said seven marriages I exclaimed, "You're the Liz Taylor of the lodge!"  I think because he knows that being the Liz Taylor of anything is always the best possible situation.

([rushed whisper] "These have always brought me luck.")

People who are hardy are inherently interesting to me.  Hence my abiding love for the Little House series.  And Sweet Valley High.

They Do

Bartender Who's Perky: "You ladies are still awake?"

One of the two women on the couch in the lobby: "Do we need to leave?"

Bartender Who's Perky: "No, you're fine."

Bartender Who's Perky: [to me] "They're so cute."

Me: Nods unconvincingly, thinking about something else.

Bartender Who's Perky: "I'm all like, 'You ladies still awake?' and they're like, 'Why, do we need to leave,' and I'm like, 'No, you're fine.'"

Me: Nods again, smiles spacily.

---

This whole exchange is important insofar as it reminds me of this hairdresser I used to have who would do this:

Hairdresser: "Oops, I guess this brush is wet!  [pause]  I'm all, "Oops, I guess this brush is wet!'"

Weirdest tic I have ever heard, maybe?  Saying something mundane, then immediately afterward saying, "I'm all," and repeating the mundane thing.  I want to write a novel where a character does that every time she appears.

---

If you're wondering if I have taken some kind of medicine or drug tonight that makes everything seem interesting and worth writing posts about, I will let you in on a little secret.  I'm all, "I will let you in on a little secret."  It's coffee mixed with Swiss Miss.  The poor man's mocha.  The poor man's mescaline.  "Do poor men need mescaline?" you wonder.  "Or for that matter, mochas?" 

They do.

Mark and I Have a Lot in Common

Two guys walk past the front desk on their way upstairs. 

I overhear one of them say, "With like, some pickles," and my ears perk up.  I am hungry right now, and I love pickles. 

I listen with interest as he continues: "And like, a really good pepper on the side.  Like a roasted pepper.  That would be so good." 

The other guy agrees, a little uncomfortably.

Halfway up the stairs the guy who is craving pickles and peppers says, "I'm Mark, by the way," and the two men shake hands.

I laugh quietly to myself.  Dammit, I'm going to miss this job.