you don't eat no meat?!

My boss, bless his heart, just doesn't understand certain things.

A few months back, I asked my boss for a raise. Little did I know, I asked at a really bad time. We were at the end of the quarter, preparing the financial statements for the last three months and making projections for the next quarter. Projections say: business is down. Average daily rate (herein referred to as ADR) was down sixty cents and occupancy was down by an average of two rooms per night. In 2008 we hit the jackpot when a natural disaster hit this area, 2009 blessed us with a stellar football season, but in 2010 everything just sucked.

So I asked for a raise, thinking that
1. I am a really good employee,
2. I don't ask for things often, so it would be a jerk thing to do to refuse,
3. I really wasn't asking for that much more money.

I grew a pair and asked and my boss turned me down. He was frustrated by the decline in business and that stress was being exasperated by increasing operational costs. He apologized for not being able to grant my request, and I understood even though I was disappointed. He said if I could find a way to make more money, he would be happy to pay me. Then, something happened.

"Jeeziss cry!" (My boss, an Indian man, doesn't realize it's inappropriate to use the name of the savior of the Christian world in a cursing manner, and even worse, he can't even pronounce is correctly.)

As usual, I choke back a giggle when I hear him say this before composing myself to ask, "What's wrong, P?"

"Every damn month we buy new toner. Ninety dollar each time!"

I had a stroke of genius and took this as my opportunity to earn my raise. I told my boss that you can order toner refill kits online instead of buying a new cartridge each time and only getting a measly $5 credit for recycling. His eyes lit up and he told me to do it. Within a few minutes I had ordered enough for two refills with all the included tools for half the price of a brand new cartridge. The only drawback was that I had to pay with my own money and get reimbursed by the business.

It's been half a year since I first came up with this solution, I got my raise, we're saving money and more importantly, the desk is never out of toner. It's all a grand situation, minus the fact that each time I order toner I'm out anywhere between fifty and a hundred bucks. Yes, I know I get reimbursed eventually, BUT I'M A POOR FKIN COLLEGE STUDENT. A hundred dollars is a lot of frozen pizza, okay?

So today, my boss brings over a new cartridge from the printer at one of his other businesses and tells me to fill it. I had a very difficult time explaining to him that toner is not a universal substance and I would need to order some more of a different kind.

I say to him, "Can I do it on Tuesday? I haven't deposited my paycheck yet."
He insists, "No, do it today."
"Well, can I use your credit card? I don't want to use mine since I haven't been to the bank." At this point I'm pleading, hoping he won't force me to part with $99.71. Reimbursements don't come fast enough.
"You don't have no money?"

The look on his face was confusing to me; as the person who signs my paychecks, he knows better than anyone else how much money I make. But I suppose that as the owner of two Mercedes-Benz vehicles, he's probably forgotten how devastating a $100 loss can be to a college student.

paying my dues.

This is not directly related to work, but it got me thinking: Are 20-Somethings Naively Optimistic About Their Careers?

I have to admit (though it's no secret) that I am an avid reader of the HuffPost.  I am a 20-something college student living in an apartment complex, so having a newspaper delivered to my door is not practical for many reasons (to name a few: I'm broke, I don't trust my neighbors, and I find paper-news to be cumbersome and ecologically irresponsible).  So I read the HuffPost daily, scratch that, hourly.  I found the gem that is the link above headlining the Living section, and I just had to bite.

Now, let me tell you that this article resonated with me to the point of tears.  I am approaching mid-century faster than I'd like to admit, I make a measly hourly wage working for someone who drives me batshit crazy, and I am struggling to decide on a college major.  UNDERGRADUATE major.

In another life, at a different time, I would have been done (or at least close to finishing) with some sort of graduate program by now.  In college (or, more correctly, at the beginning of my college experience) I dabbled with different fields of study before I settled on one I liked just enough to entertain the idea of continuing in some post-graduate work.  My most viable option was to study ethics; it was directly related to my major and broad enough in terms that I could fake a decent-sounding answer when people asked "and what do you plan to do with that?"

And then I had a meltdown.

Long story short, I fucked around for two semesters instead of buckling down and finishing the last few courses I needed for a Bachelor's, took a year off, and after significant social pressure reluctantly returned to school.  Except this time, I chose a new major that made practical and personal sense for my life plan.  For the past two years I have been battling the barrage of criticism for not having completed my original intended Bachelor's and instead abandoning it for a new study that's sapping time and money from my livelihood.

It has been almost exactly six months since I first made the decision to alter the course of my education, and I am proud to say my life has never been better.  Reading this article today reaffirmed that I am indeed making the right decision for my life and the future lifestyle I hope to have.  I was a long-term sufferer of the notion that college is a time to experiment, and that regardless of your degree the letters BA/BS and a passion would take you to the perfect career without having to suffer or endure any strife in your profession.

Dead wrong.

My parents had always told me "just get a degree, it doesn't matter what it is, and then find a job that will give you weekends off, vacation time, benefits and a retirement package," as if that's the ultimate standard.  My parents achieved that for themselves and quickly realized there was no fervor in their lives, so they uprooted our family and started over.  For years I watched them struggle to find their passion, and then struggle to find a way to make their passions pay.  And not once during that time did it occur to me the typical college journey is perhaps detrimental to a person's professional development; even worse, I don't think it occurred to my parents either when they were preaching it to a very impressionable me.

Currently I am $8k in debt, happy when my paychecks are more than $500 biweekly, loving what I study and actively working on applying that knowledge to a profession.  All of this, while doing laundry, sweeping floors, and answering phones, AND being painfully aware of the fact that my pending BBA is NOT magically going to elevate my status above having to be a window washer.

It just so happens that my passion is dirty, it requires hard work, and the pay is probably not immediately satisfying, but the truth is I never expected my life to be a pic-nic before mid 40s.  So this I dedicate to my fellow members of Generation Y: our social status as 20-somethings is SUPPOSED to be tough and gritty, and the reality of our educations is that we know more people our age with degrees than without, and having a degree is not an automatic entitlement to a breezy way of life.

Perhaps this world would be a better place if everyone spent a week cleaning shit stained toilets.  #Payyourdues.

On a side professional note, I think the word "quote" should be banned in writing.  There is NO REASON to have to write/type "quote/unquote" because (SURPRISE!) that's what quotation marks are for.

like a good neighbor.

Here I am at work, twenty minutes away from being free of my obligations, and I have no less than thirty minutes left before I can go home.

Why?

Because some Russian jagoff failed to pay for his room and his credit card declined.  He fed me some bullshit about waiting until midnight... instructions from his bank.. blah blah.  BULLSHIT.

I'm staying until after midnight for shits and giggles to see if the card doesn't decline, but I am 100% prepared for another *beep* DECLINE from the credit card machine.

So what's another ten minutes, if I get the satisfaction of waking him at midnight to remind him that he's still in financial ruin.  No, really... I'm honestly looking forward to this.

Plus, it gives me the opportunity to finish my personal laundry.

none yo' damn business.

It's not even 7am yet and I have already been asked three times, "How you doin'?"

It's one thing to be asked that at the checkout line in a grocery store, but when I answer the phone "___________, XXX speaking, how can I help you?" the immediate response I get on the other line should not be "How yoooou doin'."

It's not even so much a question (thus the lack of question mark above, that was intentional... I know my grammar) as it is their ice breaker.  I am in the habit of not even acknowledging when people to choose to start out a conversation in that manner; in the beginning I would politely respond "fine, how are you?" until I realized that not a single person was prepared to be asked that in return.

I find it rude for guests to ask me how I'm doing without them wanting to know or actually caring about how I am doing.  Do me a favor: just stop asking.  Chances are, even if you DID care about how my day is going, I wouldn't want to share it with you.

Batter up.

I have personal packages delivered to my work address.  The mail situation at my apartment is unpredictable at best, so I decided to have my deliverables sent to my job where there is always someone around to sign for packages.  Today I was expecting a textbook for a class I am already two weeks behind in studying.  The grungy brown package was well wrapped, a little dusty, but nonetheless here and in my hands.  I felt a tingle in my fingertips as they pressed against the crinkled wrappings; for a foolish second, I thought I might actually be able to get some studying done at work tonight.

I was so terribly wrong.

The phone rings just seconds after I sat down in my chair ready to tackle some paperwork.

"___________, XXX speaking, how can I help you?"
"___________, XXX speaking, how can I help you?"
"___________, XXX speaking, how can I help you?"
"___________, XXX speaking, how can I help you?"
"___________, XXX speaking, how can I help you?"

It appears this is going to be the story of my day.

Between the incessant phone calls, my friend M across the street calling to complain about her shitty personal life, and all the walk-in guests that seem so incredibly intent on interrupting every task I set myself to accomplish, I worry that I won't be able to handle myself professionally.

"Give me one of those rooms.  The cheap ones.  It has to have a fridge."
"Sorry sir, all I have is a king size non-smoking, and I won't be able to offer any discounts."
"Man, this town is BOGUS.  All I want is to be able to smoke in my room.  So how much extra is it to smoke?"
"I'm sorry, but our smoking rooms have sold out for the night.  You cannot smoke in a non-smoking room."

For a moment, I let my mind drift into my happy place.  On any other day I would be compassionate and at least make an effort to accommodate extreme demands, but today the only thing I can conjure is a baseball bat.  A nice hardwood slugger.  Spread my legs, balance my shoulders, choke up on the neck of the bat: I take a swing so hard I feel the crunch of skull and I see bits of brains splash onto the popcorn ceiling that will take hours to completely clean off.  The ceiling fan whips around lazily, sending little splashes of blood onto the granite countertop, wafting the scent of victory to fill my lungs in triumph.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath.

And then the guest walks out of the lobby.  Good riddance.

His early exit wasn't quite what I was hoping for, at least his death by baseball bat would ensure I would not have to deal with him again, but I would take the empty lobby and the silence and be grateful.  I thought maybe, just maybe, things would stay like this long enough that I could get a few chapters of studying done.  And then...

"___________, XXX speaking, how can I help you?"
"___________, XXX speaking, how can I help you?"
"___________, XXX speaking, how can I help you?"

Scratch that.  This is going to be a long night.

I'm not your buddy, pal.

"HEY, BUDDY."

It's not quite 7am.  I am in the back office wrapped up in a blanket I snagged from the housekeeping closet, my head resting on the only available horizontal surface, a convenient free-standing plastic shelving unit nestled next to the employee fridge.

"HELLO?"

At first I tried sleeping on the floor, but I quickly realized the constant stream of traffic through the lobby would make it a pain to have to peel myself off the ground on command.  For an excruciating five seconds I contemplated my options: I could rest my head while sitting at the front desk (bad call), I checked the in-house list to see if there was a nearby empty room I could make mine for half an hour (too much walking), and then I settled for the metal folding chair on which my purse was sitting in the back office.  I wrapped myself in my loaned blanket, placed a pillow on the hard, white, plastic surface of the nearest shelf, and I let the humming of the adjacent fridge lull me into a nap.

7:15am.  I set my phone alarm to 15 minute intervals so I wouldn't sleep through the morning, but it became quickly apparent this step was completely unnecessary.

"I'M TAKING SOME COFFEE."

My leg has fallen asleep, I struggle to stand and I cannot make sense of the jabbering coming from the lobby.

"Is there something I can help you with, sir?"  By the time I crawled out of my napping corner, the person in the lobby had left.  I see a pair of bright red plastic tags sitting on the desk; room 201 has checked out.  I struggle with mornings even under the best conditions, but today will be much harder.  The five chopped up, sub-par hours of sleep I got yesterday were not enough and I am troubled by the prospect of having to spend the morning giving too much attention to simple matters.

The check-out process is easy: drop your keys and have a good day.  The breakfast is complementary and I do not require an update from guests each time they help themselves.  I'm not all that interested in discussing the weather either; in a lobby full of windows it goes without saying what is happening outside.

"Boy, you Iowans sure like your snow"
"Excuse me?"
"That's all you have here!  It snows every day."

In reality, it's been at least a week since last snowfall, and I can say with a degree of certainty that the collective population in Iowa is grateful for the mild winter we have had thus far.  The trio standing in front of me are checking out, they requested receipts and proceeded to fill those lagging seconds with mindless blabber.  I take a quick glace at their guest folio as I wait for the printer to spool the page; their address reads Ontario, Canada, which accounts for their funny speech pattern and interesting choice in attire.  Setting aside all cultural assumptions, I'm puzzled by their comment on the snow.  A few mouse clicks later I read that Ontario is no stranger to heavy snowfall.  Wtf.

-----

I never know when my boss will be here.  I like the freedom of not having someone micromanage the way I run my shift, my performance suffers when there is a person standing over my shoulder.  I do, however, wish that he would keep an appointment book to make it known when we should be expecting company.

A lady dressed in an ugly brown tweed suit entered the lobby, her face showing hints of what might have been beauty at one point, but now is mostly covered with pock marks and oil slicks obviously pointing out the fact that she did not bother to wash her face this morning.  She nervously approaches the desk and asks for ____ _____, the owner.  She has an appointment.  Before I even had a chance to say a word (or even process a thought), the expression on my face tells it all.  To confirm, I tell her that the person she is looking for is a name I have never heard before and that my manager is not in this morning.  She fumbles with an outdated cell phone (flip style, with a tattered blue face plate that shows signs of being dropped too many times) and makes a call.  She barely stammers out a sentence, doing a poor job of suppressing her shock at finding out her "appointment" to which her company dutifully assigned her is a phantom.  And then my boss walks in.

I say to him quietly, "P, this lady is here to see the owner.  She says she has an appointment."  Brown suit lady drops her phone at this scene, scoops it up and teeters a few feet forward to extend her hand to shake.

"Mr P, my name is ______, I am here to try to save you some money on your credit processor."
"No.  We have a contract, three year... we cannot break."
"But that's what we do.  We pay the fee and offer you a better deal."
"No, brand new contract.  We cannot."
"But that's our service.  Our company..."
"Not interested," my boss spews in the direction of brown suit lady, with no effort to hide his contempt as he storms out of the lobby.  It is then that I realize the salesperson's cell phone was still on the line as she pulls it from her purse.
"Mr P is very busy right now, I guess I'm just going to have to leave."

I gave a halfhearted smile as she left, hoping to impart some sort of apology, or pity, or perhaps encouragement.  I picture her in her car, an older, white, beat up SUV about as well kept as her personal appearance, pulled over on the side of the road, crying over the humiliation of being turned down before she even finished the sentence.  I can't imagine she's had this job long, or that she'll have the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to be a seasoned solicitor.

-----

My boss's mother-in-law helps with housekeeping five days a week.  I respect the decision to have her in our employment because she is a huge help, not to mention I am sure she appreciates having a purpose to her daily life as opposed to sitting at home unattended.  What I cannot understand is why she is given messages to pass between the main housekeeper and the front desk.  You see, she doesn't speak English.  Our communication consists entirely of room numbers (thankfully she has mastered the English numbers from one to twenty) and crude hand gestures.  And when that fails, she repeats everything louder.

"Wan-oh-seex [finger point] [grunt] wan-oh-ate.  Keemee [points to her chest]."

Thankfully, I had already spoken to someone else earlier about having the guest in 106 move to 108 so housekeeping can continue their week-long deep cleaning treatment. , so I knew what she was getting at, but I could not figure out what the hell "keemee" was suppose to mean.

"KEE...MEE [points at window, drags finger to point at her chest]."
"Uh... okay.  106 moving to 108.  Sure."
"No.  [deep breath] YOO GEE MEE KEE WAN-OH-ATE."
"OH!  You want the key to 108.  Of course."

I still have no idea what pointing to the window signified.  Kee wan-oh-ate would have sufficed, or she could have grabbed it off the rack herself.

blowing off steam.

It's ungodly early on a Sunday morning, and I am at work blowing off the steam coming from my second cup of coffee of the day.  I like the way the surface of my milky brown beverage swirls inside the cup, but the phone rings before I am able to fully appreciate the wisps of vapor tickling the tip of my nose.

"______________, XXX speaking, how can I help you?  Oh, it's just you"

(For the sake of my current job and future career aspects, I will have to refrain from identifying myself or my place of employment.)

The person on the other end of the phone is my friend M, who works across the street at a different hotel.  We've learned to cope with our frustrating jobs by using the company phones to call each other during shifts... frequently.  On this fine morning I ask her how to make the adjustment from working weeknights to weekend mornings.  Her advice: "you'll just get used to it, eventually you'll get into the habit."  Um, thanks for nothing.

The one benefit of working mornings is that I have more down time, and fewer people in my face needing attention.  The truth is the hospitality industry is the business of placating; it's not simply a matter of fulfilling a customer's reasonable demands of shelter and running water and those really small bottles of generic shampoo, the front desk exists for the sole purpose of serving emotional needs.

My first human contact of the day is a guest I am sure I have seen before, but I cannot remember his name and it's greatly possible I am confusing him for someone else.  Mid 40s, easily clears 6 feet, 5pm stubble (at 7am, mind you) and the stench of last night's beer hanging on his dingy clothes.  He later informs me that it was ten beers, to be exact.

"I don't know who you are," he says to me as he stomps into the lobby, holding the door open letting in a gust of frigid air.  I am annoyed, the current temperature outside is hanging at a blustery 5 degrees and despite having left the thermostat at 72 degrees overnight, the lobby is struggling to remain at 63.

"I'm sorry sir, is there something I can help you with?"
He stomps across the length of the lobby and barks at me, before leaving with a danish in hand.  "You're new, I've never seen you before."

Truth be told, I have been here almost three and a half years.  Few things surprise me anymore.

-----

Face palm of the day (so far): Older couple, 50s at least, probably haven't slept in the same bed in at least two decades, they are as skilled at thinking as they are at walking which doesn't bode well for humanity (or my day at work).

"Where's the breakfast?"
"Right in front of you, sir."