215,675,903 Channels, And Nothing's On.

I spend too much time on the Internet now that we have DSL. Actually we both do. But I've noticed lately that I'm staying online a lot even when I'm not being entertained or learning anything. Like now, for instance.

Anyway, last night was a terribly slow night, and I finished all of my tasks very early in the evening, so I spent some time surfing the web.

First place to go was to blogspot to check the blogs I follow. Gian had an awesome day. That's good. Band of Thebes had a book review. It didn't look particularly interesting, though I admit I was judging the book by its cover. Mickey Hepner (mickeyhepner.blogspot.com) wrote about how the new health care law is becoming more popular as people are figuring out what it's really all about (though you would never know it from listening to all the politicians running for Mary Fallin's seat.)

Mr. Hepner also wrote a commentary about a piece in the New York Times by David Leonhardt about lessons we should be learning from the Great Depression. According to Mr. Leonhardt, the government started getting panicky about all the deficit spending they were doing, and stopped supporting the ailing public sector, and thereby extended the Depression by several years. Lawmakers today, are also worrying about the deficit spending going on right now, and are wanting to stop government spending while the economy is too weak to do without it. That could send us into a double-dip recession or into a depression. This article covers a subject Mickey has commented on a few times before.

Nothing else recent on blogspot, so over to Facebook, where an invitation to join, or like, or befriend, or whatever, Senator Tom Coburn, who wants to stop out-of-control government spending. Knowing Oklahoma, that's likely to get him re-elected.

I see my friend Anthony has responded to the comment on his status. The day before he lamented about the lack of Supreme Court nominees who knew what the Constitution was. My comment was a cut and paste from the New York Times quoting nominee Kagan about the importance of the Constitution. He responded with an oblique reference to the Harvard incident where Dean Kagan upheld a pre-existing campus policy that pitted the military against civil rights. Ultimately, civil rights lost. I don't know what that has to do with his original comment, but...okay.

Well, I'm wondering if Ms Kagan has another quote I can use concerning this, so I go to the New York Times website to see if there's a quotable quote. As it happens, Ms Kagan was grilled by Senator Jeff Sessions about this very topic that day, and she did indeed have something to say about it, but the best quote was interlaced with other stuff, and...when you use...too many ellipses...it kinda takes the air...out of your...point, so I skipped it.

Nothing else of interest on Facebook, so now I'm off to Politifact.org to see what kind of silliness is going on in the world. Naturally, they're covering the confirmation hearings and have muchos entries, but I've already read most of them. There's a whole page of stuff about the Harvard Law School incident (I say incident, but in fact the policy was adopted in 1979 that required non-discrimination among potential employers in order for them to recruit on campus. The military, of course, was not able to sign such an agreement, and was not allowed to recruit through the school's Office of Career Services; instead, they recruited through the Harvard Law School Veterans Association.) I reread the page to see if there was anything more to learn from it. There's room to quibble on both sides of the argument.
There's an item about her saying that recruitment actually went up in 2005, the same year that the non-discrimination policy was put back in effect (Congress had applied some financial pressure [there's a word for that--it's not extortion, it's...] and schools across the nation had relented under protest. Harvard Law School let the military recruiters back in to the Office of Career Services for a couple of years, though it didn't make any difference in their success.) Politifact rated her statement as "Half-True" for reasons that didn't seem to have anything to do with the statement. Five is up from three, no matter how you slice it. If you check it out, let me know if you agree with them and why.

I wondered if the Washington Post had anything new or different to say about this, but you have to sign up to get their stories, and I was on the computer at work, so no. Anyway, enough of that.

How much would a DVD of "Bullets over Broadway" cost on Amazon? Ooh. Even with shipping it's less than $10. Tempting.

And then I couldn't think of a single other thing I wanted to look at. So I summoned all of my strength and moved the cursor towards the little x in the top corner...

The Victimization of a Yes Man

Ten bucks.
For an hour upstairs separating sticks from orchids when I could have been down front pulling cars for the departing wedding party at 5 bucks per car.
Now it's not her fault. How could she know that I was expecting at least six times that amount. No, I blame Peanuthead.
Peanuthead is not his real name, of course. It's just that his head is shaped like a peanut. Seriously. The guy should be wearing a monocle and a top hat with his grey valet uniform.
Actually, the real problem is that I'm too acquiescent (everybody sing: ♫ I'm just a guy that caint say no. I'm in a turible fix...♫), which doesn't go unappreciated by my indoor co-workers. I can sometimes wind up with a lot of overtime because someone says "Oh, Ron, before you go..." Somehow, though, it doesn't have the same effect when my fellow valets ask me to do something. Instead, I wind up stressed and broke.
There's a transition period between 2nd and 3rd shift. Most nights it lasts for a minute or two while the afternoon guys tell me about the day and what work is left over. Then they leave, and the night is all mine.
But on those nights that we have events that last into the night, they stick around to help out until such a time that it is determined that I can handle it all by myself without getting totally swamped. Even on the nights when I need them, I still think they are just in the way, and I want them gone. I also feel a bit out of control when they are there, which I resent because this is MY shift, and, unless someone is there who can trump my authority, I should be in charge.
On those busy nights when they are sticking around, somehow I get stuck with all the LAs (Luggage Assistance), which I actually enjoy doing, but often I know it's going cost me more money than I am going to make off of it because lately people are just not tipping well. I wind up with a fiver, which is what I can make pulling around one car, which takes less time, less effort, and a lot less personal interaction. The afternoon guys have already made twice or more what I can hope to make on the night shift, so why don't they do the LAs during the busy times, and let me have a chance at a good night?

It was just getting busy last night when the front desk called the bellstand requesting a bellman and bellcart to the 2nd floor. Peanuthead answered the phone, but he didn't go do it. I had gone to get a car for a couple who just need something out of the trunk, and Peanuthead offered to take the car back to the garage so that I could go up to 2 with a cart. I told him I would take the car back, thinking that that might force him to actually do something about the call that he got. But no, when I got back, he was still at the bellstand. Well, the job needed to be done, so...
When I got upstairs, the wedding planner directed me into the ballroom where there were three tables with about 40 or 50 flower arrangements that she said needed to be taken down to her car. One of the banquets guys and I loaded them all up on two carts and took them out to the foyer, where she told us that the actual flowers were to be trashed. We knew the banquet ladies would want to take the flowers home, so we separated the flowers from the filler and foliage. I got interrupted to help the mother of the bride take some wedding gifts up to the sixth floor, where we discovered that the food that was supposed to be delivered to the new couple had been delivered to the room the bride had been in the night before instead of the suite she was in now, and her sister was eating it.
After getting that all straightened out, I went back down to 2, where the sorting was almost done, and started loading the now empty vases back on the carts. The banquets head and I wheeled the carts to the elevator and out into the lobby, with the wedding planner right behind us. As we got out of the elevator, we passed by Peanuthead, who asked, "Where've you been?" I wanted to slap him, especially since he and the other guy were ready to go, which meant that all the business out front was done. Shit.
The BH and I loaded up her Jeep, then he went inside while I visited with her a bit more. She got out her wallet and pulled out a 20, about a third or less of what I felt I deserved. "Do you have change?"
My job is basically an acting job, so I acted like she hadn't just punched me in the stomach, and resisted the urge to say "Twenty IS change." Instead I said, "I believe so," and pulled out my meager take for the evening, and asked, "How much do you want back?" I gave her the ten dollar bill she asked for, but I had to turn away when she said she hoped that that was enough.

I told the morning guys about what had happened, and they understood exactly why my anger and disgust was centered on Peanuthead. One of them reminded me of Peanuthead's habit of standing with his hips pressed against the bellcart door like he's trying to prevent anyone else from getting to the keys. He pointed to the the hole in the door where the lock used to be before the new one was installed. "That hole is for [Peanuthead]'s penis." The one thing we couldn't decide on, though, was whether he was oblivious or sneaky.
Later, when I complained to someone else, I was told that I just needed to learn to stand up for myself. I know that's true. But I'm not confrontational. I can use my blog for some passive aggression and venting, but I need to take some more positive steps.
I've got the weekend to think about it.

So Apparently I've Stolen a Car

About 4:45am, Ms 804 called the bellstand and asked for her car. Now it only takes two minutes for me to pull around a car, so if she had called and left her room immediately, I would still have it out front before she was out of the elevator. But no, I had to wait in the lobby for her when I had other things to do (deliver newspapers).

Finally the elevator door opens, and asked the woman who stepped out, "Are you Ms 804?" She said yes, so I asked, "May I put your luggage in the car?" She said yes, so I took the suitcase out to the vehicle and put it in the trunk. She had some business with the front desk about her charges, and while that was being handled, she handed me her valet ticket, which I didn't look at, since the car was already outside. When she was done, I escorted her outside, gave her the keys and directions to the airport. She sat down in the Smoking Oasis to have a cigarette before she left. After a few minutes she was gone.

A couple of minutes later, Ms 804 came out of the elevator wanting the car I had pulled around. (Panic!)

Now we've got to figure out who that other woman was, and Vizzini is not panicking fast enough for me, until I remember that I have her valet ticket. Turns out, she was Ms 805, and I still have her car.

(I should mention at this point that I am using their room numbers as euphemisms for their last names, and their names sound nothing alike. The fact that their rooms were across the hall from each other was just an amazing coincidence.)

Since Ms 804 was also headed tot he airport, I asked if she'd be interested in taking Ms 805's car. She said she would rather not take on that responsibility, but she still needed a ride to the airport. I decided to take her myself in our van.

Our chef does a cooking show early in the morning on one of the local TV stations, and uses our van to transport all his supplies. He never cleans the van when he returns it, nor does he fill the gas tank. The van smells like old cooking oil, and it's an embarrassment to have to drive our guests anywhere in it. On this morning, I was spared that embarrassment because there were no seats in the van. I wound up taking Ms 804 and her companion in my car (I was so glad it was relatively clean), which is actually against the rules, but what choice did I have?

In spite of the tension being felt by all, conversation in the van was light. We talked about other snafus we'd been privy to in our lives, and they talked about their dealings with car rental companies. At the airport, there were apologies, thank yous and goodbyes. Then I headed back.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...I mean, hotel, Ms 805 has called to tell us she got the wrong car. When she arrived at Thrifty, they informed her that the car belonged to Hertz. She told Vizzini that she hadn't even noticed that it was a different car. She thought that I had just adjusted the seat. Looking into it later, I found that she had driven in to the hotel three days before, parked the car in valet, and hadn't used it again till it was time to go home. So at $50 a day for rental, plus tax, and $20 per night for valet parking, she spent at least $240 on a car when she could have spent $55 plus tip on two taxis. And since she hadn't seen the car in three days, she didn't notice that I had pulled around a light gray Corolla instead of her blue Optima.
Our Loss Prevention Officer called over to Hertz to make sure that the car had been returned, and the clerk he talked to went to check. While he was gone, LPO could hear Ms 804 in the background getting very upset with the other clerk who was telling her that since I had given the car to someone else, that I had essentially STOLEN the car and the police needed to be called, and that since her name was the one on the contract, that she was responsible for paying for it. Then the first clerk came back and told LPO that the car had indeed been returned.
LPO and Vizzini started making plans about how to return the Thrifty car. They decided that what should be done was to call Dane, the 6:00 bellman, to come in early (which they did), then the overnight houseman and I would drive the car and the van out to he airport. LPO decided he'd better call Thrifty to make sure that that was okay. I had arrived at the hotel by this time, so I got to witness the conversation.
The Thrifty clerk told LPO that since the contracted driver was no longer available, that they would have to send a tow truck out to the hotel to pick up the car, which would be charged to Ms 805. LPO said that couldn't happen, because we, the hotel, were ultimately responsible for what had happened. Can they charge it directly to the hotel? The Thrifty Manager would be in at 8:00; we would have to ask him.
Up to this time, I had thought that fixing the problem would just be a matter of getting the people and the cars where they belonged. I had no idea it would be made more complicated by contracts and liabilities and tow trucks.
Dane arrived "early" at about 5:59, so I went up to deliver the papers. The whole time I had a sick feeling in my gut because I didn't know if my job was in jeopardy-- or if I was going to be arrested. I decided the best course of action was to let HR know what had happened before anyone else. When I finished the papers, I went directly to the HR office, and told the head of HR the whole story. She asked if I had talked to the Director of Loss Prevention. I hadn't (he came in while I was delivering papers), but I was sure that LPO had. She called DoLP and found out that LPO had told him very little, and he suggested I come up and talk to him.
On the way, I ran into AFOM, who said he had talked to our General Manager, who had asked, "Were they similar cars at least?" "I think so, yes." "Well, don't worry about it. I've done that before. Well, not me personally; people who worked for me." That was a relief. At least I knew I could keep my job.
DoLP and I went into the office to talk. Halfway through the story, AFOM came in, so I had to tell the story again. While telling the story to him in his office, FOM came in, and I had to tell the story a fourth time. I was getting pretty good at it.
FOM suggested we call the call the rental agencies and find out where we stood. AFOM called Hertz, who said they had the car in their possession, and everything was taken care of. He called Thrifty, and the manager told him that it was perfectly okay for us to just bring the car out and drop it off. All that worrying for nothing.
By the time AFOM and I got back from the airport, it was almost 10:00. This problem had consumed five hours of my morning, and kept me at work 2½ hours late.
Of course, I've heard of this kind of thing happening. But this is the first time it's happened at our hotel, and it would have been nice if it had happened to someone else. But at least I have a story to tell.

Mudslinging

A question came up, which I posted on Facebook, about the vilification of Nancy Pelosi. My best friend responded, but instead of answering the question, he offered me more labels. I don't care about labels, I just want information, and I said so. Enter my brother, who decides to rub Jeff's nose in the fact that he didn't provide any real information. Jeff's not the kind who likes his opinions disrespected, and, with both of us objecting to his lack of an answer, he unfriends us both, complete with name-calling. Scott doesn't notice, and continues the nose-rubbing, this time complaining about the name-calling along with everything else.

I'm not sure what to think about all this. Once upon a time, Jeff and I could discuss things we disagreed about without needing to convince the other we were right. That's the kind of discussions I like. You tell me why you think what you think, I'll tell you why I think what I think, and that's good enough. It's hard to do that with Scott. Scott must persuade you that his point of view, his opinion, his understanding is the correct one. To our family, particularly our spouses, I refer to this as "he has to win". But we're getting better at talking with each other. I doubt Jeff and Scott will ever be able to talk civilly. Both are too stubborn.

Jeff moved to the land of Far Away (just this side of Far, Far Away), and Facebook is our constant contact. I like knowing about the mundane in his life, even if all he does is complain about the weather. But I miss him. We just don't see each other often enough, so the lack of Facebook leaves a void.

And I still don't have the dirt on Pelosi.

Scott objected to my use of the phrase "he has to win." He felt that he came across like Tonya Harding and that I was blaming him for Jeff's departure. So we discussed what I meant by the phrase, which wasn't easy for me because, in my mind, the phrase perfectly described situations I had observed. I suggested the word 'confrontational,' and he liked and understood that one, so I tried using it in this post. In context, it didn't work. It didn't describe what I was trying to say. I thought about 'contentious', which is closer both linguistically and contextually, but it had a connotation of belligerence that didn't fit. Scott honestly believes he's doing a service by convincing people he's right. He's not out to get you.

I had to laugh, though, when I realized that with all his complaining and pressuring me to make adjustments, the little bastard was trying to win again. In fact, I've been telling that as a funny story to some of my co-workers.

He did convince me of one thing, tho. An economy of language doesn't work if the reader can't understand what you're talking about. I use language that I think is implicit in order to shorten the story, but it winds up being too oblique or esoteric to be of any real communicative value.

So in an effort aimed at clarity, I have changed this post once again in order to

1) leave no misunderstanding about what I mean when I say "he has to win," and

2) make it clear that Jeff was reacting to both of us, not just one of us.

And if Scott doesn't like it, tough! I'm not changing it again.

Jeff did not just unfriend us. He deleted his Facebook account.

No Newspaper For You!

One of my nightly duties is to deliver the USAToday to all of the rooms that have been rented in the hotel. Each paper is put into a black burlap bag decorated with "SH" in white scripted letters, and hung on the door handle of each room.

Normally, the bags are the biggest problem I have each morning. As the maids clean the rooms, they are supposed to gather the bags and send them downstairs to the housekeeping department in the basement, where they will be gathered in bulk and taken to the bellcloset on the 1st floor. Since they do not have the code for the door lock, either security or one of the bellmen will let them in, where they can put the bags on the large roll-around spindle, thus making it easy for me to gather as many as I need to make my deliveries the next morning. This rarely happens.

Instead, I find them piled on the floor, on the shelves, on the spare bellstand--and that's if they make it to the bellcloset at all. Otherwise, they'll be in the basement piled on the laundry box in housekeeping, or on any other flat surface that's handy, or hanging from various protrusions of the housekeeping carts and machinery that happen to be around. Last week, I found 11 of them in the trash.

If they never made it to the basement, they're frequently in one pile or another on the service elevator landing of each of the guest floors, or hanging on some door handle. If I have time, I'll ask security to loan me the passkey so that I can raid the (23) maids closets,where I will find them still hanging on the maids carts, or just tossed in with the towels and linens.

Guests contribute to the problem, too. Stayover guests leave the Do Not Disturb signs on their doors, so the maids don't clean their rooms, and therefore do not have an opportunity to retrieve the bag. During conventions, this forces me to go down to the dungeoun for more, even when I know there are sufficient quantities in circulation already. Also, a lot of guests think that the bags are souvenirs, and take them home, not realizing that they are actually stealing them. Often the bellman or front desk clerk will catch them on the way out, which is why I also find bags in the office.

But the bags are only one problem I have to solve to do this job. Two days in advance, the night auditor is supposed to order enough newspapers to cover every occupied room. For reasons that have not been sufficiently explained, this doesn't always happen, and I get fewer than I need. In that case, I have to deliver to all Hilton Honors members (a contractual obligation), and the rest of the papers are brought back to the lobby for whoever else wants one. If I'm a few short on the number needed for the HH guests, I can use some of the other papers we carry.

But this morning, there is no paper delivery at all. We have 211 rooms occupied, 151 of which are HH members, and I got 75 newspapers. Being shorted by 76 papers for a minimum delivery, there is no way to deliver them equitably, and therefore all papers will be kept downstairs. Somebody will get yelled at today, and it won't be me.

Okay, here's the real scoop (but don't tell anyone.)

Ever since the Knicks told the press that they'd lost their game to the Thunder because the ghosts in the hotel had kept them awake all night, interest in the ghost stories at our hotel has gone up considerably. I personally get asked about them a lot, and I've decided that it would make a good blog post, so here goes.

The NBA teams usually come in pretty late, and they have a lot of equipment and personal luggage, so on those nights a couple of the daytime guys will come in and help out. On this particular night, the Knicks were arriving right at shift change, right at the beginning of my shift, so Bossman and a couple of other guys were there to take care of them while I took care of the other arriving guests. I actually got very busy.

Since it was still relatively early, a couple of the players decided they wanted to go out to one of the bars in Bricktown. They were waiting out on the front sidewalk for a taxi as I came out running to go get someone's car. I was halfway down the front sidewalk on the way to the parking garage when one of them shouted "Hey!"

I turned around and came back to them. "Yessir?"

"Is this place really haunted?"

I'm to busy at this time to start telling stories, so I just said, "We're not allowed to talk about it." They stiffened up and their eyes got real big. The taxi pulled up just at that moment, and I turned around and continued my run to the garage.

It actually is true that we're not supposed to talk about the ghost stories. AFOM used to keep a journal of things that have happened since the hotel re-opened, but the GM confiscated it, telling him, "This cannot exist." Now AFOM keeps a new journal at home.
The taxi drivers, however, are the worst about telling ghost stories. Not only do they love doing it, but the stories have nothing to do with the things that actually happen here. And now these two basketball players have a taxi taking them to get drinks. This can't be good.

Two nights later, a former co-worker sends me a newspaper article via Facebook about the Knicks blaming their loss on the ghosts in the hotel. Then, minutes later, I saw a promo for the news saying they'd be talking about the same thing. I called my dad. "Hey Dad! Watch channel four tonight. There's going to be a funny story about the hotel."
When I got to work that night, I told the security guys, "We were on channel four tonight."
They said, "We were on every channel tonight."
I walked out front and found Bossman at the counter. I said, "We made the local news tonight."
He said, "We made the national news tonight."
Now this can be good news or bad news. On the one hand, lots of people think its fun and exciting to stay in a haunted hotel, and we could get a lot of business from it. On the other hand, NBA players are very superstitious, and we don't want to lose a lucrative contract.

The reason Bossman was there was because the Spurs were coming in. (You know, the team with the gorgeous redhead.) We weren't busy otherwise, so I actually got to help this time. The Knicks' coach had tripped over the tiny little step at the west entrance, so it was my job to say "Good evening. Welcome. Watch your step" to these towering men who kept asking me, "Is this place really haunted?"
Our VIP liason is a tiny little thing, half as tall as the guys surrounding her. As she was passing out the keys they kept asking her, "Is this place haunted?", to which she emphatically replied, "Don't worry. I don't have any of you on that floor."

There is no "that" floor. Stuff happens on every floor. But only for people who have no clue that there might possibly be ghosts in the hotel.

Over the next few nights I found out more stuff about the Knicks' stay. One of the security guys told me that one of the guys complaining to the press about the ghosts was only on the court for three minutes, the other was on the bench all night. He also said that if the team had gone to bed the night before the game instead of staying up with the women, the beer, and the 4am chicken wings from room service, they might have won.
But the funniest part was that the coach, knowing that he had a nervous player on his team, had hired one of our morning bellmen to go up to that player's room and move his furniture.
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I went down to HR one Thursday morning and told HRBossette that I thought the Thunder would do pretty well against the Lakers that night.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I went up and down the halls with a tape recording of a baby crying last night."

She gave me a look of abject horror.

"I'm just kidding."

She grabbed her chest and started huffing as if she'd just survived a heart attack. Though her concern was real, we did have a good laugh over my little joke. (She and I have always had a good rapport. Fortunately. As evidenced by the fact that I still have my job.)

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Mood Indigo

I gotta break out of this funk.

Between the weather, and this thing with the brother, and the lack of time and money to do what I want to do, I just can't seem to get motivated to do anything constructive. It doesn't help that they're screwing around with my schedule at work just at the time that I need some normalcy.

NO. Nononono. Don't play the blame game. Turn off the computer, take a shower, put on a sweater, go out to the studio and figure out what needs to be done in the next 38ish hours that you have before you have to go back to work. And stop thinking about the things that just make you want to crawl in a hole. You simply don't have time for this.

Okay, I can do this. I think.