Hotelling

Right... I've just about had it. It seems to me that just about every other shift I'm working at that hotel, I find some moron sleeping on a couch in the bar or some other place. What the hell is it with me and that hotel. Are we random people magnets? Does the hotel scream: it's ok... you can sleep in a couch in here without getting disturbed, as long as you don't mind cleaning staff about you.

So this morning, it's a swedish 50 or so year old guy with plenty tattoos on hos hands and arms. The guy has even taken off his shoes for more comfort. It's about 6 in the am, and the cleaning fuckers are just loafing about. It's the second time I've experienced them not telling me when somebody's sleeping in the bar. I try to explain to them that it's important they let me know. But for some reason, they don't. Anyway, I wake him up with a shake of his leg. Not much for touching these weirdos tbh, but I gotta get him up. He's come to life, and I tell him it's go-time. He's looks a little bewildered, but acknowledges the request. My colleague tells him it's now. Not in 5 minutes. He gets up and starts putting on his shoes, while I walk towards the reception area.

I start messing around with a computer, when my colleague approaches me with the guy's credit card in hand. "Do we have any rooms.. He'd like a room", he asks me. I'm momentarily baffled. Does the guy actually have the nerve to ask for a room? I grab the card, and tell my colleague, that no, amazingly enough, we don't have any rooms for this guy. I walk over to the couch sleeper, and ask him if he understands me (seeing as I speak danish, and he speaks drunken swedish). He nods. So I tell him, either you get out of here now, or I will charge the hours you've slept on our couch, to your card. He accepts his card, and starts to walk towards the entrance. Half way there, he turns and mumbles that he's sorry. I disregard him and walk away.

So... go to a hotel and sleep on a couch for free. When you are thrown out, you ask if you can rent a room. Is it just me, or does that sound like a thief stealing a car, and when stopped by police, he says: Oh, I wanted to buy this car.. did I not mention that to the salesman? I know I was being a bit rough with this guy, but seriously. It's disrespectful to a degree where I don't understand how the hell they even think of doing it. And how do they get in? Do they have a masters degree in sneaking about? And it's all kinds of people. Had a bum sleeping in the conference rooms the other day... an elderly chap with a backpack sleeping on the couches.. two chinese girls, no more than 25-26 sleeping on a couch one night. Where do they come from? Does this happen to all hotels?

I shake my head in disbelief... it's amazing really.

It's weird really.. Have had this admin section open in a tab in FF for a few days now, been meaning to write in it a few times, but just never got around to it. Now I'm just thinking what the hey... got a few odd stories I can share, I guess. 

All the moving of my stuff is now completed, and I've left Ranc's place for good. Leaving the premise itself didn't bring out any tears of sadness, but I must admit some fun times have been had in that place. And of course, despite his everannoying meowing around mealtimes, catdaddy was a cool little furball, that will be missed... just a bit. But as I said, I won't miss the room that much. Afterall, I'm in my own place now, and despite the fact that things are a tad complicated around here, and too personal to be related here (not for me, but for my family), I'm sort of in limbo between feeling at home, and still sort of feeling like this is my mom's place. But I'm guessing that will be sorted within a few weeks. Most of my stuff is still in boxes on the living room floor. I'll unpack it all, when I'm all by myself, with shelves to put it all in. I've got my clothes in huge closets now, which is just a joy. 

Besides living in a new place and feeling absolutely splendid about it, work is as work usually is. One bad thing tho, is, we will lose our room service privilege come April first, meaning a huge chunk of cash will be yoinked from my poor innocent hands. The hotel wants to go legit, for some reason, even tho it will cost them a fuckload of money. But that's as is, I guess. Unfortunately, this means I'll lose some income, and I'm getting the feeling I will be able to notice. Perhaps I'll have to rent out a room for some time anyway. We'll see. This also means that a person will be hired to do the cooking and room servicing at night, at the hotel. That, in turn, means somebody else will be there all night long, very likely wasting my precious alone time chatting away nineteen to the dozen about random pointless topics. I don't know what I'll do. I guess I'll have to pull out the old Mr. Arrogant Prick routine, so people will eventually think I'm an asshole, and just leave me the fuck alone. There's a good chance I'll have to make use of my alter ego to scare people off. Of course, with a bit of luck, they'll hire somebody extremely interesting and funny, so my nights will be cut out for me. But they almost never hire people of that sort. Just me. But then, I'm me... nobody else can claim that. Or... hmm... Nevermind. It'll suck, I know it. I'll type out the story of the night cleaners now, and put it in a new post.

Besides me and m'colleague at the hotel here at night, a night cleaning team also occupies the premises. That team consists of some 4-5 different guys, with usually 4 of them working at the same time, throughout the hotel. They vacuum and buff the lobby floor, wipe surfaces down, cleans the basement and the restaurant on the 20th floor.

Most of them speak little or no danish. Some speak a little english, some speak spanish, some speak lord knows what language. Common for them is, they loaf about at night, and are, involuntarily the cause of much amusement for me. The best is then they get into an argument over something, and both are annoyed with the other, but neither can communicate it in any language the other can understand. It takes a lot of self control to not just laugh out loud at them. But be that as it may. One of them, a chinese looking bloke, does speak danish failry decently. He's a skinny little fella, and when he's here, he cleans the restaurant kitchen and floors. Now, I'm not usually the go-to guy when it comes to small talk during shifts. And as such, the cleaning staff and I don't communicate a lot. But this guy is pretty funny. He's on about a variety of different topics, most of which I find somewhat dull. But that's just me.

So anyway, yesterday he walked through the reception back office area at 07 am, where most of the morning staff had arrived. They consisted solely of girls yesterday, and while it's not bad during the nights, the fresh scent of girl perfume does lend a certain ambience to the offices. So he's walking through, taking it all in. Especially this one girl, Carina. He smiles knowingly at me, and then disappears.

Tonight, however, he's back. Asking about the hotel room availability, claiming he'd like to sleep on the 20th floor, you know, for the view. Fair enough. Then he lurks about for a while, then asks me if I wasn't impressed with the way the office smelled yesterday. I know where this is going, but figure wtf... won't hurt. I tell him the girls usually leave a certain nice and fresh smell around. "Yeah" goes the cleaner, "especially that blond girl". Sure, her as well. "Yeah, her husband is probably happy". I tell him she's not married. He looks surprised. I dunno if he had figured all nice girls would or should be married. Now, this is where he turn the tables and gets the better of me. Apparently blatantly selfaware of his own situation, he philosophises on how she'd probably wouldn't ever go for a guy like him, smelling things up from cleaning chemicals, working the night shift. "No, I'd probably need black magic to get a girl like her" he said. It startled me a bit, and I sort of felt sorry for him. I dunno why. I mean, he seems happy enough, and I doubt he was really serious about her, but still. Working the night shift as a service manager, as I do, might not be the fanciest job in the world. But the pay is decent, and I have a responsibility and I get to wear a suit and what have we. Superficial, for sure, but it does maintain a decent facade. He's a cleaner. Now, it's as honorable job as any, if you ask me. But it's inheritingly one that people think less of. And that's sad in a way. I felt a pang of guilt for some reason, and also a bit of respect for this guy. He's doing his best, and I hope it will help him get where ever he's going in life.

I left my little note with topics at home, so this one is straight out of memory. Had two amusing incidents at the hotel recently, and I felt you guys might find them hillarious as well. Well not hillarious perhaps, but... at least better than staring at the wall.

A week or so ago, I was out in front, doing something, I forget what. In through the doors walks a scruffy looking dude. It's apparent from the second my weary eyes meets his person, that he is near passing out from alcohol. Fair enough, we've all been there. He carries a plastic bag, and has trouble walking straight. He stops a few yards from where I'm standing, and motions for me to approach him. He seems unable to fully open his eyes. I tell him, that if he wants to speak to me, he can come to me, instead of the other way around. I later regret that decision.

He comes up to me, too close for my comfort, and claims he has broken his back. I regard him with the greatest possible disbelief. He wants me to call for an ambulance. I ask him where his back is broken. Just for fun. It's pretty clear that he just wants a free night in the hospital. He keeps emphasizing that he's just drunk, and that I won't call him anything. He keeps repeating how his back is broken. "Why are you so sick in your head" is another fun comment he throws at me. I can't surpress a laugh as I guide him towards the exit. He tries to escape my grasp twice, without any real effort tho, and is evicted in style. 15 minutes later, he is about to enter through the glass doors. I shake my head at him, and he moves on. Great stuff.

Second story takes place mere days after. At 1 in the am, a cleaning dude comes down and tells me in broken tongues (he tried in several languages, none of which were coherent), that some guy is upstairs, on the conference floor, sleeping, and that he can't wake him up. I walk with him upstairs, thinking some drunk guest passed out in a couch. Wouldn't be the first time. But it's a little more complicated than that. In one of our conference rooms, one that is locked, mind, I found a largish guy sleeping on the floor. He wasn't quite homeless by the looks of him, but he did smell something fierce of urine and bad hygiene. I told him to get up and leave the hotel. He didn't say anything, but just complied, indicating how often he's been thrown out of places. He was in his boots and hat and overcoat on the floor, so it didn't take him long to get up. Looking at his watch, as this situation was the most normal thing in the world, he exited the hotel, leaving behind only a faint smell of weewee. He must've been up there for a few hours, as I didn't see him come in. And he isn't the type of person you mistake for an actual guest. How the fuck he got into a locked conference room, I couldn't tell you. But I guess these dudes have their ways. Amusing little tidbit anyway. Oh well.... enough out of me for now. Later!

... ok so I was listening to Wild Wild West with W. Ill Smith, when I started typing out this blog entry. Is there a problem with that? No seriously, if there is a problem, let's have it out in the open. You sure? Ok, but I don't want to hear about this incident in your best man speech at my wedding, understand? HEY, look at me... do you understand? Doing that that will not end well for you. So, now that we have the finer points settled, let's move on to the topic at hand, namely fewd, or to the layman, food. 

As you may well know, I rely heavily on food in order to survive. Now, I may be going totally rogue with my assumptions, but 50 big ones in my pocket says that you do too. So we can readily assume that without food, you and me, and probably about 6 billion other human beings on this earth, would cease to exist, were somebody to remove food from life's great equation. Where are we going with this, you could be pondering to yourself right now. And I wouldn't blame you for it. In all honesty, you probably not been told anything you hadn't already read on a milk carton or something. "Why is this random moron telling me things I already know, I mean what's the point of telling people stuff they already know? It's a waste of time" is a question I'm imagining you asking yourself right now (please donate $10 to my paypal account if I was correct). Well, my shifty friend, there is a point. Read on...

Seing as I'm a sucker for food, I am greatly disappointed when the lack of said food interferes with my daily routine. I'm a poor chap, as you may well know. I've compensated somewhat by getting a job at a hotel, a place where food is in the greatest abundance. I pay X amount of monies from my salary per shift I work, in order to ensure the presence of well crafted food upon said shift. When I worked the evening shifts, food was usually served from 5pm til 9pm, and consisted mostly of some sort of potatoes with some sort of meat, very often chicken. What the hell the chefs were on back there in the kitchen, I've no idea about. Now that I'm working night shifts instead, more often than not, they have left no food whatsoever. Which, to be perfectly frank with you, is well annoying. Since I already pay for food at the hotel, and I happen to be working a lot, thus being at the hotel itself quite a lot, I've sort of based my food budget on being able to ingest the majority of my meals while working.

Hmm it's late, and I had a break of some 12 hours between the first part of this post, and now, so I'm not quite sure what the hell I was saying. Or where this whole thing is leading me. But I guess I'm at least near the end. Spend the evening with my bro, playing Civilization II, and just having a blast. Decent night, all in all. Anyway, to sum the post up, I guess I wanted to say that I'm annoyed with the chefs for not being consistent about the food making. We ordered pizza yesterday, my colleague and I. Hotel paid for it.. Or we made them pay. I guess that's ok. Just not my idea of living healthy, you know... oh well, digression is a must I suppose. Hey-ho!