NO! That Is Not A Typo
It is, in fact, an hilariously funny double-barrelled pun, which I made up from my own brain and can you tell? Firstly, allow me to rouse Art from his coal-fuelled stupor with this portable air-raid siren -
Okay, treble-barrelled. No, Your Humble Scribe has never seen this film, though I was aware of the title, hence today's title.
'Hotel Paradisob' is also a sly nod to the South Canadian expression "Son Of a Bottomhole", because our Intro most certainly features one. It also makes reference to the act of crying or sobbing, which might feature implicitly more than openly yet which is definitely in the background of this tale. Art!
We don't want to OVERLOOK anything, do we?
This forbidding abode can stand in for the actual location, which the Hotel's Underpaid Narrator, hereafter HUN, described as being in an expensive ski resort in Colorado, without ever once hinting which town or hotel. Fear of legal retribution, I dare say.
During summer, HUN had been working for $10 per hour, which gives you an idea how long ago it was. Come the down season in late autumn and winter, guest traffic numbers fell off a cliff, as the snows arrived. HUN was voluntold to switch to what hotels call 'Night Audit', which merely means Night Shift in normalspeak. Art!
Art! you bafune
This was working from 23:00 to 07:00, and with a 3 mile walk each way, as 1) there were no buses running at these times and 2) HUN didn't have a car. In winter, in the dark and with snow on the ground. Also, their hours were cut from 40 to 32.
HUN approached the General Mangler, hereafter GM, asking for a raise to balance out the loss of hours and a journey on foot that might take 3 hours each way.
'Nope, and I can easily fire you and hire another body at $10 per hour,' gloated the GM. The narrator doesn't describe them as gloating, but I like to fill in the background mise en scene for you.
They then gifted HUN with the phrase 'I don't care how you do your job, just do it.'
Cue Malicious Compliance. Art!
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| FORESHADOWING |
HUN, seeking revenge and having a creative mind, found an automated script that would do all their manual input, except it needed a payment of $500. So, doing a bit of script-writing, they amended the Free Trial date from seven days ahead to 2050. When the script was run, this meant an hour of manual input was done in 3 minutes.
The other thing about working Night Audit was - being solo. Officially, HUN wasn't entitled to either a free dinner or a free breakfast, but - again, solo. What they did was make a meal from anything they felt like in the kitchen, taking care to clean up their dirty dishes and not leave any evidence. Art!
Thanks for the free food GM
This worked beautifully for many months until HUN applied for a post all the way across South Canada, and got it. Before they moved on, HUN trained up their Night Auditor of Zero Intellect, hereafter NAZI, replacement, and showed them only the manual methodology of completing the inventory. The script's Free Trial end date went back to a week hence.
Two days before HUN is going to fly out to the East Coast, after leaving the hotel and with NAZI in place, there's a call from the Front Desk Manager: NAZI has been fired for making racist remarks that a guest recorded, can HUN return?
Nope. Art!
It gets better. Or worse, depending on your perspective.
At 05:00 on the day the Free Trial script expired, HUN got a call from GM, wanting to know what's in Hades, Perdition, Tartarus and Sheol is going on with the inventory?
HUN trots out the phrase 'I don't care how you do your job, just do it,' to which GM nearly has a myocardial infarction. He demands HUN returns to fix things. HUN promptly agrees - as long as his airfare gets paid, he gets free food, free accommodation and $10,000. When GM threatens legal action - one is surprised HUN can comprehend a phone conversation conducted through a mouthful of froth - HUN hung up on him.
Cue absolutely nothing for the next 5 years.
Until HUN returns to the same Colorado ski town to visit his mom, and encounters the Front Desk Manager again, who is actually a pretty reasonable and competent bloke. FDM brought him up to speed on what GM had been up to. Art!
I did say it can get worse. GM was caught by none other than his wife, who may have harboured a suspicion, whilst he was having carnal relations with the Head Housekeeper in his office.
Divorced!
Then the 19-year old female receptionist lodged sexual harassment charges against him, and rather than try to defend himself, he immediately -
Resigned!
Most shockingly of all, whilst coaching a Little League baseball team, he hit one of the children on the arm with a metal bar, breaking it. The arm, not the bar. The kid's father turned up and GM got -
Pummelled!
FDM said GM's trail had gone cold from that point. I rather suspect because he'd be doing serious prison time for negligence, child abuse, assault, battery, bruising the father's knuckles and destruction of city property. Metal bars don't grow on trees, you know.
The FDM had taken over as General Manager and ensured at least 3 people knew how to do the Night Audit inventory, manually.
They managed to save the eye
Another Set Of Space Photographs
Your Humble Scribe has been un-sticking the pages of another very large hardback book, which dates from 1997 rather than 1988 and so wasn't in as bad a state. Art!
28 years sooner, this kind of imagery was unusual enough that it could be put in a book and sold, whereas nowadays entities such as Maxar can make this available to you the public, if you're willing to pay. The actual cartography is rather dull, to be honest; what's more interesting are a handful of close-up photographs of terrain and townscapes. Art!
This is New York, where Central Park is clearly visible as a red rectangle. Just to prove how obsolete this data is, here's an illo from Google. Art!
Not Sure If This Is A Good Thing Or A Verrrrry Bad One
If you've read the Intro, then we allude to 'The Shining', Ol' Stan's horror masterpiece where there is no sudden spooky music - it's all spooky music. And very brightly lit, too. No monsters lurking in the shadows.
ANYWAY this just got posted on Twitter. Art!
Thank you so much, I shall be looking over my shoulder for the rest of the evening.
Whilst On This Stephen King Jag -
Mostly because the Intro was so long, we need a few items focussing on illos not text, and here's another. Art!
Not to be confused with - Art!
I Shall Be Brief About This Item
You may be forgiven for not knowing that Mordorvia possesses an aircraft carrier, that epitome of a modern navy, because it's been in dock undergoing a 'refit' for the past seven years.
No, that is not normal. A refit might take a year anywhere else in the world. In Mordorvia, they cannot afford to do anything with the 'Admiral Kuznetsov' including have it set out to sea. Art!
Years ago they put it into dry dock and removed the propellers. The dry dock then sank and cannot be salvaged, so the propellers cannot be replaced either. Unless they tow it to Vladivostok, which they dare not do, because the Royal Navy will follow it, laughing all the way, and sell tickets to watch it stagger through the English Channel.
Finally -
Off to see how my bottle of ice is freezing up.
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