I’m Not Convinced We’ve Wasted Enough Time On This.
The phone conversation I just had:
Me- “Thank you for calling ‘Kate’s Motel’, this is Kate, how may I help you?
Them- (in thick eastern Indian accent) “May I speak with the manager Michelle, please?”
Me- “I’m sorry, she is not here this morning, is there something I can help you with?”
Them- “Well the reason for why I am calling we are offering (unintelligible) magazine to your property for first issue being complimentary and receive to your property remaining issues and what address I can send first issue which is complimentary?”
(No lie, the man spoke in a run on sentence just like that.)
Me- “Um……what?”
Them- “What is address? First issue is complimentary.”
Me- “Oh, I get it. Yeah, I’m not authorized to make those decisions. What is your telephone number so I can have Michelle return your call?”
Them- “First issue is complimentary.”
Me- “I know that. But I’m not going to get fired for accepting a magazine subscription that I wasn’t authorized to accept.”
Them- “So I am going to put down here that you are afraid…”
Me- “Wait! You’re not listening to me. I. Am. Not. In. A. Position. Of. Authority. To. Make. That. Decision.”
Them- “But first issue is complimentary.”
Me- “That’s fine.”
Them- “So that’s fine I can send complimentary issue? What is address?”
Me- “No! Just give me your phone number so I can have Michelle call you back.”
Them- “Ummmm…”
Me- “You know, a phone number that you or someone at your company can be reached at.”
Them- “Ummmm…”
Me- “Are you not allowed to give the number out?”
Them- “Oh yes, I can give you the telephone number.”
Me- “Great. What is it?”
Them- “Ummmm…”
Me- “Do you not know the number?”
Them- “Oh yes, I know what the number is.”
Me- “Great. What is it?”
Them- “Ummmm…”
Me- “Look. If you’re not going to give me the number, I really have to go. I have guests waiting on me.”
Them- “First issue is complimentary.”
Me- “Good luck with that…”
(click)
Teenagers + Alcohol + Weed + Kate’s Motel = Fun For Kate!
I sure hope that Doo wasn’t expecting me to come home anytime soon. Finally, after 9 months of sitting at Kate’s Motel with no action or significant drama to speak of, I have at last had to call Henry County’s Finest to come to my aid.
Kate’s Motel loves the popo.
The popo loves Kate’s Motel.
I KNEW when they checked in this afternoon that I was probably going to have trouble, but I relented and checked them in anyway, secretly hoping that before the night was over, I would have the opportunity to exert my au-thor-I-TIE and throw someone out, sans repayment of room and board.
For two hours straight, I watched and listened to countless people going up and down the elevator, tried to convince myself that what I was smelling was NOT weed, and wondering just what the monetary damage to the room was going to be by the time all this was over.
The first noise complaint came 5 minutes before my shift was over.
*JACKPOT* (insert cha-ching sound here)
I went up to the room and warned them of the noise curfew….once.
Kate don’t play.
Twenty minutes later, Kate learned that Henry County’s Finest has a hard time taking one phone call at a time. I got put on hold at least twice. Fortunately, less than 2 minutes after I hung up the phone with the dispatch officer, 3 policemen walked through my lobby doors. Good service so far, Henry County.
Over the next hour, my protégé and I watched ten (10) people under the age of 21 pile into the lobby of Kate’s Motel. We watched ten people under the age of 21 get questioned about their age and I had to restrain the urge to stand up and shout, “You’re all just babies! Why in the hell would you want to jeopardize your future by fucking up like this?!? You were born in 1993 for Christ’s sake! I was already in high school by then!!! You’re all idiots.”
I have to admit that I enjoyed, down in the deepest corners of my acrimonious heart, watching those kids all receive breathalyzer tests. It was like being in the middle of my very own Cops show. I kept waiting for one of the girls to lose it and start fighting the officers and screaming stuff like, “I AIN’T DONE SHIT! YOU GOT TO LEAVE ME ALONE! LET MY PEOPLE GO!”
I wasn’t that lucky tonight.
While I’m not quite sure what happened to the delinquents, their alcohol came home with me. I got a half gallon of cheap Russian vodka and a flask of MadDog 20/20 out of the whole ordeal. If you look close, you can see the used breathalyzers floating in the bottle in the middle.
Life is good.
If You Ever Need An Outfit To Match That Stick Up Your Ass, Give Me A Call
Dear Lady in room 215,
It has come to my attention that you are not happy with the room that I assigned to you last night. This is very unfortunate because, as I am sure you noticed, it was a very nice room. All of the rooms at Kate’s Motel are nice. They all feature hardwood floors, pillowtop mattresses, granite countertops, glass showers with rainfall showerheads, a 32” flatscreen LCD television, and they all come with microwave, refrigerator, free Wi-Fi, and a free Deluxe Continental Breakfast.
Incidentally, I do understand that the room you were assigned, one of the last 5 rooms I had in all of Kate’s Motel to offer you and being a handicapped room to boot (although at this point I do believe you have some handicap in you somewhere), it was not the ideal room for you.
You must understand why I question your claim of discovering a pubic hair on one of your sheets shortly after you checked in.
a) Are you 100% positive that it was a pubic hair that you found? Did you smell it? Did you examine it under a high-powered microscope? I have to say honestly, if it were me in your shoes and I suspected that what I was looking at was a stranger’s pubic hair, I certainly would not have been able to convince my face to get close enough to it to examine it and determine exactly where on said stranger’s body this particular hair came from.
b) Most adults have pubic hair. As is common with hairs from the pubic region, they tend to latch on to whatever cloth is nearest. I’m sure you’ve probably had one in your mouth at some point or another.
c) This is a hotel. There are worse things than pubic hairs hiding in your room. I’m surprised you were able to sleep at all.
In closing, I’d like to inform you that no, I won’t be refunding the entire price of your room. I’m not authorized to make that decision; I just work here. You should be grateful that you received the generous 50% discount that I graciously provided to you and remember to tip the Housekeeping on your next hotel stay. They are less inclined to leave pubic hairs on your sheets when you do that.
Thank you,
Kate
Just Cause You Got The Monkey Off Your Back Doesn’t Mean The Circus Has Left Town.
My fingers start twitching, I can’t sit still and for some reason my face itches. I’m getting the shakes. Having a difficult time with the can opener, but that could be nothing…I’ve never had much luck with electric can openers. The left and right sides of my brain are arguing with each other and the cacophony inside my head is deafening.
“Just go to the store and get some, Kate. You have the cash in your pocket. It’s not going to break you, and you know you want it. They‘ll sell it to you. You don‘t need a fake I.D. to buy it now.”
“NO! Don’t give up now! Your health, your life, is at stake. If you continue, you won’t have to worry whether your son had a good Christmas or not because you won’t be there to make a difference. Sit your ass back down.”
Then the sweats come. Even though it’s 28 degrees outside, I go from feeling like I need to streak naked on the balcony, to turning the heat up to the “Hell” setting. Waves of nausea, panic attacks, I think I’m even hallucinating that giant Coke in the fridge. I read somewhere that the hallucinations can last for up to 2 weeks… Not good.
In the next months, I should expect profound confusion, disorientation, hyperactivity, and possibly a grand mal.
The cons of stopping are seeming to outweigh the pros. Don’t they do Intervention shows about this stuff? Maybe I need rehab. Does Obamacare cover rehab?
This craving may kill me. I really don’t think I’m strong enough to handle this. When I had nothing else, I at least had this tiny outlet. And who could really blame me after all I’ve been through? It’s not like I sold blowjobs for crack…I could have found a much worse addiction…
I need a cigarette so bad.
Artificial Intelligence Is No Match For Natural Stupidity
Dear Mrs. Obnoxious Lady in room 228,
Please remember when you are checking into my hotel that it is impolite to interrupt someone while they are talking. Here are a few things that you might have missed while you were yapping at me in that horrible accent of yours.
a) Your discounted rate of $69.99 plus tax is exactly that. $69.99 PLUS TAX. This does not mean that you should stand at my counter and count out exactly sixty nine dollars and ninety nine cents. Although I must admit that I smiled on the inside when you realized you were going to have to count again.
b) We have a Continental Breakfast that we graciously serve from 6am to 9am. That means that it’s included with the payment of your hotel room. It also means that you are welcome to expand your generous waistline on our danishes. It does NOT mean that anyone on my staff is going to make your waffles and bring them to your room. Something tells me you’re not a “tipper” anyway.
c) I know that you are expecting another couple to check in sometime in the near 20 minute future. You’ve managed to tell me approximately 7 times since you walked through my lobby doors. Yes, I will give them the same rate as you, and no, you don’t need to stand at the front desk until they get here to make sure that I’m not trying to scam you. Although, had I known that you were going to be such an insufferable bitch, I would have told you that the lowest rate I had available was $99.99. Because I can do that.
d) I could steal your credit card number if I really wanted to. Fortunately for you, spending the next 20-30 years in jail for credit card or identity theft is not preferable for me, so your credit score is safe. However, I can see where it could be hard to trust someone that you don’t know with this information. Because it’s entirely possible that I have a loser ex-husband that fights me at every turn on child support, I could have a crappy job that doesn’t pay me what I’m actually worth, and Christmas is just around the corner. Lucky you found an actual honest person.
I have a “script” that I follow with every single guest that checks into Kate’s Motel. Had you listened to anything that I said while you were checking in, I wouldn’t have had to repeat everything and taken 20 minutes to finally get your keys to you. You would have known what time breakfast was served, what time checkout is, and the best place to park your car. And the best part is, you would have known all these things without ever having to say a word.
I also would have gotten through the entire procedure without a migraine headache to show for it.
Thank you,
Kate
The Only Way To Improve A Coke Is To Put Rum Or Bourbon In It.
Lord knows I love a good Coke. It does nothing less than THRILL me that I live 20 minutes away from The World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta. If left to my own devices, I would drink Coke at every meal, immediately upon waking, AND right before falling asleep. Summarily, I would gladly hook up to an I.V. of Coca-Cola if it was possible. Diet Coke is blasphemy.
Lately, I’ve been only having Cokes when I go to work on the weekends. It’s just getting harder and harder to justify spending more than 5 bucks on a case of Coke these days when it’s only going to last for a maximum of 72 hours.
Imagine my surprise when I opened the refrigerator yesterday morning to find a fresh, unopened 20oz bottle of Coke sitting on the bottom shelf. I looked at it for a minute, convincing myself that it was really there and not some figment of my caffeine deprived imagination. When it didn’t disappear before my eyes, I closed the fridge door and set off to find Doo.
He’s SO good to me. He MUST have known that I was craving that sugary goodness and he brought me my fix. He’s the best man in the whole wide world and I love him so very much and I’m so glad that he just does awesome stuff like that to make me feel better when he knows that I must be missing my bestest friend in the universe cause she’s having her baby without me and he’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company because it’s ‘the real thing’ and maybe just maybe I should verify that my assumptions are correct before I drink it like some crackwhore who just blew the dog because that’s what her dealer said she had to do before he’d give her any smack.
“Doo? Umm…is that Coke in the fridge for me?”
“Nope.”
Silence.
No explanation. Just Nope.
In my initial shock I reasoned that Doo must have bought the Coke for himself to take to work the next day so that he didn’t have to waste time stopping at the convenience store before getting to the office. That shock wore off fairly quickly. The thought occurred to me that he might have been kidding. Doo does that frequently, and in our honeymoon phase of the relationship I’m still learning what’s a joke and what isn’t.
I decided I wasn’t going to touch the Coke.
So this morning, as Doo was walking out the door, I stopped him.
“Wait, you’re forgetting something.” I walked back to the fridge and pulled out the bottle. “Your Coke.”
“Oh. No, I don’t want it right now. Just put it back,” he says.
My composure slipped.
“You mean to tell me that you’re going to let in sit in that fridge and make me stare at it all day and not let me have any of it?!?!? Seriously?!?”
“Well the only reason I bought it to begin with is because they were on sale, two for $2.”
This is the moment that my eyes glazed over. The world was turning gray and suddenly it no longer mattered that other people existed on the planet besides me and the bottle of fresh, unopened Coca-Cola that I was currently white-knuckling.
Doo had already HAD one Coke.
You say they were on sale, two for $2, Doo?
You should have bought four.
Silence! I Keel You!
I’m not saying that my upstairs neighbors are terrorists just because they are Muslim. That would be racist, unfair, and just plain mean. In fact, I’m not saying they are terrorists at all. Not trying to get anyone red flagged here.
In the spirit of being innocent until proven guilty, I’m just going to lay out the facts and let people decide for themselves. And for humor’s sake, I’m going to refer to the couple as Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Fact 1:
Mr. and Mrs. Smith live in a one bedroom apartment on the third floor. They have no children. Doo and I are still trying to decide if Mrs. Smith is pregnant or if she just really has an oddly shaped midsection. (I do realize that not everyone can be shaped as perfectly as Elizabeth Hurley.) If she IS indeed pregnant, I’m going to have to be a bit weirded out and I’ll tell you why. Mrs. Smith is in the same age group as my mother. Somewhere between 45 and 65. Mr. Smith is at most in his mid-20’s.
I get the whole cougar thing. There are just some lines that shouldn’t be crossed.
Cougars look like Ivana Trump and Courtney Cox and they have enough money from their alimony to avoid the tribulations of apartment living.
Fact 2:
They are awake and in a hurry at all hours of the day and night. I know this because I was awakened this morning at 4:45am to the sound of slamming doors and rapid heavy footfalls leading from the bedroom to the kitchen and back again several times.
Random jumping up and down above the exact spot where the light fixture hangs over our dining room table. Running from the bedroom to the kitchen for no apparent reason other than I will occasionally hear their smoke detector going off. (PS: Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Smith for burning whatever you cooked the other day and opening your balcony door to air out your apartment. I was enjoying the fresh, cool, autumn air with my own windows open that day and the aroma of your unintentionally (or not) blackened curry rice invaded my apartment like a healthy whiff of Agent Orange.)
Fact 3:
They tried to get me to sell them Doo’s Jeep. Now, I totally get bad credit. My own is not spectacular. And avoiding creditors by obtaining a vehicle through personal means could possibly be a good idea, if said vehicle is actually for sale. But there is a name for people that take away someone else’s only mode of transportation because they don’t have one of their own. Those people are called carjackers.
I’m just sayin’.
So I don’t have any hard evidence that my upstairs neighbors are terrorists. Sure, they listen to music that reminds me of the end of Moulin Rouge, and Mr. Smith just kinda has the sort of face that makes a man want to punch him right in the kisser, but I’m really beginning to believe that they aren’t terrorists. They’re just assholes.
The Best Thing About Me Is You.
When I turned 16 and got my first car, it was arranged between our parents that we would ride to school together each morning and home together on some afternoons. It worked fine until I totalled my poor Ford Tempo on the rear bumper of a 1938 pickup truck made out of cast iron. That’s another sad story best saved for another day. After my car was no longer in commission, my new carpooling friend, Andy, managed to get himself a Bronco. (I secretly thought it was hot.) He’d bring me home sometimes, but because he was also taking home his good friend John, and John was apparently more important than some silly girl, Andy made me sit in the back seat. (Coincidentally, that’s when I am ashamed to admit that I learned all the words to Shaggy’s Boombastic song. Andy listened to it on his car stereo set to repeat all the way home from school.)
My senior year, I never went to prom. I wanted to go SO BADLY. But I refused to be silently pitied for being the girl that no one would ask out because yeah she’s nice and all and she’s not UGLY per se but she’s not exactly hot either and she’s way more fun to be friends with and I don’t want her to get the wrong idea if I ask her to be my date so there’s no way I’m going to the prom with her. I had tortured myself plenty by attending all the homecoming dances and watching everyone else dance with their guys and slowly dripping into a suicidal state because it seemed like the only guy NOT dancing with someone was the unibrow kid with the weird last name.
Mom told me I should ask the boy next door. I couldn’t ask HIM!! HE had to ask me!! I told mom he had a girlfriend. Turns out Andy never went to that prom, either.
We left high school and our lives separated. He’d moved in with a girlfriend, and I was on my way to becoming a mother. Before we’d blinked good, 10 years had passed. We both had children. We’d both been through some SERIOUSLY hard trials. We both had joined Myspace.
“What does ANY of this have to do with his nickname being Doo?”
Nothing. I just wanted to tell you. 😛
I found out that no one called him Andy anymore. He had matured to Andrew. There was no way I was calling him Andrew. He was Andy to me. But when the impossibly sweet 2 year old daughter of Andy’s roomates began calling him ‘Doo’ because she couldn’t say ‘Andrew’, I knew it was going to stick. And it has.
Doo works hard at the cable company to take care of me and Ryan, Doo reminds me that stuff needs to be done around the house and I try not to forget to do it because I like when Doo is happy but sometimes I can’t help it, Doo makes me laugh, and Doo loves me good. Even though Doo sometimes does things that I want to be mad at him for, like using ALL of my expensive cinnamon and replacing it with craft purpose cinnamon because he wanted to make cinnamon toast, I love him so good right back. And I think Doo owes me a prom date.
Now Ryan needs a name.
If You Weren’t So Stupid, I Could Tell You How Stupid You Are.
Stupid Hotel Question of the Day:
(Guest, pointing to the elevator)
“Is the third floor up there?”
Last time I checked, it was. But it’s entirely possible that someone came and took it. You know how those gypsies are…
When Childhood Dies, Its Corpses Are Called Adults.
When I was a little girl I loved spending the night with my grandma. She lived right down the road from us, and I could walk or ride my bicycle to her house. When I was too young to go there by myself, mom would take me and pick me up early the next morning. One of my very fondest memories of these slumber parties is that at bedtime, after I’d donned my nightclothes, my beloved grandmother would lay in the bed with me and tell me bedtime stories. Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, all the really good ones. I loved it. Just my super-fun grandma and me, making memories.
Last Saturday night, The Cable Guy made some spectacular strawberry daiquiris. (The Cable Guy = Andy) The offspring had already gone to bed for the night, having crashed hard into a sugar coma from the Halloween festivities, and we just wanted to relax. A daiquiri for each of us.
That night as I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep, (The Cable Guy always falls asleep so much faster than I do, almost like he has nothing worth stressing over to keep him awake. I’m jealous of this.) I could smell The Cable Guy’s breath. It wasn’t overpowering, so I didn’t get nauseous or anything; I could just smell it.
“Sonofabitch,” I said. I was immediately transported down memory lane to my bedtime stories with my beloved grandmother. The Cable Guy’s breath was the same as hers.
She was toasted every single time.
And here, all my life, I thought we were having tea parties. I didn’t know there was tea in my cup and Jim Beam in hers.
I look important in this picture.
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Kate's Motel 