Work Stories: Episode 55: It's a Dud

Previously on Work Stories, I wrote about the person who thought that the giant ball in our lobby felt like a giant boob.  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing because I would never imagine a boob feeling like a giant rock ball.  Would you?  I don’t think you would either.

This week I will tell another tale of something that happened while I was at work.  I always say that, and I always follow through on that promise.  I always (minus two weeks, I think) come through with another Work Story.  Mostly, it’s for myself.  It’s a sort of release to write about things I’ve experienced at work.  I don’t care so much if people read the Work Stories.  It’s nice, but I don’t need that.  I just want to put them out there.  I want to write the things down and share them, though the amount that they get shared does not matter.

Let me take you back to the days when I worked at a hotel.  I’ve written about this place before.  I’ve done that a few times.  I spent three years working there while I was in high school.  You might think “Wouldn’t you more frequently write about working there if you worked there that long?  How come most of your Work Stories are about where you work now?”  As I’ve already written before, my current job is fresher in my mind.  It’s also in the middle of the tourist area, as opposed to the hotel which was on the outskirts.  That’s why there are more stories for the museum than the hotel.  This week is about the hotel, though.

I was a parking attendant at the hotel, mostly.  I would let the hotel guests into the parking lot for free, and I would charge the public if they wanted to park there.  They could stay parked there as long as they wanted to.  Some people took this to mean that they could pay once, then go in and out of the parking lot as much as they pleased.  This escalated once into a full blown yelling at me encounter.

There was a woman and a child.  The woman paid to park in the parking lot.  I watched her drive her car to a shady area, park, get out of the car, and walk away.  About two hours later, she came back and said she had to leave for a while but would be back later.  I said that was okay, but she would have to pay again to be let back into the parking lot.  Those were the rules.  She got furious.  She had already paid, so she was entitled to come and go from the parking lot as she pleased.  She spent about five minutes yelling at me about having already spent too much money on parking there.  She was not going to pay to re-enter a parking lot that she had already paid to use.

I’m not sure where else there is to go with this Work Story.  I realize at this point that the story is really only a paragraph long.  I see that it is just me saying that I got yelled at once.   I’m not sure why I said she had a child if the child doesn’t really bring anything to the story.  I can say that the woman left and didn’t come back.  That’s about the only thing I hadn’t already said that would finish off the Work Story.  Other than that, I think I chose the wrong moment in my working life to highlight this week.  I’m not sure what provoked me to choose this one for this week’s Work Story, but what’s done is done.  It’s here on the page now and everyone can see it.

They can’t all be hits.  Sometimes you swing and miss when you try to pull a Work Story out of your memory.  This Work Story would be a walk to first in baseball.  It works enough for me not to erase it all and start over, but it doesn’t feel like I actually got it this time.  Just like walking in baseball.  Sure, you got to first, but you didn’t hit the ball to do it.  It’s not as satisfying.

Next week’s Work Story will hopefully be a better one.  I don’t want to leave you expecting more and getting less two weeks in a row.  I’ll try to get a decent story next week.

Until then, my name is not Earl.