Your Mind Wanders

When half your job is to simply stand at a door waiting for something to happen, you tend to let your mind wander quite a bit. I've been working every day for the last week, so I haven't really had much time to come up with a new post. And judging by the fact that this'll be number 360 for me, it would certainly appear that I may have exhausted all possible avenues into fresh blog material. But fear not, gentle reader, for I need not remind you that you are in the hands of a craftsman, an artisan, a skilled communicator, a ruggedly handsome rogue, a... guild member. You get the idea. Anyway, here are some thoughts that crossed my mind as I stood motionless in front of the door for a total of twelve hours last week.

What if you thought you recognized someone from earlier in the day, and as you walked up to their car, you said, "Welcome back" like you're supposed to, but it turns out he wasn't returning for the night? And what if he really had stayed there before, but it was a long time ago? I think the conversation would go something like this:

Me: "Welcome back."

Him: "Welcome back? Welcome back!? How could you possibly remember me? I stayed here one night a year ago, and I know you weren't working here then because I'd have remembered and recognized your stupid smelly face and your ass head. Don't touch my car, and please refrain from looking me directly in the eye."

Me: "If you have any bags in the trunk, I'd be happy to get them for you."

Him: "I bet you would, queerbait. Just try not to be too faggoty when you pick up my black leather bag filled with naked muscle man magazines and Cher CD's."

Me: "Whatever. Where's my tip, you senile old bastard!?"

You can't see inside through the glass door very well because of the glare, so it's hard to know when people are inside wanting to get out. Sometimes, there's a person on the outside who's coming in at the same time there's someone on the inside coming out. When this happens, the person on the inside usually comes through first, and they inevitably thank me for being so prompt in my door-opening skills. What they fail to realize, however, is that I never even saw them coming, and I was only opening the door because there was someone on the outside coming in. I have to pretend like I knew the inside person was there the whole time. What a charlatan I am. I feel like David Blaine, except without all the gay-ass magic tricks and faux-spiritualism.

I wonder how far I could drive that guy's Audi before someone at the hotel reported it stolen? Couple hundred miles? Maybe more, if he doesn't wake up tomorrow morning until 11 or so. (By the way, that reminds me: do you know what's more embarassing than stalling an Audi TT in the middle of the street? Doing it in front of the owner.)

Rich people are stingy. I haven't received a decent tip from a person driving a luxury car. The best tippers are the people who drive crappy cars. I'm not kidding. Maybe they feel the need to make up for owning such a stupid car. Or maybe it's an empathy thing. You know, "I'm a workin' stiff too, buddy. Just tryin' to keep the man off my back. Here's ten bucks. Head on down to the 7-Eleven and buy yourself somethin' pretty."

Two Dollars!? I Wouldn't Wipe My Own Butt For Two Dollars!

I started working full time last week as a bellman at a local fancy-schmancy hotel. I can't say which, because, well, I want to be honest here, and I don't want to get fired or piss anybody off or anything unsavory like that. After my first week, I have enough material to fill a book. Obviously, I don't want this blog to become a place where I just vent about work every day, so I'm only going to offer up a few choice nuggets from my first four days of work as a full-time employee.

My first day barely even counted. I wasn't working with the guy who normally trains new bellmen, so I pretty much just fumbled through on my good looks, wit, charm, sophistication, and huge muscles. There was a local old peoples' singles society having brunch there on my first day. Seriously, a group of elderly singles. I've never seen so many Cadillacs in one place before. Why do old people like to drive sitting so far forward? We're not supposed to move the seats when we park their cars, but I literally could not fit into this one lady's mid-80's Caddy. I had to turn my head to the side just to fit under the roof of the car. It was awful. Plus, the car smelled like old lady.

The second day was when training truly began. I'd never before heard the phrase, "And this is the most important thing" so often in my life. Apparently, everything about this job is "the most important thing." It's amazing. Basically, I've learned that the rule of thumb with this job is to remember that the customer is always right, even when he or she is demonstrably wrong. There is nothing in this world harder for me to do than to ignore stupidity and greet it with a smile. This will be a growing summer for me. Well, either that or I'll flip out and shoot a bunch of my coworkers with a spudgun or something.

I've met about half the hotel staff by now. They're an interesting bunch. The best part about this job is that everyone is being paid to be sickeningly sweet to all the guests, so fake or not, I work with a bunch of really nice people. One guy is secretly referred to as the "walking sexual harassment suit." One lady is a four-foot-nothing German woman with a Hispanic-sounding name. Apparently, almost all of them have crashed a car at one point. I guess it's not that uncommon an occurrence at this place. Somehow, I'm less than comforted by that thought.

I had to deliver a letter to a bunch of unoccupied rooms one day, and I was deathly afraid of walking in on some couple... uh... entangled... by mistake. Thankfully, I didn't. What I did do, however, was find a grammatical mistake in the letter. In the first sentence, actually. I hope no one actually read that thing, or they'll think we're a bunch of morons. I'm not a moron, though I'm reminded I can only speak for myself. Perhaps everyone else really is.

The vast majority of the job is simply standing around, waiting for someone to walk or drive onto the premises and help them out with whatever they're doing: checking in, parking their car, "just looking around," being lost and can't find a way out, having a sexual fetish that involves bellmen and luggage racks... you know, the usual. The job is a lot of standing around. I'm impressed with how well I'm paid to stand around. At most jobs, your boss would scream at you, "I'm not paying you to stand around." At this, the boss would have nothing to say. Except maybe "Keep up the good work," or possibly, "Andrew, you're really awesome. Here, have a big ol' handful of Spanish dubloons. And can you please come to my daughter's Bat Mitzvah? She thinks you're way hott. With two T's."

You can look forward to more updates on my awesome new job. Don't worry. If you're not really impressed with what I've told you so far, you can always go rent a movie or take a cold shower and try to remember that I don't care what you think. I'm not a freakin' monkey whose sole purpose is to amuse you with my antics.

Arby's Makes My Whole Body Hurt

I like roast beef sandwiches. I like curly fries. I like soda. I even like barbecue sauce on my roast beef sandwich as I eat it with my curly fries and a soda. I don't like Arby's, though. It's like they somehow found out how to take the perfect set of ingredients that should combine to form a killer fast food place and then screwed it all up just for spite. I went to Arby's for lunch today, and I decided that I'd rather swallow a curling iron than ever go back. I tried to put my straw in my soda, and the cheapo plastic cap frickin' ripped in bloody half. That's because the straw-to-hole ratio was just too large. It needs to be at least 1:3. That means the hole in the lid needs to be at least three times the size of the straw you're putting through it. If the straw is any bigger than a third of the lid hole, you're gonna have a major problem. This straw they hooked me up with was way too big for the teensy hole in the crappy generic plastic lid. I had to pull the whole thing off the top of my delicious Pepsi-cola and try it the hell over again. By that time, my beautiful curly fries had already begun to get soggy, which of course ruined the whole meal. Stupid Arby's. Now I'm in a bad mood.

I Saw What Happened And I Came Out

Nothing like a good ol' car crash to bring the neighborhood together. There was an accident on Baptist Road, right behind my house, just a few minutes ago. It was awesome. At its zenith of populatrity, the crash site boasted four police cruisers, a fire truck (looked like a hook and ladder, I believe), a fire district patrol car (I think it was a Blazer or something like that), a tow truck, and two paramedic vehicles. Oh, and I probably should have mentioned it earlier, but there were only two cars involved in the accident and no injuries. It's amazing how many of those flashy-light-type cars will show up at a site where their presence is completely unnecessary, and perhaps more of a hindrance than anything else. They all stood over the front end of one of the cars and pretended to look interested in the shape taken by the twisted metal. I've never even seen six firefighters at the sight of an actual fire, let alone surveying the aftermath of a fender bender. Apparently, the Pope and Jesus were the two people involved in the accident. That's the only thing that could explain why fourteen people showed up to move a Mazda RX-7 three feet away from where it was at the time of the accident and then stand around looking all confuzed and annoyed like a bunch of black people at a Ben Folds concert. Why on earth did four police cars show up? Did it take them four tries to finally remember to bring the accident report forms? Probably, but that's beside the point. Cops in Monument are excited by the prospect of getting to do anything besides catching speeders on Baptist Rd and arresting local high schoolers for marijuana posession. Why does the town of Monument even have four police cars? That's easy: Fourth of July parades. "Hey Bill, hop in ol' sparky and drive over to Leather Chaps and Baptist. There's an accident. You can probably kill a good three hours on this shift hangin' out at that accident scene. Lucky bastard. I'm stuck here on security detail serving protecting my fellow citizens or some crap like that." Some of you may be saying, "Andrew, it certainly appears that you don't like police officers. Why is that?" That, my friends, is the wrong question to ask. You should be asking yourselves, "Why would anyone EVER like traffic cops? What good has a single traffic cop ever done, besides bringing in revenue for the city by pulling over helpless old ladies and soccer moms?"

It's The Media!

A girl in my male/female comm class gave a speech today in which she tore The Media a new one for showing such blatantly sexist commercials as the Godaddy.com ones from the last two Superbowls. I hate the use of the phrase The Media as some sort of catch-all when blaming something on society as a whole. Society encompasses the speaker, whether or not they're willing to admit it, but The Media, on the other hand, implies a distant, separate entity on whom we can heap as much blame and guilt and corny diarrhea as we want. But enough of my grandstanding. How uncharacteristic of me. You know how much I hate getting all dialectic like that. It's just not me. Anyway, she gave this speech about gender stereotypes in commercials. It was so bad, it gave me cancer on my face. I literally had to avoid eye contact, because I was afraid of the poor speaking ability, bad sense of timing and organization, and horrendous logic somehow rubbing off on me if I engaged it directly.

She spoke about the "research" into trends in television commercials she did, which was mostly just asking a few of her femi-nazi lesbo friends if our patriarchal society was portraying beautiful women more often than men. Surprise! We do. You know why? Because the male aged 18-35 demographic is the one that spends all the money in this country, you fat, liberal, victimized moron. Why would they make commercials that cater to a demographic that mooches off their husbands and spends all their money on diet pills, lean cuisines, baby clothes, and more diet pills?

The other part of the speech was her assertion that The Media are solely responsible for the "unrealistic" images we all supposedly have of women. No. You are. If there weren't any insecure tubs of Crisco like you wining to everyone else about the "unrealistic standards" we're fed by The Media, we'd all be totally content with the way people are portrayed in commercials. If you weren't uglier than a garbage bag full of leprechaun poop and used condoms, you wouldn't be complaining either. Ever notice that? Good-looking people never complain about the "impossible standards" in The Media. That's because ugly people are just jealous. Suck it up.

Selling Points

I was walking around UCCS today, and I happened upon a poster encouraging students to vote on the new university constitution. The poster said, and I quote, "Now with a new preamble celebrating diversity." I'm not kidding. That's the selling point of our new constitution. The pre-freaking-amble that celebrates diversity. That got me thinking about what other slogans and selling points would convince the sheeple that comprise our student population to vote yes on a totally new constitution. Don't worry, though. You don't have to do any wondering at all. I've done the work for you. That's what long, boring classes in lecture halls are for, right? Here are some of the potential selling points I jotted down instead of listening to a lecture on "My Name is Asher Lev."

1. Printed on paper made from trees that used to adorn Sam Walton's grave. Suck on that.

2. We've made the whole thing more nymph-friendly.

3. It's shorter, so you use less ozone when you read it aloud.

4. It'll power your e-85 hybrid car.

5. The only waste it produces can be used as horse feed.

6. Nothing in it will offend the spirits of the trees that died to make the paper on which it was printed.

7. It comes with its own sense of self-worth. To scale.

8. It'll cook your Gardenburger for you.

9. Written in sign language so as not to leave anyone out.

10. It will be displayed in a singing frame that plays "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy.

11. We've removed all such offensive references to "God," "truth," "objectivity," and "understandable English." Take THAT, fascists! Score another one for team Mother Earth.

12. Now with 40% more midgets!

13. Redefines "pothead" as its own separate race.

14. Printed on the treated and bleached flesh of a slain white middle class Protestant male.

15. Only allows American-made cars into the parking lots.

16. 50% more references to The Force, and 13 more invocations of "with our powers combined..."

17. Dolphin safe!

18. Made from hedgehogs (don't worry, bleeding hearts, they're ugly).

19. Establishes Thursdays as "pants optional."

20. If you kinda squint, it looks like Michael Moore.

21. Outlaws references to World War II that don't focus on the Holocaust.

22. Changes the Bible so it's not the Jews who kill Jesus. It's the Nazis.

23. Makes "Rent" the official campus movie. Go Bohemians!

24. Blames Bush for balls cancer, jealousy, Joel Schumacher, Wendy's, VH1, charlie horses, bad breath, potholes, Scientology, broken shoelaces, Hayden Christensen, belly button lint, the letter Q, static electricity, and certain aspects of gravity (the bad ones).