Month: December 2019

In the process you see things that you wouldn’t have normally and you learn things.

Case in point.

Hotel Cleaning staff have a tough job. When you walk into that shiny clean hotel room take a moment to think about the cleaning.  The bed linens will typically be clean, the bathroom is clean and everything is to some kind of specification set by the hotel.

That’s a lot of work and the cleaning staff does a lot of lifting & toting. You don’t fully appreciate what they do because you as an individual don’t clean on the same scale. I personally hate making beds. Lifting mattresses and fighting with sheets that invariably poorly fit the mattress make it all the tougher. Either the fitted sheet is too deep for the mattress or the fitted sheet won’t stay on the mattress because it’s too shallow. 

Either way you’re fighting to get the sheets on the mattress and it’s akin to putting a condom on a pissed off rhino.

Note to sheet manufacturers, there has to be a better way…  Note to mattress makers, If you’re making a King Size pillow top mattress how about putting some indents in the super thick area under the pillowtop as catch points for sheets that don’t have a depth of 24” ? Just a thought…

I learned just how much work is involved in hotel maintenance, over the weekend because I offered to help a buddy with an Air B&B rental. He needed to be out of town and he also had people checking in. I said sure, “I’ll take care of it”.

Cleaning a two bedroom one bath cabin in three hours is a heck of a task. I’ve never cleaned my own home in that short a period of time. I learned that you need a plan and you need to execute to the plan. No variation, no breaks you gotta move and if the place you’re cleaning is unfamiliar the task is even harder. I missed my 3 hour window I did it in 3:45. Well Shit! I wasn’t wasting any time I was in motion without break for 3:45.

I’ll grant you I might not have been moving my fastest…

The reason for that was a trip to the ER the night before. 

Nope I wasn’t hurt but one of the people living in the cabins I was there to clean, slipped on some ice and broke their arm, severely.  This is a person who’s at least late 60’s and has other health issues. Okay, as a human being, you can’t leave someone hurting and unable to get up, laying on the ice. But I thought about it…

Damn my upbringing. I was built to protect! I could no more walk away than I could stop breathing.

Sooo, I get the person up, immobilize the arm as best I could, and get them into the car.

My loaner car… The one with no chains on the tires… The car that made it up the mountain while temps hovered above 34F but it’s now 27F and the streets are cold enough that they’re icing over.

Yea!

To the persons credit, and also as a way for me to note if they have a concussion they were able to give me concise directions to the hospital ER. (I was in another mountain town and don’t know my way around very well.) As a side “bonus”, with the situation being what it was, I left the house I was staying at without my glasses. I only realized that, when I noticed I couldn’t read the street signs and we were two blocks away. (Sigh.)

We walked into the ER to complete pandemonium. The place was as packed as the local restaurants with longer wait times. I had my phone, the person had their phone and ID.

So we check in, and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait.

Emergency Rooms do not work on a first come first served basis. They work on a triage system meaning that the level of need dictates how fast you get served. Broken bones that are not bleeding are lower on the priority list than heart attacks.

This ER waiting room was full of people that were coughing & hacking up who knows what, One guy was coughing up blood… great! One kid had a concussion and was vomiting, A pregnant woman appeared to be in early labor. Several people were brought in on gurneys and all I wanted was to go to sleep. We arrived at 9:30PM. The person I brought in was seen at 11:30PM. Xrays were taken and it was determined that the arm was broken in several places. You know it’s bad when a doctor describes a break as, “it’s a mess in there.”

12:45, I’m hoping for the person to be admitted and I can go to sleep. Nope! There’s no beds available, and surgery is needed to repair the break. However since there are no beds, The ER decides to cast the arm, pending review of the X-rays by an orthopedic specialist.

I head back out to the waiting room. I sit down in the only seat available across from a black woman. She’s sitting next to a well dressed black man and they’ve been there since we came in. She’s looking at me with daggers. 

I’m not sure why she’s apparently angry with me, I can understand that she’d be angry in general sitting and waiting for such a long time.

Eventually it occurs to me that she might be thinking, “white privilege,” since we arrived later than her, and yet we were seen before her. I’m tired, thirsty, and hungry (the vending machines were not working).

So I’m starting to get just a little annoyed at the angry glare. I finally say, “ The person I brought in is late 60s, fell on some ice, couldn’t get up, and I don’t know them. They’ve got a really bad broken arm, and apparently some other health issues, but since I couldn’t leave them laying on the ice, I’m here. How’s your day going?” The evil glare stopped. Her friend said something to her in another language and she went back to looking at her phone. Racist much lady?

3 AM, 19F, 3 Helicopter landings later, I’m in the car warming it up. I have no idea if the loaner is configured for these temps, at my house it’s in the garage but here it’s out in the open.

I’m trying to keep the engine warm enough from residual heat so that I don’t have another problem. I’m also tired of sitting in what is clearly a germ ridden petrie dish, I figure the cold air will do me good and maybe sterilize my sinuses and outer surfaces. Probably a false hope but hey, I needed some hope.

3:30 AM My charge is getting into the car and we’re heading back to the cabins.

I fall asleep sometime around 4:30.

9:30 AM I wake up, get a shower and start the day. I’m not hungry, and I’m working on things to hopefully make the tasks ahead easier. I’m exhausted, what sleep I got was not enough for me to fully recharge.

I manage to get the rental cabin cleaned up but I took too long, I gotta get better at doing that.

A couple of times during the day I tried to check on the person with the broken arm. They didn’t answer their door and once I was done with the cleaning and new guest check in, I tried again.

Still no answer, okay now I’m getting worried. But rather than pounding on the door, I grabbed my snow shovel and started working on the ice that had caused the problem in the first place. I figured me banging around in front of the house chipping ice away would be enough noise that it would attract attention.

Having cleared the ice flow, I texted my friend asking if he’d heard from the person. 

The answer was yes, and that I hadn’t checked on them. Uhhh no, they hadn’t answered the door. I head back over and voila now the door is unlocked and they’re responding. I take the dog that is partly responsible for the whole fiasco outside & tend to their food and water. 

And then as one last favor, I end up driving to the CVS to drop off an RX. Then I come back to the cabin and seriously consider just staying the night. But I figure my friend is going to be exhausted, if it were me I’d not want to have to be a good host. I do the dishes, and clean up the place so he can come home and just crash.

I creep down the mountain behind the skiers who are out of their damn minds. I buzz across the lowlands and come back up to my mountain. I make it up and into my driveway at 9:30PM and I’m more tired than I’ve been in a long time. I’m pretty much just running on autopilot. 

I eat something, watch an episode of Archer and hit my bed.

I’m asleep within seconds and don’t wake for 9 hours.

So What have I learned?

Hotel Staff should always be treated with kindness and courtesy.

You have to help people even when it’s the last thing you want to do.

Skiers and Snow players are unbelievably dumb, I saw people on the way up the mountain on Saturday afternoon allowing their kids to get out in traffic, play in the snow, then run to catch up to their vehicle when traffic moved. Aside from the stench of dead bodies in the spring, perhaps we should allow Darwinian rules to apply.