It’s a little too premature to be reporting this, but as of
Tuesday morning, Slappy has been relieved of his part-time La Quinta
duties. We had a new man patrolling the hotel’s grounds Tuesday evening
and though he described himself as a “floater” I’m hoping that the security
company will be providing a suitable replacement by next Monday eve.
Monday night, Slappy informs my co-worker (the individual
who’s manning the desk from 9 to 11pm until I come on) that he can’t climb
upstairs anymore because he’s afraid of
heights. Why this realization took more than a year to discover I do
not know, but said co-worker tells me he’s going to have to drop a few things
off at several upstairs rooms because Slappy refuses to go. I venture out
of the back office and, seeing the Slapster is seated at one of the tables in
our lobby, I inform him that this does not bode well for his career at La
Quinta. What I said was, “I don’t think the boss is going to allow me to
call those individuals getting out of hand or creating a disturbance to ask
them if they can move it downstairs so that my security guard can handle the
situation.”
Slappy tells me he’s not feeling well. “I’m sick,
man—real sick,” he continues to wail over and over and over again. He
reveals further that he’s not necessarily afraid of heights, it’s that he gets
dizzy climbing the stairs and he feels like he’s going to fall. So I tell
him that if he’s ill, he needs to call his office…inform them of his
situation…and let them know that they need to send someone out here in his
place. I hand him the phone and he complies with my request.
This past week, we’ve been tres, tres busy here at
Midtown—due in part to Spring Break and also the Masters Tournament in Augusta .
(Yes, hotels are busy to the point where guests are actually forced across the
state and into Savannah .) So
the audit has been a little heavier than normal, and I find myself with
precious little time to devote the usual amount of adult supervision in
Slappy’s case. He did discuss the matter of his being sick with the guy
in charge of the security office, and he tells me that the individual told him
to sit tight while he made preparations to get a replacement out to us. I
then told Slappy (in retrospect, kind of stupid I know) that he could either
walk around the property to a) get some fresh air and b) pretend he’s doing his
job or he could sit down for a breather until his substitute arrived.
Naturally, he chose the option that would involve sitting down.
And he sat…and he sat…and he sat…for about four-and-a-half hours, according to my watch.
At first, I wasn’t too concerned about this because this security company is
notoriously slow in getting a relief man (or woman) out to us. But
gradually, it becomes apparent that the guy he talked to apparently rolled over
and went back to sleep, because after two hours he’s still sitting there and no
one’s coming to relieve him. On top of this, he starts complaining to
just about everyone who walks into the lobby (the driver of the CSX van, our two
Carolina Trailways drivers, etc.) about how the people who employ him aren’t
doing him right—he’s sick, and when he talked to his boss he told him to “stick
it out for the rest of the night.”
As you may have guess, the part about “sticking it out for
the rest of the night” doesn’t jibe with the rest of his story—particularly the
part about his company sending out a replacement. When I call him on
this, he assures me that help is on the way—but with every passing hour, it’s
not looking good. In fact, when he told the CSX van driver about how
cruel his company was for making him work while he was sick, the driver gives
me the hairy eyeball, thinking I’m the slave driver. I shot back a look
that I hoped conveyed the message: “Do you see him sitting there? Does it look
like he’s working?”
By this time, I was grabbing items out of our makeshift
kitchen and bringing them out to the breakfast area in preparation for our
award-winning continental breakfast. It’s about twenty minutes before
Slappy’s shift officially ends, and as I enter the lobby through the back door
he says to me excitedly: “Hey! I know now what was making me sick!
My blood sugar was low! I just checked it and it was low!”
So I just stood there, silent and not moving a muscle, because
to do so would involve me strangling the little twerp and I’m not entirely 100%
certain a jury is going to let me walk—this is
Georgia , you
know. He proceeds to produce a hamburger that his wife made for his lunch
and pops it in the microwave, wolfs that down and then asks me if he can have
some toast.
“Slappy—a half-hour ago you were at freakin’ death’s
door…and now, just as it becomes time for you to leave you’ve got the nerve to
ask for breakfast?” I continue to stare at him as his pudgy little fingers
shove the remaining bits of burger into his maw. He then realized that we
had this conversation about sponging off the breakfast area last week, and
decides that it was bad form to ask me for toast—but instead, picks up the
house phone and calls his wife to let her know he’s on his way home…and asks if
she’ll make him some pancakes for breakfast.
As he gets ready to leave, he says to me: “Well, I guess
I’ll see you tonight.” He turns to go, and I interrupt him with the aural
equivalent of floodgates being opened.
“Slappy—I’m going to do everything in my power…move heaven
and earth if I have to…to make sure you never
cross that threshold in an employment capacity ever again. Your career
here at La Quinta is over, my friend. You’ve spent the last
four-and-a-half hours with your fat ass in that chair, complaining you’re sick,
and now I learn that it’s all because you refuse to take care of
yourself. You played me,
man—and the camel is buried in a big straw stack.”
He interrupts me with “No, I didn’t play you” but I’m not
finished. “Slappy, I don’t know why I felt sorry for you. You’re a
diabetic, and yet you continue to shovel crap and garbage down your gullet that
completely violates the diet of any known diabetic. If my father ate even
half the shit you do, my mother would
be a widow now. There wasn’t anything wrong with you this evening that a
proper diet wouldn’t cure, but instead you decided to play the illness card and
faked being sick so that you wouldn’t have to do a goddamned thing. Well,
it’s over, my friend—I’m done protecting your job. I’m fed up with your
mooching and napping and your just-plain-laziness. The GM and I are going
to have a talk in the morning about this, and again…if you’re still employed
here by the time we finish our chinwag, I can assure you that I won’t be.”
I related this incident to my boss in pretty much the same
manner as set down in this post, and even though he looks upon Slappy as some
sort of hotel court jester, he reluctantly agreed that Slappy had to get the
yank. He says to me: “Did you really tell him about doing everything in
your power to keep him from coming back here?”
“You better believe it,” I responded. “My only request
is that you don’t make a liar out of me.”
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