But he must

Had a nice lady staying here a couple weeks ago. Good-humored, gracefully aged Latin American woman. When you work at a hotel, especially an old one that used to be a crack den, all kinds of problems are going to arise. You get guests that roll with the punches and smile and you get guests that are total bitching bastards, and you love and hate them in direct proportion to their flexibility. Something had gone wrong with this lady's reservation, either with the travel agency she used or on our end. She had some people coming to join her a few days later that we hadn't known about, so we had to blah blah blah who cares, point is, she was a good sport, and we sweetly charmed each other across the generation gap for a day and night.

Fast forward to the morning of the third day, 7:30 or so, truly the gloaming, the loopy time for me, and her guests have arrived: Two gawky teenage boys with shaggy brown hair, obviously her sons, and a handsome, wry, yet bumbling man with gray hair and glasses. His English wasn't great, but it wasn't that bad either.

"This trip it is very important. This my first wife," he said, almost proudly. How refreshing, to see divorced parent remain on good terms for the sake of their children, I thought.

"But now we try again!" he said, hopeful but nervous. Its important to remember that the first wife in question is standing right next to him, along with his children, and that this conversation is in no way private.

"So do you think you will finally get some sleep?" The woman asked kindly. The question of sleep is always a rueful one between me and my favorite guests.

I shrug, gesture lightly with my hands. C'est la vie, I am saying.

"Well, hopefully with us,"the man says, not at all discretely glancing between me, a hotel receptionist whom he's never met, and his wife. and he probably would have winked at his boys if they hadn't been standing behind him, "hopefully," he says, "there will be very little sleeping, eh?!?"

In the service industry, besides starting an anonymous blog, there's very little you can do when a customer says or does something totally embarrassing. Your only option is to just sort of let the remark or action hang in the air, and let the discomfort speak for itself. It spoke volumes.