Meet the Idiots: Girl With Name that Sounds Like a Columbia Dorm

There are two women who are the two main front desk people at the Hotel during the week: GWNTSLACD and the White Witch. They are both pretty awful people, but they have really fake smiles and they know the booking system really well, so they are basically the manager and the assistant manager of the hotel.

While the White Witch is one of the most heinous people I've ever encountered, GWNTSLACD is somewhat redeemable. She's in her late twenties, she's from Spain, and she's been working here for about three years. She's slender, of short-to-medium height, with a thin face and a prominent nose. I suppose she's not really all that bad; she can be fairly supportive in an I-would-never-do-anything-wrong-but-its-not-really-your-fault, -it's-your-inexperience's-fault kind of way. Her biggest flaw just seems to be that she spends too much time around the moral black hole that is the White Witch, and she hasn't had the strength to resist her. Apparently she divorced her first husband at the urging of the Ice Queen (he probably wasn't hot enough or something) and she used to be kind of sweet, but three years of working alongside the White Witch has left her chilly done the opposite of thawing out her feelings towards others (ok, I'm done).

But really, the worst thing about her, and what causes me to have general ill will towards her, is the way she answers the phones in the mornings. She says the same thing every time: "Good morning, Hotel Idiotica, how may I help you?" in the same lilt that anyone would develop after answering phones for three years. Doesn't seem so bad, right? And the Spanish accent is the sexiest of all accents (It is too sexy!). So what's the problem?

Well, to synesthetize it for you, her morningtide phone manner is essentially verbal diarrhea. It starts off fine, the "Good Morning," is almost normal, but by "Hotel Idiotica," she's pushing out the words in this high-pitched, droney whine. But then, holy God, the words, "How may I help you?" sound like they were forced out by pushing on the chest of a dead muskrat. They sound like you wished you could when you held your nose and stood on your tiptoes and pretended to be a posh older woman offended by a terrible smell, except even higher-pitched and more nasally. The timbre is probably closest to the witches in the movie The Witches after they've all been turned into rat-monsters. Honestly, to me, it sounds like black poop.

And that is Girl With Name that Sounds Like a Columbia Dorm

Rabbit Season

So if you haven't noticed, it's been veeeeery quiet here at the prime hotel for blog-fodder in this grand city. That's been welcome news for my cholesterol, but bad news for you, my readers, so I'm going to try to pump out a few Meet the Idiots and Blasts from the Pasts before my face falls into my soup.

Shattered Dreams

Flock of women of indeterminately young ages comes rolling in around 1 oclock. Dressed very strangely. 1 with blue eyeshadow so pervasive it borders upon rouge, another with a poofy, white, lacey dress, reminiscent of Bjork w/out the swan. 2 others seemingly somewhat shabbily dressed. Can't really take in too much because I'm trying to help an older gentleman at the time.

"Wedding?" I call out, desperate to engage. "Ha, nope!" laughs the girl with azure cheeks, who seems to be the queen bee. "Prom!"

Hoo-boy. Eyebrows officially raised. Interest officially piqued. I cannot think of anything I would rather have happen at this hotel, in terms of pure hilarity and opportunity for mischief-making, than a prom after-party.

But something's off. Where are all the guys? Don't these girls seem a little old for prom? And who would come back to a glorified bathhouse like the Idiotica for post-prom?

"It was an 80s prom!" one girl enthuses. "1989," said another in the background.
"1989?" mused the old man, whose face would have been more aesthetically appealing if all the features weren't scrunched together in the middle. "Wasn't that the year all those girls got into all kinds of trouble?" This old man is not as sweet as he seems from that quote, but he is a little sweet. The girls indulge the ol' perv and then swoop up to their rooms.

Update: The ringleader comes down with most of her whorish make-up off, and I learn from her that this 80s prom was some sort of interactive theater performance, which is pretty cool, but for our purposes is notable for being far and away the most interesting thing a guest has ever done at this hotel.

Fun Fact

New York City, at least to the Irish, is notorious for its faulty plumbing.

Who Just Came into the Hotel, asking ridiculous questions and giving out staggeringly unhelpful tips

2 chubby women, one blonde in a pink sweatshirt, the other brunette with a red hoodie, and their cute, bespectacled 16 year-old daughter (2 mommies?) stop at the desk to ask me, a burly Amishish man, and my colleague Yusuf, a 40 year-old Guinean man, where exactly the Victoria's Secret they walked by today is?

The brunette in red is pouring some powder into her small Poland Spring bottle. "Coffee?," Yusuf wonders.

"Grape mix!" she responds enthusiastically.

I start to try to look up the locations of Victoria Secret's on the computer. "Its on the corner," the girl calls out hopefully. I wait for her to elaborate, but that's all she says. It's on the corner.

I'm thinking this is probably the dumbest thing anyone has said during my tenure at the Hotel Idiotica, but I'm willing to write it off since she's just a kid. The one of her mommies starts chiming in.

"Yeah, it was on a corner. Not on one of those side streets." Oh. Hmm, let's see, ma'am. Well I know it's not on the corner of 112th and Broadway. I'm not sure about 49th and Lexington, or any of the other 3,147 street corners in Manhattan.

I try Google Maps, Victoria Secret, 10036, the hotel's zipcode. A number of options come up. "Put the American Eagles on there," pink woman hollers. "There was an American Eagle close by." Her companion just stands there, slurping her grape-ade.

The Tipping Point

Familiar readers will know how much I LOV talking about Malcom Gladwell and "punctuated equilibriums" and other really not-obvious things, but its rare when you get to experience one of those moments in the first person.

To wit:

At about 2 in the morning, young woman calls down from room 911 requesting extra bedsheets. There have already been a few inquiries regarding the whereabouts of the key to room 911 (All rooms at the Hotel Idiotica have physical keys, not keycards, that are supposed to be left at the front desk when a guest leaves the hotel), so I know that room 911 is occupied by an attractive blonde with stringy (crimped?) hair, and a sallow face (but in a good way somehow), as well as her two less attractive but still cute and vivacious young lady-friends.

Now since I'm the only staff here on Sunday nights (on Saturdays there's also a security guard), I'm really not supposed to leave the desk. Also, I was feeling pretty beat up and pretty much just wanted to stare blankly at the computer screen. So I told her if she could come down to the desk I could fetch some sheets from the basement.

She protested, and I was about ready to tell her she could freeze to death. But then she pleaded one last time really animatedly could I pleeeeeeaaaaase come up, and I heard her friends giggling in the background.

In this instance, the giggling was the tipping point. This faint background noise led to seismic shifts in torpor, disillusionment, and infecundity.

I'll be right up.

(As you can probably guess, this was also, sadly, the Dr. Scholl's Blueballs Moment of the Weekend)

I Can't Seem to Make it through Sunday

So for whatever reason, I can't seem to muster up much energy for blogging on Sundays. I mean if I was vlogging, that would be one thing, but for blogging? On Sundays, it seems I'm just too tired to bother. But once more into the breach, for you all, before I head to my treehouse for a long nap.