Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Sometimes Being A Sucker Paid Off, But Mostly Not!

Okay, I will admit it right up front. I am the poster child for Sucker Anonymous. My name is Mud, and I am a suckcerholic. Having a soft heart and a even softer head places me at the top of the class for being taken. The problem is that I don't ever seem to learn. I especially found myself to be vulnerable in the hotel world. I was a soft touch for a sob story.

My maintenance skill are very minimal. Okay, that is a lie, My skills in repairing things does not even register on any scale. I was even officially told that by Mr. Ben Tyvand, our high school guidance counsellor. Remember those stupid national achievement tests we had to take? Ben went over the scores with each student, and when my time came he informed me that I was practically a genius in reading, English, retention, social sciences, etc. I was glowing from the compliments. Then we got to the mechanical part of the scores. I was informed that I was basically an idiot when it came to those matters. His exact words, and they still echo in my head, "you must not know the difference between a hammer and a screwdriver".

Well, Ben , you are so wrong about that one! In my twenties I did learn the difference. I learned that when I had too many screwdrivers that I go hammered. And sometimes, when I got hammered, I got screwed. So there, Ben, you were wrong. But those stories are for another time and forum.

In the hotel world, there are many repairs to rooms that must be made, and they must be made quickly, or you might have a very angry guest on your hands. The larger hotels that I managed had full time maintenance people on staff, but some of the smaller ones did not. The Emerald Inn in Seattle was a smaller property, and being fairly new, the owner did not feel that the cost of a full time maintenance person was justified. So, what was a mechanically challenged person like me to do? Well, there was only one thing to do, and that was to find a way to get someone to assist me with repair problems without costing the company much money.

Well, like I said in the opening paragraph, I am a sucker for sob stories, and the next few blogs will chronicle some of those times, both bad, and those rare good end results. I need to stop for now and go run some errands, but my next entry will start bonding the sucker and the maintenance stories together. Stay tuned.

3 comments:

Go Figure said...

Ah, yes my repair and mechanical abilities are legend too!

Cedar Street Kid said...

Yep, you should have seen the last
time that I repaired my bathroom sink! the only way that I got by in the hotels was to find a vacant room where everything was okay, then run back and forth between the two rooms. I would look at the good toilet, see how the parts were, then run back to the broken toilet and try and make it look the same.

MarmiteToasty said...

I aint to good with DIY stuff.... but that dont stop me having a go LOL

x

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