Snark Station

Laura mentioned that I don’t say much about my daily life. To which I prove otherwise! Or just tell you the silly things that happened.

Like, for instance, today, when the housekeepers were loading their carts this morning, Luisa gave a sudden shriek and cried out in Spanish-accented English "Roach! Roach! Roach!" (Cucharacha is harder to say.) I poke my head around the corner to see her dropping a laundry bag and skittering away from it. The housekeeper next to her- Sherry, (who I found out last week lives just down the street from me, but anyways)- picks up the bag, opens it, gives a startled cry, and drops the bag. There is a cockroach *in* the bag.

Andy (the girl in charge of housekeeping while the boss is away, and you may remember her from previous posts) summarily stomps on the bag until she feels something hard. “I squished it,” she announces to the fluttering housekeepers. (Because, y’know, there were eight or so females in the room all going “ick!” over the roach, or else just watching the scene with great amusement. Or bewilderment, in the case of the non-English speaking twit recently hired.) I don’t really believe this (cockroaches don’t squish easily when hidden under soft things) and pick up the bag by its bottom (thus allowing for any squished or unsquished roaches to fall out of the opening).

Sumiko- head laundry personnel from Japan- arrives back downstairs to the cockroach-infested laundry room around this point. She skirts the entire scene to keep working. Wise woman, her. Luisa starts shrieking again, and Sherry says "It’s crawling up the bag!" The cockroach is crawling up the bag, on the outside, towards my hand. Brave girl that I am, I instantly drop said bag and cockroach goes skittering away under Sherry’s cart. Sumiko can be seen moving one of the laundry tubs. Likely hiding the cockroach's escape, as the cockroach was never seen again.

I mentioned as Sherry was moving her cart to look for the roach that maybe we should have called Maintenance, have them take care of the roach for us. (Or even funnier, if only Shane was still working in Laundry and we could make him deal with the roach!) After some serious groaning on the part of the younger employees, we decided that we needed no man to solve our bug problems.

They’d just scream the bugs away. The girls, that is.

Mid afternoon.

Sumiko went looking through the phonebook in the housekeeping office for a number. I asked who she was looking up, to which she replied "boyfriend." Or mumbled something and Andy translated for me. I have trouble with her accent sometimes. Andy thought the idea was ridiculous. "Why are you looking a guy up when you have Doug?"

Dual snorts. Sumiko keeps looking up her number (obviously not for a boyfriend- that was just her interesting sense of humor) and I say I’d rather be single than date Doug. (He comes across as a little gay...). Andy says "no, not you, you’re young enough to be his daughter! But Sumiko’s old enough to" - Andy slips a little here, so who knows what she had been going to say- "be his wife."

And if that was better said than her original thought, I’d hate to have to be the editor in her mind, trying to tell her how to put words and phrases together and not come across as an idiot. (Liz says Doug comes across as gay to her- even though he’s been married twice. And I’d like to say that, if someone as oblivious to sexual preference as I am can pick up gay-vibes from Doug, he’s putting off some serious gay-vibes.)

The real reason that I’d rather not date Doug- besides the twenty-seven year age difference- is the fact that he’s a slob, is irresponsible concerning his job, and almost lost me mine.

Anyways, told this story to Liz. (Hence the reason I can say Liz catches the ‘Doug is gay’ vibes.) Liz said she’d rather have J.C. for a boyfriend. Sweet, good manners, moderately attractive- perfect boyfriend material. Then she said she wouldn’t date him because he didn’t have- and here she went on with hand-waving and ‘um’s and ‘ah’s as she tried to explain whatever it is about him that sets him on the ‘guys not to date’ list. I stare blankly as I try to catch on, only to find out my mind can’t quite come up with the words either. IB alum that I am, I use circumlocution! "The ability to go bungee-jumping and love it?" Something like that, it seems.

A few seconds down the conversation, it sums up to "So you’d want a guy with Stephen’s personality and J.C.'s manners?" "Yeah!" ... (This is the sound of Elf giving her patented evil grin, which doesn't necessairly mean she's up to something. It just means you're better off not knowing what she's thinking, dirty-minded girl that she often is.) Liz spots the grin, thinks about what was just said. She makes an 'oh shit' face and tries to backtrack. To which there can be but one reply.

I’m blogging this.