So, like I'm getting laid off
 

Events at the Bates continue to spiral down the toilet. Carmen has been sick since Thanksgiving and has finally been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She had to resign as manager and she and her hubby have moved to an actual house of their own. The Bates is REALLY spooky now with no one living there anymore. I clip my pepper spray/mace to my belt every time before I go on shift. I hate hanging out alone with only $2,000 in cash to keep me company and a bunch of ever more disgruntled drunk/meth-addicted/mean "guests" wandering in through the door. Did I mention the druggie who tried to break in via the laundry room a few weeks back? He tried to crawl in through the 12 inch re-enforced rectangle of glass in the laundry room door. He had shattered the glass with his bare hands and was trying to pull the rest of the door apart by time the cops arrived.

The owner has decided to cope with security problems by making my 65 year old female coworker sleep in one of the extra rooms at night. She doesn't even have mace or anything else. Motel Maintenance Man (3 M guy, remember him?) slinks off to his room by 6pm every night and puts his phone off the hook while he smokes and drinks himself into oblivion. I think my coworker is insane to stay there by herself every night - no extra pay, no back-up - so she can "guard" the money. No one around there, especially the owner, has ever thought of just throwing the money in the lock box, hiding the key and removing the cash from the property at 10pm when the office closes. Like, you know, the owner could just stop by for the money at closing, put it in the (locked) trunk of his car, and deposit it into the bank in the morning the way other businesses do. Well, it IS the Bates, after all.

There were hints that I should relieve my coworker and stay over myself on some nights. I countered this notion with a demand for a loaded shot gun and $50.00/night hazardous duty pay for any night I might stay over. Needless to say, I go home and sleep with my trained attack kitties, instead.

As penance for my disobliging attitude, the owner has decided that I should be responsible for creating a data base listing all the past and present undesirables, so that we can just enter each potential customer's name in the computer and see if they come up "clean" or not. Its amazing how many people will steal the fridge and the microwave from the room, break the screens and windows, run a small time prostitution ring out of their room, and expect to be met with open arms a week or two later.

Well, I actually don't mind creating and refining my data base of crime (me and the FBI). It helps pass the time, and I put the owner's name into it just for kicks (he had a major drunken run-in with a Navajo man in the parking lot, broke out his bathroom window, and stole all the bedding, as well as the pictures on the walls). I figure I'll be long gone when and if my little joke is ever discovered.

The owner wants to refurbish the apartment that the new manager will live in before he hires anyone, and 3 M guy has been given the job. Yesterday, 3 M pulled all the molding off from around the bathroom window - a half hour job - before calling it quits for the day and breaking out his medical marijuana and Coors. At this rate the apartment won't be ready for a month or more which is fine by me.

Once the new manager is in place, I'm out of a job because I was only hired to cover some of the hours Carmen couldn't do. I imagine the new person will be healthier and put in the standard number of hours/week. My coworker, having seniority, as well as the drooling loyalty of a golden retriever, will catch the weekends. I wish her well. I truly do.

I have no idea what I will do for work. I have asked at every place I can think of, and I peruse carefully all 3 or 4 help wanted classifieds that show up in our twice weekly paper. NOTHING.

I am trying to convince a friend that we should go into the medical marijuana production business on the 7 acres he has outside of town. In Colorado, its a perfectly legal sideline as long as you pay the fees and get the permits. As I understand it, one can make a tidy profit, especially since I have no desire to sample my half of the crop. My friend isn't so sure. Mostly I think because he WOULD be tempted to skim some of our crop.

Well, I can always go down to the rec center and hope to get into good enough shape so that I could join one of the groups of illegals who weed and tend the grounds of the houses and condos of the 1% who have property up in nearby Telluride and its obscenely wealthy suburb of Mountain Village. Colorado is a strange state. I can grow weed legally, but if I go pull weeds in Mountain Village, la Migra will be asking me for my green card. Heh!

Try to insinuate yourself into the life of one of the 1% and make him/her think you are indispensible.

Then rob them blind.

Or ask you and your guard-kitties to sleep overnight in the fields to guard the crop.

Maybe you should just offer to buy the motel and run it properly.

Sam be honest, when you were younger, were you a really hot chick?

I actually have an acquaintance who is doing just that. Well, not the robbing them blind part, but she scored a pretty cool gig as a house sitter/house keeper for a luxuriant condo in Mountain Village. She says the owners come out for two weeks a year and the rest of the time the condo is hers. Sweet.

What's with this past tense stuff? :D

Crap, Sam. Hope you figure something out soon.

Haven't you been younger? Who are you anyway, Benjamin Button's sister?

Two managers are going over their budget for the next year.

After analyzing expenses and revenues, they come to the conclusion that they will have to lay off one of their two assistants, Jack or Jane.

They go back and forth but can't decide who to lay off.

Finally, one manager decides that they lay off the first person who gets up from their desk.

In the meantime, Jane is hard at work but suddenly gets a headache. She gets some aspirin from her desk drawer and gets up from her desk to get some water.

One of the managers gets up to break the bad news to Jane.

Manager: "Jane, I need to talk to you. I've got a problem. I either need to lay you or Jack off..."

Jane: "Well, Jack off. I've got a headache."

In a small browser window, the thread title is reduced to "So, like I'm getting laid"

In my dreams. I still haven't recovered from my "senior cowboy" experiences. There WAS a very sexy man who checked into the Bates the other night and gave me a wink and a leer. Cheered me up considerably, that.

@BigV As a matter of fact, I NEVER have been younger. Well, I was 5 once, but that doesn't count. I don't feel any different than I did at 18. I still get out on the dance floor with the best of them, go on my back country expeditions, and want to brush up on my Spanish, so I can read Pablo Neruda in the original once more.

Who's Benjamin Button? :confused:

Benjamin Button got younger, started old.

I was thinking more Dorian Gray.

You don't have a portrait of yourself in the attic, do you? ;)

Merlin rolled that way as well.

And if you're skimming the title, it's "so, like, I'm getting off".

Either way is good. Both is better

ANYWAY... I am now in a quandary. Today I asked my coworker how long its been since she spent a night at home. Three weeks was her sad reply. And I felt really guilty about my continuing refusal to stay there all night but I also feel the owner is being a major asshole over all this and his unreasonable demands should not be indulged in.

Number one, there is the safety issue. Like I posted in the OP, there are some highly unpleasant characters who wander the streets here at night. They're predators seeking an opportunity, and what better opportunity than a woman alone guarding $2,000 in cash? Plus, everyone knows that it takes the local police forever to respond to even a 911 call. I think they just ditch their cruisers and go to sleep somewhere at night. You never ever see one patrolling after 10:00pm. Anyone staying over night to "guard" the motel really should have a gun and be confident about using it. At the very least, the owner should get a muscular young man to do the job, not somebody's grandmother.

Number two, if you expect an employee to stay overnight to guard your property, you should pay the employee to do it. Expecting someone to give up their entire life for the sake of YOUR interests, not theirs, went out with the end of the Civil War. This is southern Colorado in 2012, not South Carolina in 1812. But my coworker is so timid around the owner, she won't stand up for herself and the owner is more than happy to take advantage of this.

My coworker needs to grow a spine. This is not my problem. Its hers. Except I felt so bad for her that I told her that I'll stay over tomorrow night and Thursday, so she can spend a couple of days off at home with her boyfriend.

I probably won't see the owner tomorrow because he's supposed to be going somewhere or doing something terribly important in his terribly important little life. However, I will see him Thursday. And I am going to confront him about all this. I don't want to lose my temper, but I will speak my mind. After all, I have nothing to lose. I'm already getting laid off and it would be a major pain to find another person and train them for a job that is going to only last a couple of weeks, so I doubt he'd fire me on the spot even if he gets mad.

I really would like to make the owner feel ashamed of himself for taking such advantage of my coworker. And I'm not going to do this again. I've got better things to do. Like maybe seeing how fast I could drive over Wolf Creek Pass in a blizzard. Or I could go out on the desert in Canyonlands and off road in my Toyota until it ran out of gas 50 miles away from anything. Then I could try to walk back to civilization with no water. Stuff like that. All better things to do.

And I've decided to place a call in to Cortez's finest and explain the security situation at the Bates. I'm going to ask them to keep an eye on the place at night. Which will cut into their time flirting with the waitresses at Denny's. Which means they'll be irritated with the motel ie the owner, and he'll have to deal with it. Too bad. I have awful insomnia and to make really sure that I get my police protection, I can pass the time by calling dispatch every hour or so because I'm sure I heard someone out in the bushes.

I'm going to document this little adventure along with the fact that no one ever gets overtime pay and on my final day at the Bates, the Colorado Labor Board or whatever they're called is going to get a call from me followed up by an official letter of complaint. I'll have plenty of time on my hands. Might as well make use of it.