Bad Day at Work
By Laura J Snyder
The Cascade Mountains in the heart of Washington, off the beaten path, and I do mean beaten, there is a lone building jutting out of the grass of a man-made meadow. It sits along the cranky Yakima River, and much like wildlife, it never behaves. Yet, we have been lucky and have yet to flood. I do say yet. But man do people get angry when they think they will get to float the river and get told “yeah best not”.
Those guests are always my favorite. I say that with every ounce of sarcasm. I especially love it when I get a stern talk when the weather is also not behaving. Like I turned the snow on or didn’t.
Wildlife is everywhere, deer, bears, various tree dwelling critters, including some rather opinionated squirrels, make this place their home. They don’t seem to mind us too much. Other than the squirrels. They’re a bit fussed about the arrival of the lodge. Can’t say I blame ‘em. I’d be pretty pissed if someone came along and planted this massive cabin in the middle of my home too.
The Swiftwater Lodge. A 36-room cabin for those wanting to “connect” with nature. That’s their pull anyway. From my point of view, it’s just a bunch of rich folks who cannot fathom the idea of camping like a normal person. Glamping at its finest. Yet, this is where I work. And I am not going to lie, I love it here. The location, the building, my coworkers, the critters, it’s the human guests that I struggle to enjoy.
You name it, I have dealt with it. You get all kinds of people when working the front desk.
The entrance to the building is fairly open. Guests walk in through two giant doors with tin casts of bears and elk. They walk into an open room with a giant fireplace right across from the doors which is often going, even in the summer, with the desk area to the right. There is a grand staircase to the left of the fireplace and a long hallway to my right lined with rooms and leading to the dining room. Running along to the left of the staircase is another hall leading to the staff areas such as the kitchen, break room, and the boss’s office. All places I rarely even venture.
I often spend my breaks walking the grounds, saying hello to the annoyed squirrels and curious chipmunks. The elk like to keep their distance, but the deer like to coerce food from the guests despite our pleading to them not to feed the animals. Now they won’t go away. I know, I know. It’s contradictory because I love seeing them, but there is just something irksome about encouraging the wild to be less wild.
Anyway. I digress. This story has nothing to do with them. Or the river for that matter.
It was a normal day. Arrived at work at 7:30 in the morning. Groggy as usual. Stayed up way too late watching documentaries about people having much worse lives than me. It reminds me breakups are not the worst thing that can happen to you. But man does it not curb my boiling rage. Or how utterly stupid I feel. What a jerk. Him, not me. All I did was fall for a guy who said nothing but sweet things to me. And now look at me. Alone, angry, stupid, with a dash of shame thrown in for good measure.
Breakup is also an incorrect word. Is it really a breakup when he was never actually your boyfriend? There were feelings involved. My feelings. It feels like a breakup. It is the dissolution of a relationship, even if it was a one-sided relationship.
I have my hair twisted up, secured with one of those alligator clips. The kind kids like to pinch on their lips because it’s funny. I still do it sometimes. Come on, you know you do too. It’s a little too tight, but it looked good so, I endure the pain. It’ll loosen as the day goes one can hope.
I walk, I was almost late, and I can see Annie already behind the desk. Her pristine uniform of tight tan trousers, blue pressed collared shirt reminds me that I really need to do the laundry. I do an armpit check. I’m not offensive yet but can still smell a hint of body odor. As long as no one sniffs me I will be fine. You never know with people. I have had weirder things happen than a guest sniffing me.
“Good morning sunshine,” says Annie with a smirk.
“Mornin’”, I say as I take my place behind the desk and begin to log in to my shift.
“You look decent today,” Annie still has that smirk on her face. She is teasing me. I could get snarky, maybe give a cheap shot back, but decide nah.
“Yeah,” I sigh, “thought it was about time that I stop the pity party.”
“Don’t know why you were pity parting in the first place,” says Annie as she adjusted pens and key cards. “I mean considering he was a giant lying sack of suck.”
I sigh again. She’s not wrong. But there had been feelings. I wish there hadn’t been feelings. Ugh.
“At least he lives in the city, so you don’t have to worry about running into him.”
“Yeah,” I agree. Again, she’s not wrong.
“Cutting it close this morning, again,” says a voice coming up from my right. Ugh. Rachel. Little Miss I-know-everything-and-do-no-wrong. She’s not even in my department. She’s a housekeeper, and a mediocre one, but if her head was the literal-size of her inflated ego, it would fill the room.
“Well, I’m on time so…” I say, “besides, aren’t you like an hour early?”
“I always like to be here early, you never know when a guest will check out,” says Rachel. What she really means is her boyfriend who works in the kitchen was working and she rode with him. She says it’s to save on gas, but I think its because she can’t stand being away from him. Trust issues.
“You aren’t allowed to hang around the desk,” says Annie, not bothering to hide her own contempt toward Rachel.
“Julia said to ask if you guys need anything,” says Rachel smugly.
“Nope,” I say without looking at her, “we are just fine.”
Rachel lingers, agitating me, and I can feel my anger shifting from Sean to her. Nothing like transference to help mend a broken heart. That is until the guests began to come and go from the dining room.
Breakfast is offered every morning beginning at 7am. The early birds usually spend about 20 or so minutes eating if they are lone visitors, but the larger the group, the longer they take to eat. Couples will be in the dining room for rough 30-40 minutes. That is if they do not get room service, which is often the preferred choice. A couple, arm in arm and walking up the hallway. The woman is laughing and smiling from ear to ear, love in her eyes. And the man. His curly brown hair, trimmed goatee. Oh no. I know that face. You have to be fucking kidding me.
“Shit,” I say, diving below the desk.
“Uh,” says Annie, staring at me, confused. “You okay…”
“Shh,” I say.
My hands are shaking because my heart has gone into flight mode. My body wants me to get the hell out of dodge and there is nowhere to go. Not without him seeing him. Or worse him seeing me. Oh God. The panic attack is coming. My chest is getting tight, and my pulse is skyrocketing. I take a slow deep breath. I am in control. I am in control. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
“Grace,” says Rachel, “this is very rude behavior.”
The witch is catching on that I am hiding, and it is for a reason. And she wants me to suffer.
“Excuse me,” I can hear his voice. Crap.
“Yes,” says Annie, what can I do for you?”
So much for calming down.
“We were having trouble getting our wi-fi to work,” this is the woman’s voice. Her voice. His girlfriend. His actual girlfriend. The same one he had sworn was no longer his girlfriend.
I can’t help but roll my eyes. Good to know she is one of those guests who clearly did not listen at check in.
“Our wi-fi is satellite linked and does not always work. The weather last night was probably making connection difficult,” Annie says in a well-rehearsed statement that we have both given many times.
“If you are going to offer wi-fi it should work.”
This. He chose this over me.
The panic began to subside as the anger began to take over. Why am I the one hiding? He came to my work. He is staying in my hotel with her. Granted, if I was in a rational state of mind, I would have given him the benefit that he had not known this was where I work. He never asked me where I work.
So, I stopped cowering.
He was glancing away, in shame or embarrassment as his girlfriend was still getting into it with Annie. But he must have caught a peripheral glance. The blood drained from his face. I smirked. We both knew that I held all the cards.
He had blocked me on social media, and I had not bothered to text or call him. What was the point? He made his message clear after I poured my feelings about being the other woman known after he had let the truth of his relationship status slip. I am no one’s side dish. I am a main course, or nothing at all.
I could see the panic rising, much like it had been in me mere moments before.
“Oh hey,” I said, “how are you? It’s been a while.”
Annie shot me a confused look.
I gave her a look back, “don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.” I didn’t. I have never been that great on the fly, but I was committed at this point.
“Uh, good,” he said, swallowing.
“You know her?” said the girlfriend, it was more of an accusation than a question. And yes, honey, it is exactly what you think.
I should feel bad for the girl with her cheating scumbag of a boyfriend, but I don’t. I cannot see past my own anger toward him. For all the lying. All those compliments and words of endearment. Also lies.
“Uh yeah, we’re old friends,” he says.
Friends? I don’t know if “friends” was ever a word I would have ever used to describe our relationship. True, we had known each other for years, but there had always been something about it, something I should have seen as a red flag. He never really took the time to get to know, but I knew him. He had always loved talking about himself. Me. Me. Me. Ugh. Stupid.
The girlfriend looks at me, then back at Sean. Then back to me. Then to Annie again.
“You know what,” I say, cutting of the disgruntled woman, “up until about two weeks ago, we were very good friends.”
His eyes go wide. Wider than wide. Yep. I am the destroyer of life. Behold.
Except none of that happened. Nope. I never stood up. I said nothing. I cowered beneath the desk. They never approached. Just went right on moving along, laughing and talking to one another. There was no regaining of my power.
I gave it another minute before slowly standing just to make sure the coast is clear. I couldn’t hear the sound of their footsteps over the thumping of my own heart.
“What the hell was that?” asked Annie.
I just gave her a side glance. It was bad enough Rachel was still standing there and saw me hide like a scared puppy. Ugh.
“Dude,” says Rachel, and for once she was missing the condescending tone.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said as I began to go through the computer to find his name.
“Oh,” says Annie, finally connecting the dots, “oh.”
“Yeah…”
I wanted to crawl into a hole and pull myself into the fetal position, which also may or may not involve some thumb sucking which had been my coping mechanism in childhood. But no doing that, I have to keep my girl pants on. This is my job. I can do this. I can be a professional.
“Who was that?” Rachel asks.
“Isn’t it time for you to clean the bathrooms?” Annie snaps.
To be fair, it was.
Rachel storms off, thank God.
I found his room. They checked in the night before and were staying the weekend. Good thing I have tomorrow off, so I only have to be hyper vigilant today. My nerves are on fire and every time I hear someone coming down the stairs my eyes shoot up and I go into a state of panic.
I try my best to go about my day, but if I am being honest, I am completely useless. I go through the motions. There are only a couple of check outs, which take up little to no time, and most people make their reservations online these days, so luckily for me, there are only a couple of phone calls, which Annie mostly handles, leaving me to my paranoid thoughts. I know I do not have the balls to express my feelings to him, or to tell his girlfriend the truth of our relationship. Who am I to do that anyway? Though there is a part of me that feels she deserves to know. It is a truly complicated spot that I have put myself in.
A woman comes down, a middle-aged woman with a bad dye job and a sour face. I am not in the mood, and I can tell just by the woman’s demeanor she is angry about something. That is usually the only reason stay-over guests approach us, to complain about something that is often out of control, like the wi-fi.
“This is rather ridiculous,” the woman starts, “I should not have to drive an extra twenty minutes just to be able to purchase something other than your overly priced food in the restaurant,”
“We are sorry about the inconvenience,” I begin from something I have rehearsed many times, “there is nothing local, most folks stop before arriving as it is a rather out of the way spot. We like to provide the ambiance of seclusion.”
The woman rolls her eyes. “How secluded can it be if there are other people here?”
I don’t really have an answer, that is just what our mission statement says. “You are more than welcome to purchase any personal items you may need from the kiosk.”
“Why should I have to pay extra to you people?”
Ugh. There is going to be no making this woman happy whatsoever. People who want things provided to them for free very often are easily sated, I also have a feeling she will be doing her best to get a reduced price from her room when she checks out.
Dealing with this woman, I let my guard down. And as my gaze shifts away from this woman as she continues her rant, we lock eyes. Sean is walking through the lobby, and he sees me. He does a double take to make sure it is really me. The orange hair is kind of a giveaway, there is no hiding that.
His girlfriend seems oblivious to his staring, which is good. I do not want to go there. As much as I wish I could.
What do I do? Do I wave? Do I pretend I don’t notice him? I have no idea, and I suddenly feel very hot.
They walk out through the doors. And the interaction, fleeting as it was, is done. My heart is racing, and my hands are shaking a little, and the woman in front of me is standing there waiting for me to give a response to something of which I was not listening to.
“I am sorry for any grievance you may be experiencing ma’am, perhaps you would like to speak to our supervisor who will be here in about an hour?”
This did not make her any less angry, but these types always like yelling at supervisors. Not that a supervisor has any real power over any of the operations. That is on the owners, but they seem to never understand that. But I say the magic words and the woman says she will be doing just that, and she storms off.
I breathe slowly. One deep slow breath in, one out. I repeat this exercise until my heart rate returns to normal and my body temperature starts to cool down. I can feel the sweat in my armpits.
Just another day at work, I guess. Never a dull moment here at the Swiftwater Lodge.