I know, I have been a baaad girl. Just so darn tired , hotel full, holiday weekend, with skeleton staff, and, done day 9!!! I promised myself I wouldn't do this anymore, don't know quite how it happened, just missed out on my day off, and now I will be off for 5-6 after Thursday, so...might as well try and stick it out.
Today, like the past few, was hectic, but bearable. Thankfully there were no big surprises, at least for the most part of the day. With extra staff, I was able to concentrate on one building and keep up with the laundry. I was even nice, and did a load of personal stuff for a customer, who is very young (like my son) and very very far from home. Hey, it was barely a small load, and I had the time. That is my good deed for the week....
The day actually went by in a flash, I was considering packing everything away, and getting home a 1/2 hr. early. Just watching the machines, 15 minutes left, and I could head out the door. Stupid me!!! I should have known, I heard a male voice call my name, and that could be only one person on the staff, and whatever he needed, was not going to be good.
Yep, it was the Maintenance man... Oh, and he had a doozy.
Seems the sink in the small shop off the hotel had been plugged for a couple of days. He decided at the very end of the day to use his miracle clog magic solution. Oh this stuff is horrid. I had never come across it until I moved here. I suppose the nasty hard water makes clogs far harder to deal with than other locations so...we have this pinkish stuff called "Clearline" . You know it is bad stuff when it has an extra warning plastered separately on the plastic that wraps the bottle. It is very caustic, and just reading the instructions will frighten a average human being. The worst part of the whole process is when it comes in contact with whatever is clogging a drain. You think that the sewer has opened up and is spewing it's contents. The trick is, to pour it into a drain, put something over the drain opening without getting close (in case it erupts). You wait 5 minutes and then take off the covering and run cold water. I expect he did most of these steps. Not sure if it unclogged the shop sink, but...it went into the pipes of the adjoining suite, somehow got into the sink pipes, and ate a hole right into the pipe, causing water and Clearline to pour into the cabinet and onto the floor. The poor fellow (the same young guy I had done the laundry for) rushed out of his room to inform the Maintenance man his room "smelled very bad", and stuff was leaking onto the floor.
The solution.....call housekeeping. Yep, it is apparently our job to clean up everyone's mistakes. I wasn't thinking clearly (how unusual) mopped up the floor, put on gloves and started wiping the cabinet, which was full of black crap and metal from the pipe. Apparently a brighter person would have realized, as the Maintenance guy is asking me to try and wipe between the wall and cabinet (wide enough for a small rodent, but not my pork hock hands) if Clearline is going to burn a hole in a metal pipe, latex gloves are not a match for it. Cripes, it burned so quickly, it was like grabbing a handfull of stinging nettles. The shop lady was concerned, she had me in the backroom with cold water running onto my poor red hands, but, apparently some cleaning was still expected. Nope!! If I am suppose to clean something that eats through my protective gloves, I may take a moment to grasp the situation, but, I clued in the hard way.
The end of this is, the poor guy moved away from the stinky room. He was more than happy to move into a much smaller room, without a kitchen that he didn't want in the first place, just a bed, a desk and reasonably odour free.So, just because a room has all the trappings of the suite life, you never know when you will get a whiff of what lays hidden behind cabinet doors.Or..."you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear"!
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