Overheard 4

Wow. It has been a long time since I did one of these. Like, the last one I did was at the end of 2017! I said in that post that I had a few more to share, mostly examples of things I've overheard at church, and then somehow a year and a half passed, and I never wrote it. Oh well, I'm here now, so let's do it!

For those of you who have never seen one of these posts before, it's pretty self explanatory. All of these stories are things that I have overheard in real life, at church, work, out in public, etc. This is different than my newer, "Out of Context" series, in that I include the whole conversation, and everything that happened is very clear. If you would like to read the other three posts I made in this series, I will have them linked here.

Post 1 | Post 2 | Post 3

In the last post I said I still had conversations I'd overheard in church to share, so I will start with those. At least half of these I've probably had since then. Some are just random snippets of conversation that I have overheard, that really don't have anything to do with church, they just happened to take place there. Like this one, where I heard a little girl talking to her friend about a new culinary adventure she'd recently had.

"I ate clover! It's true! I promise it's true!"

Or this one, where a little old man started telling a story.

"When I was a small child, just before dirt was invented..."

Most of these overheard anecdotes happen between church and Sunday School. There's a fellowship/coffee time for people to visit and catch up, and a lot of random conversations can happen around me. Like when my grandma was discussing her favorite kinds of books with a group of elderly women.

Woman 1: “I like reading the Amish books.”
Woman 2: “Oh yes, me too.”
Woman 1: “I mean, they’re all the same story I guess, but I still like reading them.”

There was another time where another elderly woman was talking about her family when they were kids.

“My brother used to call me his ‘Little Muggin-Hose.’ I don’t know what that is, and maybe I should be insulted, but nobody could ever tell me what it was, and he’s gone to heaven now, so I guess I’ll never know.”

I actually googled that phrase, in a variety of spellings, and I never figured out what it was, so hopefully I haven't accidentally profaned my blog with some kind of old-fashioned swear. 😆


Once in a while there will be some kind of food served during the coffee time, and one of those days there were a bunch of tiny bowls of fresh fruit sitting on a table for people to help themselves to, which led to a very random and hilarious interaction between an elderly couple.

Elderly Gentleman: "Oh look at that! We have Jell-O today!"
His wife (looking at him like he was crazy): "No it's not, it's fruit!" 

He just looked at it and said, "Oh, okay." and went off to talk with someone else at a nearby table. He had missed church the previous Sunday, and this other person was wondering how he was feeling.

Elderly Gentleman (cheerfully): "Oh, I'm still not feeling the greatest, but I'm on drugs today!"

One Sunday before Sunday school started I overheard a Sunday school teacher who taught one of the younger classes, talking about her students.

“Every day I ask the little kids how their day is going. They think it’s because I’m trying to be nice and get to know them, but really it’s because I want to be amused.”

Last year the church completely restructured the way they did Sunday school, but up until that point, I had been attending class with my grandma, and at that time they had the whole church divided into age groups. So I got quite a few gems from going to Sunday school with the seniors.

Such as the day the teacher came in and said, "Good morning! How's everyone doing?"
Another elderly person in the class immediately came back with, "Well, we're here."

The teacher of the senior class was himself a senior, and he had a quite a few of his own, including this one, which to me, was one of the funniest things he ever said. And it was completely by accident.

"And then, that translation of the Bible was called the Septuagint! I had to learn that word from the microwa- I-I-I mean the World Wide Web."

He was completely serious, and it was all I could do not to just die laughing right there in class.

Another time he was talking about someone he heard on the radio.

"I was listening to a preacher on the radio, and he seemed to be pretty good, until he wanted to sell me a recipe for unleavened bread."

After the Sunday school classes were restructured, all the classes had a mix of people from all different age groups. In one of the first weeks of the new format, a woman greeted an elderly woman who entered the room.

Woman: "Good morning! Are you joining our class today?"
Elderly Woman: "Well, yes."
Woman: "Well then our class is going to get wiser!"
Elderly Woman: "Oh?"
Woman: "Because you’re here!"
Elderly Woman: "Okay, well, I hope that makes some difference."

I love dry humor, so this woman's delivery had me in stitches. Internally of course. Outwardly I was pretending I wasn't hearing anything.


Other than at church, most of my overheard conversations come from work, but I do have a couple of exceptions this time. One was from my nephew's birthday party, where a little kid I didn't know was wearing a party hat, but at the front of his head, like a horn, and he had to show it off to someone, who I am assuming was his mom.

“Look! I’m a unicorn! I’ve finally transformed! Aren’t you proud of me?”

Another anecdote was from a day I was at the zoo. We stopped in the gift shop, and as is pretty standard in zoo gift shops, there were plenty of children begging their parents for toys. I overheard this conversation between a pair of siblings who had just been turned down at the stuffed animal section, one of whom was significantly more pouty than the other.

Little Boy: "Our parents are so mean to us..."
Little Girl: "Not all the time..."

In the past, most of my overheard conversations have come from work, as I work at a grocery store, and I see a LOT of people. Since I got my job at the hotel I haven't worked nearly as much with the public as I used to, so this resource has mostly dried up, but I do still have a few examples from before my grocery hours went down. Such as this conversation between a little boy and a checker who must have known him.

Checker: "Did you have fun at pre-school?"
Little Boy: "Yeah! I was crying!"
Checker: "Oh no! Why were you crying?"
Little Boy: "I got in trouble."
Checker: "What?"
Little Boy: "I hit someone! But he hit me first!"
Checker: "Why didn't you tell a teacher instead?"
Little Boy: "I did!"
Checker: "Before or after you hit him back?"
Little Boy: *silence*

One day a very talkative, almost-but-not-quite hyperactive little boy came through my line with his mother and sister. He was rather energetic, and his sister seemed to be getting real fed up with his antics, and quipped:

"Jake, we're going to give you some night-night medicine!"

I don't know exactly what that means, but apparently it wasn't good, because her mom looked horrified and exclaimed her name in shock.

"Samara!!!"

The day after a snow storm, one of the baggers at the store, a teenage boy, came in from helping a customer out with groceries. As he took off his coat he exclaimed, "It's so slippery, I was doing a Bambi dance out there!"


Church isn't the only place I overhear conversation between elderly people. I heard this one at the store while I was bagging for another checker.

Checker: “Did you find your husband?”
Elderly Woman: “Yeah I found him.”

A moment later a little old man came up beside her.

Elderly Woman: “You said you’d be right back! I was about to ask them to call for you over the intercom. ‘Would little Davey please come to the front of the store?’”

Last year after I got the job at the hotel, I transferred to the grocery store's bakery to fit into my new overnight schedule a bit better. There are a lot fewer conversations to overhear back in the bakery, especially early in the morning, but I did get one. A small child was looking through a bakery display, in the middle of the summer.

“Mom! Look! They have Thanksgiving stuff already! See? It says pumpkin!”

At the hotel where I work now, we have a small, approximately foot-tall, bronze statue of the Iowa State University mascot, Cy, who is a buff cardinal, sitting on the desk/counter, by my computer, where we check in the guests. I just took a picture of it so you can see what I'm talking about.

One middle-aged guy seemed to like it a lot, and was commenting to his wife how they should get one. A minute later he called his teenage son over to show him the statue.

Dad: "William, look!"
Mom (To the son): "He's been rubbing it..."
Son (looking strangely at the dad): "That's weird, dad."

And that's all I have! I have no idea if I'll do another one of these posts, I haven't collected many of these since I started working at the hotel, I work overnights, so I don't see all that many people from which I can overhear hilarious conversations, but if I hear any, I'll keep collecting them just in case. If I get enough for another post in the future, I'll probably do another one, it is just unlikely to happen any time soon. :)

I FINALLY Have an Internship!

So, kind of big news, okay, who am I kidding, HUGE news! I finally have an internship! After almost two years of applications going nowhere, and (almost) never hearing back from anyone, I finally have an internship!

And now for the twist. This will not be a traditional internship. In fact, I am basically making it up as I go! I had to get special permission to do my internship this way, but it will count as the final credit I need to officially graduate and get my degree!

I've mentioned my YouTube channel here before, I don't talk about it a lot here, but if you follow me on my public social media pages, then you'll know I almost always make at least one video a week. Some of those videos I do with other people, and one of those people is Rachel Wagner.

I mentioned her in my last post, you may have seen the pictures from January when I made a scarf and hat for her for a late Christmas gift. Rachel lives in Utah, and she and I met through the Rotoscopers. We both write for the site, and she's the main reason I finally bit the bullet and started my own YouTube channel.

We've become pretty good friends over the past few years, and for the past few months I have been occasionally doing some freelance editing for her. Rachel has two blogs, two channels, and two podcasts, (In addition to a full time job, completely unrelated to YouTube) and sometimes, on weeks where she has too much to do, she'll have me edit an episode or two of her podcasts for her.

In mid-January I started thinking, I have been getting some decent experience with this, I wonder if there is a way I could expand on it and make it count as an internship. I didn't say anything right away, like I said, I have been applying for internships ever since I graduated, and I had just applied for some at the beginning of the year, so I was waiting to see if anything came from them. Shocker, nothing ever did. Story of my life for the last 22 months.

Finally in February, I proposed an idea to Rachel, if I came on as an unpaid intern, would she have enough work for me to do on a consistent basis? It was an immediate yes. Like I said, she's very busy.

So, as for the unpaid part, I know I've said since I graduated that I was not going to do an unpaid internship, since it would almost certainly mean quitting my job while working on it, and I have bills to pay. I can't afford to be without income for 3 months, or however long a full-time internship would last. I had a plan for that, but since this internship is very unconventional, having it be unpaid would only work out if everything came together perfectly.

So, Rachel has actually been paying me since I started working for her, but knowing that she requests my services only when she's really needing some extra help, I figured it would be best to propose it be unpaid. That, and at this point I really just want to get this thing over with. I figured this way it'd be a win-win for both of us, as long as everything worked out the way I wanted it to.

Since January I've actually been working full time at the hotel. At first it was because someone went on vacation, but then there have been, (and are still continuing to be) a bunch of schedule disruptions. People quitting, getting promoted, moving to a different parts of the hotel; it seems like every week a new person leaves or is hired. At the beginning of February, one of the night auditors was moved to days temporarily, so I've been working five nights a week until things can go back to normal. Even if I wasn't working full time at the hotel, I am still employed at Hy-Vee, so I have full time work either way.

With that in mind, I am definitely not interested in quitting for an unpaid internship, no matter how much I need to get this thing done. So my idea in proposing the unpaid internship to Rachel was to keep working at the hotel, but work on the internship on the side. Normally internships are ten, 40 hour weeks. Basically it becomes your full time job for around three months. The way I was planning this, it would take much longer to reach the required 400 hours, but at least I could still have a steady income, and do the internship at the same time. Any other internship, unpaid or not, would not have this kind of flexibility.

So obviously I had Rachel on board, now I just had to convince my faculty adviser and the school's internship adviser. My adviser was pretty easy. Once I told him what I wanted to do, he thought it sounded like a great idea, and a great opportunity. I couldn't believe it! I thought I was going to have to work so much harder to convince him! Rachel even wrote up a huge long list of her qualifications, education, and achievements, and he hadn't even seen that when he said he liked the idea!

But then I had to make another appointment with the internship adviser, and I was sent a whole long list of guidelines, and forms to fill out before our meeting. And one of those guidelines was that the internship had to take place at a physical location, and I could NOT work from home. There were no exceptions listed anywhere in these rules, just that students MUST go to an actual workplace environment.

Well, I figured that was the end of that. I still decided to keep the meeting with her, I figured I'd at least TRY to explain everything on the very off chance that she could bend the rules for me, but I was no longer hopeful at all. I wondered if maybe my adviser didn't understand that I had planned to work from home before he given me the green light to move forward. At that point I had basically accepted that this was not going to work out. So the rest of that week I was not in the best mood.

When we finally had the meeting she seemed very hesitant about the idea, but when she heard that I had already been freelancing for Rachel, and that we always keep in close contact when I'm working on something for her, she seemed a lot more open to the idea. Apparently the biggest reason for the no working from home rule is that the students typically have a hard time keeping in touch with the person who is supposed to be their supervisor. The fact that I am always in touch with Rachel, made it pretty clear that that wouldn't be an issue.

The other reason they don't allow students to work from home is that the school wants students to get the experience of working in a professional environment. However, when she realized that I already work full time for the Gateway, that pretty much sealed the deal. I may not be getting the "Professional Environment" from the internship, but the fact that I've already had an office job for almost a year now, is great experience in and of itself. So the fact that I'm getting that experience somewhere, paired with the fact that I already have a great working relationship with with the person who would be my internship supervisor, she thought that this could be one of the VERY rare instances where they actually approve a work from home internship.

Of course this wasn't the end of it though, I still had to write up a formal proposal, the school had to get in contact with Rachel, and I had to go through all the official steps to actually register for the internship as a class. And then I had to wait more than two weeks for my registration date to open up, so I could actually submit the paperwork and actually get officially registered. Which finally happened today! Or, yesterday. It happened on the 26th. I work overnights, I can't keep days straight.

Right now it still hardly feels real. Over two years of applying for internships and I finally have one! Not to mention, I'm practically creating it as I go! I'm still full time at the hotel with a very unpredictable schedule, so I haven't fully gotten into everything, but my internship adviser told me, back when she officially gave her approval, that I could go ahead and start counting hours. So I have been working on a few projects here and there since then, but hopefully work will get back to normal soon, so I can get into the internship work on a regular schedule.

So anyway, that's my news for now! I probably won't do too many updates here along the way unless something really interesting or exciting happens, but I'll definitely follow up when I finish. Right now that's looking to be around September, but like I said, since I'm already working full time, I'm just counting hours as I go, so I can't predict an exact timeline. Either way, things are finally moving forward, and I'm just excited that this is actually happening! Before the end of the year, I should finally have my Bachelor's Degree!

Random Picture Update!

So, I haven't posted any pictures on this blog in awhile. Like, real photos from my real life. In fact, let me check and see just exactly how long it's been!

~

Well, I guess it was like 6 months ago if you're counting funeral posts, but it's been almost 2 years since I posted pictures from my graduation! And as far as non funeral/wedding/massive life event pictures, from what I can tell, I haven't posted any pictures since March of 2016! Three years ago! And those pictures were from the trip I took with Shaina and Sasha to visit Uncle Nathan and Aunt Ruth in Colorado, in 2014!

Edit: (A few days later) I found a few other more recent picture posts, but the most recent one still seems to be from mid-2017, and they were all catch-up posts containing several-months-old pictures as well. So either way, it's still been awhile, and either way, I'm still bad about posting pictures. I mean, I got right on the "Big Event" pictures, but I knew there were a lot of people waiting for them. To this day looking at my analytics, they are among the most viewed posts I've written.

So, for the past 5 years, I haven't done too much with pictures. At one point it was the main thing I posted. I even had, have, a photography blog, but I just checked there as well, and the last post was from the end of 2016. And that was also some pictures from the Colorado trip.

I took a LOT of pictures in 2017, but I still have yet to post them. The summer after I graduated I lived at home, worked part time at Hy-Vee (Like I have for 10 years now! Good grief I feel old...) and I spent my free time doing things with Sarah. That was the summer I started my YouTube channel, so we recorded a lot of videos, but every couple of weeks we would make it a point to go somewhere, and do something, (usually free) and I took a lot of pictures on those mini trips.

And then I never posted any of them. Not even our longest trip where we hit three states in one day on our way to watch the eclipse. YouTube just kind of became the main focus of all my free time. I mean, I edited and shared a vlog from the eclipse trip, but still not pictures. And then when I got the job at the hotel, between that and Hy-Vee, I barely had time for YouTube either. Someday, I swear, I will get those pictures up. But today is not that day.

Today I just wanted to share some random pictures I've taken recently. I don't take that many pictures these days, but if something interesting is happening, I have my phone, so I take some pictures.

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The biggest thing that's happened around here recently is the snow. At the moment it has almost melted, but at one point there was a LOT.

Before I get to the good pictures, I had to share this one that I took one morning after work, when I went shopping. I didn't know it at the time, but there was a huge snowstorm in the forecast. This is the bread isle at Aldi. I just started laughing. The stereotypes are true! Apparently people panicked, and wiped out the bread! Good thing I didn't need any! 😂

 

This was really one of the worst winters we've had in awhile. Grandma even got a snowblower for me to use, which was a lifesaver. Until it broke right before the winter just went completely downhill. Technically I've seen worse than this winter in the past, but this was the worst I've seen in Ames, and the worst I've seen during a time when snow removal was up to me. So for most of February, I only had the shovel to rely on.

At its worst, the depth of the snow reached well over a foot in some places, and probably close to two feet at the end of the driveway, after the snowplow had passed. I took some pictures on the day the snow was at its highest. This one is the end of the driveway, the morning after the biggest snow. I work overnights, so I came home to a mountain in the driveway. I could not pull in to the driveway. And this snow was dense. This mess held my weight, I didn't even sink in an inch, when I climbed over to walk up the driveway.

 

And when I say two feet, that's probably how deep it was in the shallowest part. We had gotten so much snow in the days before this that the "Mountains" on either side of the driveway were over three feet high, and I couldn't keep the snow I was scooping from flowing back down at least somewhat, and I could just barely keep them apart enough to pull one car through. I'd taken to parking in the street on days I knew grandma would need to get out. Working overnights I sleep during the day, so it was just easier to park in the street than have to wake up to move my car for her.

This is the driveway the morning after the foot of snow fell. You can see where the newspaper people had walked up before I got home. They couldn't pull in either.

 

And now that I think of it, I think the snow had been falling for two days. It was snowing when I got home the day before, so I waited to scoop when I got up, but by that point it had grown to near blizzard conditions and I decided to wait until I got off work instead. Either way, the amount that fell all at once, was huge, and by the time I came home from work the next morning, this was the result.

At this point I didn't want to even be bothered with the snow. I just wanted to go to bed. I figured I'd scoop when I got up, but I wasn't expecting to even get close to finishing. There was no snow in the forecast for a few days, so I figured I could take my time and not kill myself on the two feet of snow-cement at the end of the driveway.

 

That afternoon I got up, got all my snow gear on and went upstairs to get the shovel, and found this!

I had told grandma how solid the snow at the end of the driveway was, and as soon as I went to bed, she went to the phone book, and found someone who was apparently right up the road who had some kind of industrial snow-blower, he came over with his son, and apparently their machine chewed right through the ice in the driveway! She said they had it clear in less than a half hour! I couldn't believe it!

Thankfully that one awful storm was really the worst of it, and the few times it has snowed since hasn't amounted to much at all.

My other thing this winter has been getting back into knitting. Apparently it's been two years since I started learning according to Facebook's memories feature.

I seem to do a little knitting around Christmas every year, but not much past that. This year I've actually made quite a few projects past the official holiday season. One of those projects was a late Christmas gift for my friend Rachel in Utah. I actually brought it to work one night after we lost internet access. 😂

 

I had my coworker Dominic take a picture of me to share with the knitting/crochet group that my sister-in-law Alex made on Facebook, but I thought it would be good for my blog too. :) And then Rachel sent me an Instagram Story after she got the package, so I asked if I could share that here as well. :)

Speaking of work, here's a random picture. Apparently a Red Bull representative left a case at our hotel for the employees to drink. It was a long night, so I decided to try my very first real energy drink.

It wasn't that great. I mean, It wasn't as horrible as I'd been led to believe, but it definitely wasn't good enough that I'd ever actually purchase one.

Oh, and here's another random picture I took recently. Not sure how I managed this.

I didn't take many pictures this Christmas but I did take a few cute ones of Jackson and Kadin.

I have a LOT of old pictures of my nephews from random events all last year. I'll probably eventually do a catch up post for those.

These kids are too cute. The paparazzi is always following them around. :p

Last year my cousins lost almost all their pets within just a few months. I took a few pictures right after they started getting some new kittens. I could have sworn I got some of all three, but for now, here's Sarah with Tadashi.

     

Tadashi loves my sandals. Also you can tell how long ago I took these, because I wore my sandals that night...

Anyway, that's all for now. Like I said I have a LOT more pictures. I just need to find time to actually do something with them. I think my next photo post will probably be more catch-up on family pictures, the majority of which will likely be nephews, but I do have other stuff coming. I may even try to do a photo-blog post one of these days. We'll see. I make no concrete promises, aside from that it'll happen. Some day. 😂

My First Night at the Hotel

As I mentioned in my previous work update post, I had something very weird happen on the very first night of work at my new job at the hotel. It was weird enough that I had to write about it, but I thought it was long enough that it deserved it's own separate post.

During the first two weeks I was working at the hotel, I and another guy were being trained by an older lady who had been there for years. She was moving out of state, and her leaving was the reason I was hired. The other guy had been working at the hotel for awhile, but he had just moved into the night auditor position the week before, so he was also pretty new to everything we had to do as well.

At around 3:30 in the morning an elderly woman clutching a baby doll slowly rounded the corner into the lobby. We have a front door across from the desk in the lobby that we can see, and a back door that enters into the hotel, directly behind the offices, far enough back in the building that we can't even hear it from the front desk.

So this elderly woman comes into the lobby, and all she can do is whisper, "hi. hi. hi. hi. hi. hi. hi." She's probably at least in her 80's if not 90's, and she can't even tell us her name, or where she came from. Because of the placement of the back doors, we can't tell if she's come in from outside, or if maybe she wandered out of a hotel room.

The woman training us went out to try to help her, but without a name, or knowing where she came from, there wasn't much she could do, but she did notice that the woman felt like she was freezing cold, which meant that more than likely she had come in from outside. This was the middle of April, but we had an unusually cold spring, and that particular week we'd had a cold snap. I was coming to work in my winter coat every night, and one morning I left work and there was a thick layer of ice I had to scrape off my car. So yeah, it was cold. Not knowing what else to do, the woman training us had the other guy go get her a blanket, which she wrapped around her, and then got her to sit down in the lobby, and sat with her.

I wondered if she had wandered away from a nursing home, since it was obvious that she had dementia. The fact that she could only repeat one word, as well as the fact that she was carrying a baby doll, which she was treating like a real baby, were all things I had seen a lot when we went to visit my grandpa before he died. He wasn't nearly this bad, but he lived in a dementia ward, and there were a lot of people there who would fit the same description of this woman.

The guy who was training with me decided to try to call the nearest nursing home, so I did a search on google maps. The nearest one was only 0.2 miles away, practically next door. It's so close that it had to be where she came from. It seemed obvious that she had escaped, except, having worked in a nursing home, and having spent so much time visiting my grandpa in another one, I kind of knew that there was no way that could have happened. The amount of security they have to prevent the residents from escaping, from locked doors to security alarms, means that there should be no way for someone to escape, and if they somehow managed it, someone would have been alerted before she got very far. She'd have to have been a complete genius to make it past everything, unless someone there was just completely incompetent.

So he called the nursing home, and the person who answered told him she didn't think they were missing anyone, but they'd do a head count and get back to us. And sure enough, they weren't missing anyone, all their residents were accounted for. They did send over a nurse though, to try to help communicate with the woman, but she was no more successful that we'd been. She couldn't get her to tell her anything, and she was still whispering, "hi. hi. hi. hi. hi. hi." over a half an hour later. The nurse asked if she could check her pockets, but she had no form of identification, she had no life alert or other medical emergency tags or jewelry, and her name was not written in any of her clothes like it would have been had she been in a nursing home or dementia ward.

Finally it's nearing 4:30, an hour later, and I suggested calling the police. I didn't know the number, or how to use our phone system yet, so the nurse gave me her cell phone, where she already has the non-emergency police number ready. So I called the police, but when they showed up, they're no more successful that any of us. The nurse finally did get her to answer yes or no questions by shaking or nodding her head, but even that didn't really help, because she did indicate that she had a husband, but in her condition, you never know if that's currently true, or if she's remembering something from a time long ago.

Finally around five or so, the nurse convinced the woman to get up and come with her, back to the nursing home. She said she'd find a room for her and try to get her warmed up, because it's at least an hour and a half later and she's still cold. The police helped get her out to the nurse's car, and I figured that would be the last we heard about her. We all got back to work to try and catch up on everything we hadn't been doing for the last hour and a half.

Another hour and a half go by, we've sort of caught up, not quite, but we made pretty good progress considering that two of us didn't really know what we were doing yet. About a half an hour before we left, around 6:30, someone, I'm assuming the nurse who came to the hotel, called us to let us know that they found out where the woman had came from.

The area surrounding the hotel and nursing home is full of apartments and townhouses where elderly people can live, without actually having to physically move into the nursing home. I'm assuming sort of like the independent living apartments at the nursing home I used to work in, except a lot more spread out, like a small neighborhood. This woman had been living with her husband, who does not have dementia, and he had basically been her caretaker. I don't know this, but I am going to assume he was around the same age. Evidently he'd left the door unlocked, or she knew how to unlock it, and she just got up and left in the middle of the night.

The people at the nursing home said they were going to try to convince the husband to let them take her, because it was pretty obvious that he can't care for her on his own. It was very cold that night, like, maybe 30 at the highest, definitely below freezing. It was a good thing that she just happened to wander into the hotel, or she could have frozen to death! Obviously I can't really go and find out, but I hope her husband did agree to let the nursing home take care of her, because she really needs to be somewhere where she can be supervised.

So anyway, that was my very first night at the hotel. The woman training us told us after everyone had left, "It's not always like this, I swear!" And so far it hasn't been. I've been here almost three months now, and so far that was by far the strangest thing that has happened. Nothing else really even comes close. However, if anything else weird does happen, you can be sure that I'll let you know about it. :p

I Have a New Job!

So, for the few of you left that don't know, I have a new job! No this isn't in advertising, as nice as that would be, I'm actually working for a hotel, which, weirdly enough is actually something I've kind of wanted to do since I was a kid. I blame movies like Dunston Checks in and TV shows like The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. :p

I am now working as a night auditor for the Gateway Hotel and Conference center in Ames, Iowa, and I have to say, I kind of love it! Don't get me wrong, this job, like most jobs, is not perfect, but even with the small issues here and there, I am still really enjoying it so far! As a night auditor, I am working overnights, but I actually adjusted to my new schedule pretty easily. I'm already a night owl, so all I had to do was stay up a few extra hours!

Now, I will say, that this job is not at all what I was expecting it to be. I originally applied for just a regular front desk position, day shift of course, and I never heard back from them. I believe that was at the end of last year, so I just assumed I never got it and moved on. I've been job/internship hunting for over a year now, so I'm used to never hearing back from people.

Then at the beginning of March, I got a call! Apparently I'd given up on them too soon, because they wanted to set up an interview! I went in the next week, and somewhere during the interview he brought up the subject of a night position. I had never even considered that as an option. We have a night crew at Hy-Vee, but I would not want their job. Far more manual labor, and zero customer interaction. (Though I suppose in some ways, that could be a positive... :p) But I actually like working registers at the store, most days we have great customers in Ames, and it's the closet thing to 'fun' you can do there. (For me anyway.)

Anyway, the more he talked about the night position, the better the job sounded. Better pay with full-time hours, and it's usually pretty quiet, and you almost never get overrun with customers. All in all, it just seemed like a quiet, low-stress job. After the interview was finished, he told me I definitely passed the first round, and they'd call me once they'd finished all the interviews. A week or two later I had a second interview with HR, which I thought went great as well, but then I didn't hear anything for well over week. They'd told me I'd hear back from them in just a few days, so when I didn't hear back from them by the end of March, I was pretty sure I hadn't gotten it.

I was back at home by then, I had gone on a quick weekend trip with my cousin to see a crane migration in Nebraska, (I'll blog about that eventually!) and I started making tentative plans to move back to Harlan for the summer. Hy-Vee wasn't giving me many hours at all, and I figured I'd have a better shot at hours at the store in Harlan. On my last day home on that trip, I decided I'd call the hotel and get a definitive yes or no. If no, I was going to make plans to come home for the summer, because I have bills to pay! However, when I called, it turned out, the manager had been planning to call me that day! Actually, he had scheduled the call for not even an hour after I'd called him! I got the job!

I've now been working here over a month, and it is very different than anything I expected, and very different than anything I've ever done before. For starters, I kind of expected I'd just be sitting at the desk all night, maybe checking people in for a couple hours, and then out in the morning, and then nothing in between. That's not how it is at all. There is a ton of paperwork, computer work, and audit work, which you may have guessed earlier by the job title.

We have a restaurant in the hotel, and if guests charge things to their room, we get those receipts, and have to enter them into our system, to make sure they are charged. We make sure that direct bill charges line up with the records, and we sort all that paperwork for the "real" auditor who works during the day. We have cash registers around the hotel which we have to count as their respective areas close, as well as a safe which we also have to count, once we've refilled the cash registers (if need be) and all the money around the hotel is accounted for.

After the last guests check in, or 3:00 am, which ever comes first, we "run audit," which is essentially resetting the entire system, causing a ton of paperwork to print, which we have to sort, scan, email and file to all the respective locations and managers.

A bunch of that paperwork is also check-out sheets for guests leaving in the morning. Those all get sorted, and then we have to deliver them all over the hotel. We have 8 floors and almost 200 rooms, so between the walking and the the bending over to slide the papers under doors, that can end up being a decent workout if we have a full house.

Then we have to unlock the kitchen and make coffee for the lobby. That's not too strenuous, until it comes time to carry the coffee downstairs. That's a workout by itself if we have two full restaurant-sized pots. After that we wait for the guests to start getting up, because we usually have some who want to check out first thing.

And all of this doesn't take into account that we'll have guests calling or coming down to the lobby at all hours for lots of different things. More pillows, extra blankets, wake-up calls, toiletries, coffee packets, microwaves, fridges, you name it, if we have it, we'll get asked for it, and if we don't have it, someone will still want it. Thankfully this doesn't happen all the time, but some nights are worse than others.

Some nights, if we have a lot of guests, especially if we have large groups of people here for conferences we'll be busy all night. There's a lot more paperwork, more money, and more checkouts to do. However, on a good night, the bulk of the work will only take up about half the night. Not all at once of course, different things have to happen at different times, but in between jobs, we have downtime that lets us do, sort of whatever we want!

When I first got the job I was planning to bring my laptop and edit videos for my YouTube channel when it was quiet. But then I found out that we were only allowed to use the computers at the front desk, since we have to be up front and available in case anyone shows up or calls. So instead, I've taken to blogging and writing articles for the Rotoscopers, which kind of means, in a roundabout way, I'm actually getting paid to write!

Honestly, this is probably the best part of the job for me. I like most parts of the job, it's definitely a great change of pace from the grocery store, but the fact that I can write while I'm working, is kind of the highlight. I actually wrote this whole blog post and two full articles for the Rotoscopers over the course of two nights at work!

So anyway, those are the highlights for now. I do have one story to tell you about something really weird that happened on my very first night, but I think I'll save that for another post. This one ended up being really long as it is, plus, I need to save something to work on for future nights too. Stay tuned! :)