creepy guys and my oversensitivity

Okay, I know it's been a while since I posted, but life's been pretty hectic at the inn. Among the melange of things that happened, here's the stuff of note:

Creepy guys are out there girls, even in a so-called nice establishment. My first boyfriend always used to joke that my mother's place was a brothel. This pissed me off to no end because my mom's business partner at the time was totally an easy lady, but I don't think she ever slept with the customers. To this day I've only slept with one, and that turned into a 6 month relationship. The point is, this is never something I try to make happen, and it's never something that I advertise as an amenity we offer. Most of the people who show up here are usually with somebody anyway, whether that person is present or not doesn't really matter. Last week I had my first run-in with a creepy, sleazy guy. When he arrived I checked him in and everything went swimmingly. The dude turned out to be about 30 years my senior, and after checking in, he wanted to know about a nice bar where he could watch the game. I sent him to an out of the way place and then I went off duty. Now, I tell all the guests where to find my cell phone number, in case of emergency. Dude calls me on my cell phone that night to thank me for the bar recommendation. I say no problem, and I figure that's it. Then he proceeds to ask me if I want to go and get a drink with him. To this I politely say no that I don't fraternize with the guests. I don't think I've ever used that word in common speech before. This gets him off the phone and we hang up. In the morning he gets ready to take off for the golf tournament he's in town for and asks if we have a room open for that night. I want to sell rooms, so, overcoming my repulsion, I tell him of course, since we happen to have one left. I don't hear from him until 7.45 pm, at which time he shows up drunk and sunburned. I charge him, give him the last room, and while I'm showing it to him, he not only touches my back several times, but also asks me to go out and get a drink with him again! At that point I told him I had to get up early and I ran for the hills. There was no more trouble from him, and the next day he was perfectly nice, but what the fuck? Why do I have to put up with that kind of shit from people? Once is enough. And golf sucks.

That phrase, What the Fuck?, has been a common occurrence in my brain over the last couple of months. I don't know if I'm just jaded, but it seems like almost any time someone asks me for something, or tells me something's wrong, that phrase runs through my mind. I'm stuck here until April, at which point I will be heading for the West coast, but until then I realized I needed an attitude adjustment. Even though there are plenty of jobs in which I think many people have that phrase ring in their minds, I always wonder if it's as common as it is in my industry. Service is definitely one of those arenas in which customers will often ask for extra stuff, try to get it for free, and then get upset with it after you give it to them. I will never understand this. For instance, we did a wedding reception here for 50 people back in July. The whole thing cost about $3500, including food, and putting up about 20 of the guests for one night. The day after the wedding, the father of the bride asked for a refund of $50, and when we told him it wasn't going to happen, and the fact was that he was arguing over $50 out of the $3500, he told my mother she must have some jew in her! What the fuck?!!! The guy was from Louisiana, and I have never experienced anything like that down there. What made him bring it to that level I have no idea. Now, this is one of those bigger events that made me think this, but even something as little as needing skim milk can make me feel this way on the wrong day. This makes me wonder if maybe it's not the people I deal with every day, maybe it's just me. But come on, why the fuck would you ask for our phone number after you called us?

We held our first charity tea party in a very long time. We get asked for room night donations to local charities' silent auctions all the time. Of course, this takes way more out of our income than I think the charities realize, so we offer a tea party for 8 people instead. It's worth about $320, and it's a big tax write off too. We only hold them on Sunday afternoons, our least busy time, and we make everything from scratch. Let me rephrase that, I make almost everything from scratch. Moms makes a bit too. Now because we changed the schedule a couple months ago, she gets to do all the tea parties, since only she works on Sundays. This suits me just fine, as I am really starting to dislike the interaction with these people. The tea party guests are often people with lots of money to burn, and can tend to look down on those in the worker role. I'm not saying that all rich people do that, it's just the ones at our tea parties. This one was a ballet charity. I'm all for ballet, and these people turned out to be very cool despite their one special need. 4 out of 8 of them didn't eat gluten, so that meant no wheat whatsoever. Usually I make a scone course, with two kinds of scones, and tea sandwiches, a bunch of chocolate items and some pastries. Luckily these people brought over two loaves of millet based bread, on which I made their tea sandwiches (chicken with olive oil, chives & lemon and sweet & sour cuke/radish). Moms made some deviled eggs with smoked salmon inside. For the scones I completely cheated cause I didn't have enough time to fuck around and find a good scone recipe using rice flour and whatnot, so I bought gluten-free scone mix from a local health food store. I added apricots and it totally rocked. Served those with three kinds of jam, butter & sour cream (sorry, no clotted) and the guests were mighty impressed and getting towards full. I broke the bank when I rolled out the dessert cart with flourless chocolate cake (only three ingredients mind you), Mom's chocolate covered strawberries and Key Lime Custard Fool with Fresh Berries. The last dish was really my crowning achievement. I'm always the first to admit that I'm a recipe dependent person. Once in a while I break out and make something from nothing, but when it comes to serving people who pay, I try not to fuck around. I wanted to make a Key Lime Pie, since it's summer and all, but then I realized that graham flour probably wouldn't work for these folks. So I decided to make the custard filling from Joe's Stone Crab (the best key lime pie I've ever had and after tasting it a good friend told me it changed her life) and mix the custard with whipped cream and fresh berries to make what is called a fool. The Fool is apparently a derivative of the Syllabub, which if you've never heard of it, is kind of a precursor to ice cream in the UK. Elizabeth David writes about it somewhere. So, the wheat free fools loved the fool. I know, it's cheesy, but at least it wasn't wheaty. (My god, sometimes I just can't keep my father's sense of humor inside me.)

That's all for now, I'm tired.