Hotel Courtesy

The latest amusing anecdote (which might need an antidote) with a hotel guest:

A guest who might be staying at the hotel (he did not come in for breakfast and I wasn't there last night to check him in but he did have a large cooler in the kitchen so who really knows if he stayed there last night or not) came in around noon to get said cooler. He was a really big man, maybe six and a half feet and maybe 300 pounds.  Really big body, little tiny head. He comes to the desk and wants to check on his cooler and the ice level.

We go to the cooler. The bags of ice have melted, of course.  (I guess the cooler has been there since mid-day yesterday and it was very hot.)  So he wants more ice.  But before that, he wants to empty out the melted ice, aka water. He assumes I will help him.  I am trapped into submission. We go outside.  He starts hauling plastic bags of somewhat cooked beef brisket out of the cooler and without asking, hands them to me.  One, two, three, four, five, six briskets, in wet plastic bags, not closed so the briskets are sticking out of the top.  I am so flummoxed by his automatic assumption that I will be Brisket Girl that I just keep taking the proffered briskets until I can hold no more.  When I say "Oh, I can't hold anymore" he says "Well, let's just set the rest of them on the ground."  I want to say "So then why am I holding what feels like 40 pounds of brisket?" But I don't. 

He dumps out the water. I am juggling briskets.  They are slippery in their wet bags.  They are perilously close to flopping out of the bags and directly onto the pathway on which we are standing. I am not caring about that, I just don't want to get beef schmutz on my clothes. He doesn't seem to notice any of this, he is simply intent on dumping out water.  He shakes the cooler.  My arms are shaking. 
I say "so, let's put these back into the cooler" and he says "oh, no, we need a layer of ice on the bottom. Can you fill up these bags with ice?" and I have no sarcastic retort, such as "oh sure, Mr. Tiny Head, here, you hold out your strong manly arms and you take these pounds of brisket while I fetch ice like a willing servant!"  

I do not say anything like that.  I just say "OK" and continue to hold the beef. Lots of beef.

(Let me say right now that I love BBQ brisket.  I wanted to take one of those puppies and hide it under my skirt but I wasn't wearing a skirt so that would not have worked.  But this is in no way a derisive comment about brisket.)

Finally, without saying a word, I convey to Mr. Tiny Head that I cannot get ice with 40 pounds of beef in my arms and I sort of suggest that he plop the bags of brisket into a strangely contrived storage container (tin foil) and then I can get him more ice. We successfully accomplish that task. The briskets were back in the cooler, the ice was refreshed, Mr. Tiny Head rolled his wheeled cooler away and I did  not have beef brisket schmutz on me.  All in all, a fulfilling exercise in weird hospitality. 

And the really happy thing is that I think Mr. Tiny Head will show up at breakfast tomorrow no doubt with Mr. Potato Head in tow and maybe even Gumby and Pokey.  I can hardly wait! I seriously hope he brings me leftover brisket but I am pretty sure that will not happen.  Oh well. 

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