Flipping the Homeless Script: Too Fashionably Late for TV
I arrive home from work, and the lights are out. I hit the switch and immediately know it has been cut. Of course it has. I’m living with an 18-year-old who’s, uh, being evicted.
Really (would I lie to you?), and this is kind of funny: Without missing a beat, I start packing everything. Skipping over any pause for consideration, I grab all my belongings and throw them into bags. I am filling my car with my stuff yet again. I am booking a hotel room. Watch out for housing PTSD, y’all. It can make you skip over pauses. Pauses are underrated; as lip-synched Milli Vanilli said, “Girl, you know it’s true.”
At the hotel, I checked into the room and texted Zed that the power was off. He is less chill than when I told him about the eviction papers. This is a mistake by the power company, apparently. It will be live again tomorrow. There I sit in the hotel, though, feeling dumb.
Training Via Sanction
Waking up the first morning at the hotel, readying myself for work, I realize I don’t have my necktie. I don’t have time to get back to my place where it is. I decide it’s best to go get it. I text the scheduling manager and tell her I’m running maybe 30 minutes behind.
Soon after I arrive, my manager, Natalia, calls me in to talk about my lateness. Quickly, though, it becomes clear that she’s frustrated primarily because I didn’t contact her, the manager on duty. I explained I didn’t know she was the MOD. She says I should’ve known because I should’ve checked the payroll app. I didn’t know I could use the payroll app like that.
She explains that because I’m late again, I’ll need to go talk with Theresa, the HR director. I really am frustrated that the hotel can’t be relaxed about me being half an hour behind schedule. I had volunteered to come in an hour early. They changed the schedule on that basis. Then I’m being chastised.
Guys, look, I have an impulse-control disorder, m’kay? So I say to Natalia: “You are training via sanction. This is the same thing as the write-up.” She gets very flustered. “‘I’ve given you various options!” she says. This makes no sense. I leave her to herself. “Hang out with the computer, lady,” I think. “Say crazy things to it instead of me.”
An Odd Counseling Experience
Toward the end of my shift, a car arrives, and the customer wants a cart. Just before heading up, Natalia tells me to meet her when I get down. Something is afoot!
I walk the customer up to his room. The customer says he is “friends with Billy Wildwood, who is good friends with Martin,” the hotel’s GM. As we arrive at the room and I start unloading the cart, I say that I understood Martin has international expertise on wine. The customer says yes, Martin definitely does. He hands me $40 for a tip, one of the largest tips I have received my entire time at the hotel.
I walk downstairs into the manager’s office. I know right away that I am being fired. Here are Theresa, Trevor, Jeremy, and Natalia. It’s a firing squad, is what it is! You can’t disguise a firing squad from me! I catch it every time! (I have nine lives; sorry, I know that’s out of nowhere, but you deserve to know this is being written by a death-defying cat-man.)
They hand me a termination report. Their basis is my extreme fashionable lateness (three incidents, all different and nuanced). It says across the back in all-caps “COUNSELING FORM.” That’s really helpful to know this all falls under the auspices of guided therapy.
“We have some career counseling for you, Kent. It’s that you shouldn’t work here,” it says, perhaps. “We’d like to advise you to please leave.”
I decide not to read the counseling form. I’m suspicious they’re actually not trying to counsel me at all, but convert me to their religion on my way out the door.
Canned Man Walking
Speaking of “please leave,” it’s actually not that kind of an exit but an escort. Theresa walks me through the basement. As we walk past the elevators, we run into Jason. I have not seen him lately. I don’t even know how to tell him I’m being fired (present tense!).
I knew Jason from the shelter. It was clear he had more immediate potential – focused, poised, and maybe brilliant – than the vast majority of the shelter population. He was gay, but this was largely irrelevant (as it often is, other than for, if I may, adding absolutely fabulous color to a story).
Jason had introduced me to the hotel. He’s how I knew to go there with my resume. And he’s the person who advised me to conceal my current situation, since hiring managers are not typically looking for community service projects in the form of employees.
I walk out the door. I feel unmoored. It is a time for gratitude, though, in part that I had the wherewithal to save most of my paychecks.
I speak awkwardly with Jason before Theresa ushers me cordially the rest of my way out.
Conclusion: An Unexpected Pet
I enter the kitchen at the new place. The full-grown cat is in the corner (yes, I’ve been living with two cats for nearly a month and don’t know either of their names). At the cat food dishes is an unexpected pet, a mouse (don’t know her name either). The way she’s moving seems almost like a mole; it’s cartoonish.
The cat does not seem to have strong feelings about whether the food is her private stash. It’s as if she thinks I also invited the mouse to dinner and doesn’t want to offend a guest.
I show the mouse a bag containing a little cat food. She waddles in. Moments later, we’re in a small woods. These woods will hopefully meet her needs, which seem pretty modest.