The Ballad of Phil, Harbroughter of Doom... | |
So last night, when I woke up, I was not happy to see that the hives were all over. The usual pattern so far has been, go to work, get stressed, have hives pop up, go home, take Elavil, have hives fade, go to sleep, wake up hive free. But it was a Monday night, and I didn't figure it was going to be very stressful, since the hotel was due to be pretty dead. I figured since I have Tuesday and Wednesday off, I'd just go to the doctor and see what she thought we might try.
Things did go pretty smoothly until about two o'clock. And then Phil showed up.
Now, Phil needs some explanation. He's a former employee. He worked somewhere in the kitchen for 25 years. He's also a completely subsumed alcoholic. Not to mention an odd duck. He lives close to the hotel, and has had for a long time a habit of showing up on third shift. Not entirely certain why, really, but then there's a lot of things I don't want to entirely understand about Phil. At one point in time, he showed up, went to the kitchen, and pulled out items to start baking a cake. At three o'clock. In the morning. I'm just grateful we caught him in time, I don't want to think about him getting near an open source of flame. He'd take out half the building.
Another great Phil tactic was the phone calls. For about a month he called me every night and asked me to give him a wake-up call at five in the morning. Because his alarm clock didn't have any batteries. For a month. And sometimes he gets lonely, and wants to chat with the people in the kitchen. Except sometimes he doesn't realize that nobody's in the kitchen at three in the morning. Or 3:05. Or 3:10. Or 3:15... And sometimes he called in sick. Again, at three in the morning. The longest recorded string that I know of was the time he called 17 times in a row. The security guard I was working with that night and I were halfway between impressed and flabbergasted. We eventually gave up on him and started answering the phone with other local business names.
But the thing about Phil that I find most amusing (the day AFTER dealing with him) is his sense of timing. Somehow he always picks the worst possible nights to show up. Four weddings and a fistfight? Phil was there. 150 people in the lobby after redirecting them from a party in their "hospitality suite" on one of the guest room floors? Phil was there. The Amway people show up and get snippy when I tell them they can't hold organized meetings in my hallways? Phil was there. Sixteen guests at the front desk whining to us that a contractor they had hired had accidentally taken a scarf, while a fire alarm that they caused by lighting and then blowing out 50 candles in a room with the window closed? Phil was there. But Phil never shows up *before* any of the nonsense begins, which would give him some value to me as an indicator that things are going to get bad. He always shows up *after* it's all over, as sort of an addendum to a bad night. The original Harbroughter of Doom, he truly is.
So, seeing him on a night when I had woken up looking like a Twister board wasn't terribly surprising. And, as I say, Phil is a *former* employee of the hotel. I believe he was... "released of service" about a year ago, but I'm not completely sure. I know he had stopped popping up a while back. He had resurfaced a couple of weeks ago, at one point showing up and looking almost sober just before I was to go home. He was even dressed rather nattily. Of course, he's still dressed the same way, two weeks later. Doesn't quite look so natty now. And then last week, he showed up with a buddy. A young white male of the scruffy and disreputable variety. Fortunately, the coworker spotted him coming in from the parking ramp. She radioed me, and I watched them pass the desk and head toward the front door. And the security guard working that night watched them exit the front door and leave the property. This changed things in my mind. Harmless old drunk shows up on third shift and acts weird, that's one thing. Harmless old drunk shows up with young punk wandering through a hotel filled with expensive equipment... that's another thing entirely.
Now, here's the frustrating thing. I know why Phil keeps showing up at the hotel, even now that he no longer works here. There are a great many people at the hotel who "feel bad for the poor man." I know for a fact that one of the chefs will "slip him some pocket money." And I do understand having sympathy for the man. I do feel bad about him. but I don't really think pity is doing him any good at all. So, he keeps showing up because nobody does anything about it. The morning after he showed up with his little friend, however, I had a talk with the chef he's pals with. Chef told me that Phil "knows" he's not supposed to be hanging around the hotel (I say "knows" because Phil habitually gets himself to the point where I'm not sure he knows what he knows, but I think I've already expounded on the effects of alcohol enough here.) But apparently the General Manager himself has had a talk with Phil, and has told Phil that Phil is not to loiter around the hotel. So, having learned this, I was prepared to kick up a fuss with the Phil the next time I saw him.
That next time being the aforementioned last night. No buddy in tow this time, he just strolled up to the desk and asked me for a pen and some paper. My desk-clerk instincts are disturbingly ingrained, I would like to point out... I was actually reaching for a pen and a pad of paper as I said to him, "Phil, you know you're not supposed to be here."
Now, Phil may be an alcoholic of the first order, but he does have a wonderful sense of internal dignity. He actually looked at me with shock when I said this, drew himself up and declared, "Says who?"
"The General Manager says so, Phil. I'm sorry, but you're not supposed to be here and you need to leave?" And with that, I picked up my radio and called security... who was standing right around the corner from us. He popped his head around the corner and asked if I needed help. I told him that Phil needed to leave the hotel.
The rest of the conversation was a bit of a muddle, with Phil retreating on his dignity and informing me that he was a great friend of the GM, and had worked at This Hotel for 25 years, and that I was a lowly peon, who had only worked there five years. Six years. Seven years. If the conversation had continued much further, I believe he might have vaulted me into out-senioritizing him in a few more go-arounds. But my security guard called the police, and at that point I simply walked away from the desk. My housekeeper had come up to the desk at that point, having heard me call security, and she asked me if I wanted to duck out front for a smoke. So I did. Phil had left at that point, but I saw two cop cars pull into the circle drive. My security guard boogied out the door to meet them.
We explained to the cops about the situation, and then the security guard spotted Phil crossing the street at the far end of the hotel. The cops PEALED out of the circle drive (squealing tires and all) and chased him down. University cops are at least good for a laugh on occasion. Like when they came back, to tell us that they couldn't kick Phil out of the hotel. Even though Phil had already left. But if he came back, they wouldn't be able to make him leave. They would be able to ask him to leave, but if he didn't want to go, they couldn't do anything about it. We needed to serve him with a letter of trespass if they were going to be able to actually make him be "not there."
Then we did the fun little song and dance I always do with the university cops about how they really were allowed to evict people from the hotel for being nuisances. Back to that "University" thing, really. Power in the university comes from people's perceptions of themselves more than from other's perceptions of them. So, if Phil thinks he's important, and acts the part, people shy from him, because someone who acts important must *be* important, because that's how important people act. It's a whole different world in here. Anyway, the upshot is that I was telling the cops that a) Phil no longer works here, and b) as a former employee, he was not allowed to be on grounds, especially after hours, and most especially after hours and after being told to leave. The cops told me that that's the hotel's policy, and that they're not there to enforce the hotel's policy. Which, again, I've heard from them before, but it's still such a new idea to me that I really can't quite understand it. In the private sector, if someone is there who shouldn't be there, we call the cops, the cops remove the perpetrator, end of story. All this was complicated, of course, by the fact that Phil was claiming to be still employed, but on leave. And so of course it's perfectly natural that he would show up soaked in grain alcohol and with snot dripping down his nose at two in the morning. Completely understandable.
I did attempt to call the Front Desk Manager at home, as per his standing orders regarding me calling the police on third shift. Sadly, the one time I actually did want to wake him up so that he could talk to the yahoos in uniform, he slept through the phone ringing. I left him a message, and told the cops that, since Phil was gone at this point, the issue was academic at best, and we'd continue it if we had to the next time he showed up. Oh, and there was that utterly, utterly strange moment when the cops realized that I was calling the FD manager at home, and one said that he thought the manager would be there. I blinked at him a couple of times and said, slowly, "You think the FD manager is here... at 2:30 am? No, I'm sorry, I'm the manager on duty right now. The FD manager is home sleeping right now." Even for a Uni cop, that was strange.
Then I tried to get back to work. But then the phone rang. Remember what I'd said before about Phil and telephones? That boy loves the phone. His first call, he asked to be put through to the GM's voice mail. I did so. The second call, he was upset that he'd gotten the GM's voice mail. He'd expected to the GM to answer his phone. I explained that the GM was home sleeping, and that I could transfer him to the voice mail again if he wished. He said that unacceptable, and that he wanted to talk to "someone a little higher up than you are, miss." I told him I was the highest that the food chain got at three am, but he was welcome to call back later. I terminated that call. The next two calls were even more confusing. At one point he said he wanted to lodge a complaint. I told him I was more than willing to record his complaint. He said he wanted to lodge a complaint against me because I'd had no right to treat him in the way that I did. I told him that I'd noted his complaint, thank him for his input, and terminated the call.
So I roped in housekeeping again to cover me while I took a break. I asked my security guard about whether it would be worth my time to call the police about the phone calls. He pointed out that the phone harassment was technically a federal offense, and that the cops would actually *have* to do something about it if I called them. When I got back from my break, my housekeeper told me that Phil had called twice more. She has also dutifully noted the complaint that he'd lodged against me. So, I called the police. I'm pretty sure the two phone calls I didn't answer while I was on the phone with the cops were from Phil. After two levels of flunkies, I got someone who told me that they would send out a car to us.
Fortunately, the second batch didn't contain Mr. Here's-the-reasons-I-can't-do-anything-to-help-you. I was able to convince this batch that yes, the phone calls were harassment, especially as they were coming at a rate of one per minute. I pointed out that I had a business to run, and that the phone lines needed to be clear so that if an actual call came through, I'd be able to handle it. Not to mention the work that I had to get to doing that I was able to get to doing while on the phone with Phil. So this time they took down our statements, and actually started a criminal case to prosecute him. It helped that he called back three times while they were there. I put him on speaker phone, and let them listen to the conversations, particularly the parts in which he identified himself. At one point one of the officers, Ms. Here's-what-I'm-going-to-do-to-help-you leaned in, identified herself as a police officer, and told Phil that she and her partner were going to stop by his house, and that he'd best behave himself and stop calling. He called twice after that call.
The calls stopped completely about 15 minutes after they left. But by this point, well remember the hives? By this point I looked like Quasimodo dressed up for a date. All over my face and everything. But I think the worst was my feet. I just wanted to scratching and scratching and scratching.... Bleagh. So, I finished up my work, actually made time to eat my lunch, and got everything tidy and neat so I could rocket out the door the second after I'd recapped the FD manager on the night. (He actually did call me back around five, apologising for not answering my call earlier.) I emailed the comptroller, not because Phil was actually an accounting issue, but because she gets cranky if I initiate dialogue with the GM without keeping her in the loop (wacky hotel, I'm part of the accounting department and the comptroller is my direct superior. Which actually puts me pretty high up the food chain if you think about it.) I included telling her that I wouldn't be available at home to contact because I was going directly to the hospital after work, because the hives were really getting horrible. I also let her know that I'd gotten my Employee Self Evaluation in my box last week, and that I'd meant to fill it out that night, but had gotten side tracked, and that I'd turn it in on Thursday night when I was due back at work.
So, went to the hospital, got shot up with Prednisone, went to the drug store, dropped off scripts, went to lunch at Clara's, went back to the drug store to pick up scripts, and I ran into the security guard who'd been working the night Phil had done his marathon phone-in. She hasn't worked at the hotel in a couple years, sadly. She had been managing a Rite-Aid a couple cities away, now she's managing the one near my house. We had some fun catching up. I told her about Phil, and how the idiot coworker had moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting, and how, no it hadn't been just her, Saturday nights were just bad all around, especially during wedding season.
After that, it was home again, home again. I called work, to let the FD manager and the comptroller know that a) I was out of the hospital and doing fine and b) I didn't care if the coworker got hit by a bus, I wasn't coming in tonight, and if anything happened to the coworker, the two of THEM could come in and puzzle out how to do the audit by using the manual. The FD manager updated me on Phil, too. Apparently, the reason he stopped calling the hotel after the cops went to his house had nothing to do with them telling him to stop calling. No, he had simply started calling the police department... to lodge complaints with them about how they had come to his house for no reason. After the tenth call or so, he was apparently told in no uncertain terms that if he picked up his phone again to call either the hotel or the police department again, they would come to his house and arrest him. God bless Phil, king of "Unclear on the Concept."
__________________ Axis of Evil (You know you want to join)
Emergency Backup Curmudgeon
"Wow, sometimes violence is the OPPOSITE of helpful" ~~ Pete Abrams |
Linear Mode
