Receptionist @ MindSay 
A bittersweet Monday holiday
I was getting excited about the Labor Day holiday until I realized, I have every Monday off. Rats! I feel like I’ve been robbed of that excited holiday spirit. Doesn’t matter which Monday holiday it is, having it off is special. For me it’s just business as usual, well… almost. Lite1x’s day off is also Monday except on this Monday he has to work. At least Matt’s off from school, and what does he want to do? Run an early morning cross country race, of course. Hmmmm. Sounds like my non-holiday day off is going to get complicated.
I was quite old before I found out what Labor Day was really about. At my house labor meant work, and work we did. That was the day my dad mowed the lawn and did various home improvement projects. I think Home Depot and Lowes must have known my dad because I noticed both had large advertising circulars stuffed in the morning newspaper this week.
But Labor Day is to celebrate the workers of America. I never could figure out why my dad didn’t consider himself a worker. Because of his job status as an engineer, he was salaried and therefore considered part of management. Now how picky is that! Anyone who holds down a job is a worker as far as I’m concerned. From the highest paid CEO to the lowly minimum wage employee, all work. All who work for the same company should think of themselves as on the same team. But these days, as it also was over 100 years ago when Labor Day first began, those in the top positions seem to think they can screw over those on the bottom. But they forget, those on the bottom are the ones who actually do the work of the company. In other words, they are the ones who produce the goods or services.
I’ve been an office worker most of my working life. In observing people in different jobs in different kinds of companies, I’ve come to a few conclusions:
1. The company receptionist should be one of the best trained people in any company. The phone receptionist should know proper telephone manners and know all about the company. This person should be well paid and treated as a vital part of the team. A receptionist who meets the public should also be trained in both manners and attire. First impressions can never be made a second time. An office temporary should never be hired as a receptionist.
2. The office staff, whose function is to make the bosses look good to the clients should also be considered part of the team and be well compensated. Since these people know a lot about the companies they work for and their clients it seems to me there would be less turn over if they were given the respect, and pay, they deserve.
3. Bosses should never breathe over any “secretary’s” neck while he/she is trying to type something for the boss. No matter how impatient the boss feels, this technique will only slow the typing process.
4. Chatty bosses also slow down an office worker’s productivity. If companies do not wish to pay overtime, they need to monitor their bosses’ behavior.
I think that will do for now. To all the workers of America, enjoy this Labor Day weekend. Stay safe. Rest. And be ready for work on Tuesday.
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If anyone is keeping up with my dental saga, I broke the temporary inlay this afternoon. Now I have to wait until Tuesday to get it fixed. Sometimes Monday holidays are obnoxious!
The woman in tourist information took one look at us and said "Cheap cheap cheap?" and we said yes, we needed a place to stay for two people, one night at the cheapest possible rate. She smiled and nodded and made a lot of phonecalls in rapid sucession, speaking in breathless Italian, and finally after several tries found us two hostel beds for the night. We thanked her, and received the map she gave us and made our way through some very unpleasant and unseasonable rain to our hotel room. With the room taken care of, we decided to brave the wet in order to do some sight seeing, and found ourselves outside Saint Croce Church, the church where the hero and heroine of A Room With A View have their first real conversation. We planned to duck our heads in and take a quick peak, but we soon found out that that was impossible.
The church turned out to be the burial sight of Galileo, Machiavelli, Micheangelo and others, though not, interestingly enough of Dante. Dante is buried in Ravenna, but that didn't stop Saint Croce from building a huge garrish monument in honor of the Florentine poet. I've never been a big Dante fan despite slogging my way through three different translations of the Inferno. When I saw his monument I think I understood why. He always looks incredibly dour, as if he was having bad indigestion; I think it comes out in his writing.
The next day we had to move to our hostel that Lindsay had also booked from Mali (the deal was that she would book Florence and Sienna, I would book Venice and Pisa). Rather than head straight to our Hostel, however, we decided to do some early sight seeing, and made it to the Duomo in time to be first in line when it opened. The guidebook was not too enthusiastic about the church, claiming it was "chilly and austere" on the inside, but I enjoyed it immensely. The inside doesn't feel cluttered the way some of these churches can be. After the Duomo we headed across the way to the Baptistry to gaze at Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise," which was obscured by a sea of tourists. I'm short enough, however, that I eventually wrangled my way to the front, and I'm glad I did, the doors are truly breathtaking.
The Piazza was beginning to get absolutely swamped with tour groups, so we headed back to our hostel to collect our bags and carried them through the wet and cold to the hostel we had booked for the next five nights.
The hostel looked amazing, it was up a steep flight of stairs, but had large windows and wooden floors as well as offering free internet. There were signs all over in broken English reminding guests that "The waisting of the energy was a crime against the enviroment" and other helpful hostel hints. When we got there, however, the woman couldn't find our booking. There was much sturm und drang, and the management was called, while we nervously looked over the reservation and tried to decipher the rapid Italian the receptionist was shouting into the phone. Eventually we realized that the reservation was for May, and we were here in June. The hostel was booked solid all five nights, and we had nowhere to stay. We asked the receptionist if she had any suggestions of places to stay, and she said that as far as she knew the entire city was booked solid. It turns out that the next day, the second of June, was a national holiday, and meaning it was a popular time to visit. She wouldn't let us use the phone, but she was nice enough to let us store our bags while we found a place to stay.
We returned to the street with absolutely no idea of what to do. We found a phone and began to call all of the hostels in the guidebook. All of them were booked solid for the next two nights, but we finally found a place that will take us for the last three nights of our stay. Lindsay went off to find an internet cafe where she could confirm the booking, and I headed in the other direction to find us a bed for the night. My plan was to head to the tourist office, but I realized that the streets on the way to the train station seemed to be lined with wall to wall hotels. I stopped into a few of the cheaper looking ones, all of which seemed to be booked solid for the next two nights (I even encountered a panicky couple whose reservations had also fallen through screaming at an unfortunate receptionist) Finally I found a one star hotel with a single room left. It was little more than a broom cubbard, but breakfast was included, and the room had a TV. Grateful to have a place to stay I headed back to collect both Lindsay and the luggage. I've learned two things from the whole experience--the first is never have anybody make a hotel booking from Mali, and the second is that commercials are more entertaining in Italian.