Right around the turn of the millennium, I found myself working for a local Best Western establishment.  It was a desk job, and primarily one that involved a ridiculously busy cache of check-ins and telephone reservations.

Even though it fell under the corporate moniker, the Motel was privately owned–and THAT–my fiends is what made that year and a half a golden one:  there was room for individuality without some hardscrabble, suffocating Gladys Kravitz waiting to snuff out my procedural DNA.

Most notably for me, was the way I was allowed to approach internal memoranda, correspondence and incident reports.  Since we were not a law enforcement organ, our incident reports were primarily for narrative illumination–and not meant for public consumption.  That’s not to say it was chock full of salacious material; it just means we were able to put our own flavor to the narrative.

Which of course meant, atrocious and flabbergasting embellishments, over-the-top anthropomorphisms, and a reductionist approach to humanity’s also-rans for the sake of having an opportunistic straw man to roundhouse in the pie-hole.

For me, the temptations to start flailing away with appalling narratives and hyperbolic, anecdotal recaps was almost too much to bear.  I would sit around, literally hoping to be hectored by some quixotic transient JUST–to be able to write it up as if the guy had just broken his fetters and wandered out of the Gadarene tombs.

Data in: I’m Dennis, and I fought in World War I.

Data out: My name is Legion.

One day, it was drawn to my attention that the night auditor–named Art–was gaffing the oatmeal for the complimentary breakfast.  It was put to me to make sure the proper–and simple–clarifications were made.  All I was supposed to do was re-type the instructions that Byron, the boss–had written down for me earlier.

As they say. You had ONE JOB. I’m not sure Art appreciated the fear and trembling by which the following flowed out of this culinary seer:

Click to enlarge

Actually.  He failed to see the humorous point-of-departure I did.

I wonder why.