Sign of the Times

It's 8:15 in the AM hours on a Saturday at the good ol' TL. I have been here since 6am. Thus I have been here for two hours and fifteen minutes (what a mathematician am I? lol).

The reason I am outlining how long I have been here today is because normally on a June 20th at this point I would have seen or talked to at least 5 people by now as they walk through our front lobby. At this point, I have not seen a single soul. It's like I'm working in a ghost town (One of the ex-employees used to swear this building was haunted... I think not).

Ever since the economy started to go downhill earlier this year, I have been saying that the tourism industry would get hit hard. So far I have not been wrong, but even this is worse than I expected. Take last night as an example: Last night we had a total of 8 rooms occupied. 8 ROOMS... 8 ROOMS occupied out of 56 ROOMS. Again I am not a mathematical genius but that's 48 rooms that were completely empty on the night of JUNE 19, 2009.
I am absolutely flabbergasted! Normally I enjoy it when it's nice and slow because that means I rarely have to do much (and let's face it, I'm notoriously lazy), but having only 8 rooms occupied on the eve of the eve of the first official day of summer is quite ridiculous!
Last year on June 19, 2008 we had a total of 25 rooms occupied. I'm not saying that we were completely booked or that we were so busy we had to turn people away, but that is 17 more rooms than we had last night.

This brings me to my current dilemma...
For those of you who actually know me personally, will know how much of a people person I am. For those of you who actually know me personally, will know how much I like to talk.
Those of you who actually know me personally, will know what it's like to talk to me when I haven't had personal contact with another human being for a couple of hours.
Those of you who actually know me personally, can imagine what the first poor shmuck who dares to tip toe into the front lobby, will be faced with.

For those of you who don't know me personally, trust me... it's bad when I finally have contact with another human being after having hours of alone time!

So what is a self proclaimed "people-person" front desk supervisor to do when faced with such a horrible dilemma and feeling of seclusion?
Write in her blog for one, which I have noticed that because of the low occupancy we are currently dealing with, has very little stories to tell. I was thinking about that the other day actually... I thought to myself "How the heck am I supposed to continually update a blog about the goings on of a small local hotel, let alone write a book eventually, if nobody is traveling?" While this Student turned Front Desk Supervisor turned Blog Writer is not too concerned about her current position or employment vanishing anytime soon, I can't help but wonder, what if something happens and all of a sudden there is no longer a TL to tell stories about?
This is a very frightening prospect!

For now though, there is still a TL. With a TL there is still a Front Desk Supervisor. Within this Front Desk Supervisor there are still stories to tell. While the stories may not be as plentiful as they would be with higher occupancy rates, there will still be stories, and as a result there will always be a Tales from the TL.

Thump, Thump.... Thump thump thump thump thump thump... I can hear the footsteps now, coming down the stairs.

I have to go!

Human Contact!

Yeay!