(Revised and extended edition due to priceless feedback)
Mexico City, circa 1995
I can see the airport and most of the city from my office, I am the manager of a million dollar spa, located at the top floor of a major hotel across from the airport. I supervise customer service, a cleaning crew, a small group of massage therapists, the aerobic instructors and personal trainers as well as purchases and operations. I have unrestricted access to corian clad high pressure showers, Egyptian cotton towels and robes and I am the only employee with membership rights to the spa. The place is owned by an American consortium of slave masters that pay the employees almost nothing, I make just slightly more, which still is pretty much nothing. I have the power to hire, fire and the place is pretty much at my mercy, but my income is rubbish and my shift is 16 hours a day six days a week.
I'm working there while I find something else, and the "Manager" title will eventually add up. But in the meantime I'm wasting my life away.
Since I'm making very little money (I have never made so little) my residence is a small bedroom, roughly 10" x 10" in a very old mansion which has been converted into a "guest house". Rent is due weekly, there's no security deposit and the bathrooms are shared. In previous posts I've recalled living a homeless life at a bus station on which I describe their fetid restrooms in detail. Well, they have nothing on those of these guest house. They are like crapping barefoot in the middle of an 18Th Century Bulgarian morgue during summertime. Flies are just an indication that there's life, which on such conditions is a good thing.
Fortunately I seldom used them, since I had more than enough time at the spa to bathe, as for the rest, well, let's just say it was Dantesque.
The rest of the "guests" were mostly women, which all seemed to look like a high speed collision between an SUV packed with Female Lucha Libre Mexican Wrestlers, two sub compacts with the Mexican version of Jerry Springer and the Jenny Craig bus. Nasty Fat (no, not sexy buxom devils, ex-trophy wife plump milfs or cute and chubby angel face cherubs) I mean NASTY FAT Prostitutes that provided more layaway than the local Credit Union and were significantly overpaid (if they ever actually got paid).
But not everything was bad: on one occasion I was witness to a windstorm sweeping the airport, from a top the hotel. The wind gusts were so strong that the skylights over the pool began to peel out and fly, like 6 feet eggshells floating in the air and then falling 18 stories only to crumble on the street below. So now I had a crappy job, a shit hole for crib and the pool area (at work) completely fucked.
After the storm I began assessing the damages, fortunately nobody got hurt. Anyway, the position of the SPA (tenant) was that the Hotel (landlord) had to fix it, but the Hotel wanted the roofing company to fix the skylights, lawyers became involved and 2 weeks later we still didn't have a roof over the pool, and it rained.
Have you ever seen what happens to a pool and astro turf when exposed directly to Mexico City's polluted rain? the once Mediterranean and navy blue bottom and aura of the pool was fully covered by a green miasma that would sometimes bubble as strange insects raised to the surface, some could be seen crawling on the water tension of this Olympic cesspool. The AstroTurf became quicksand, it was one giant and unrolled seaweed sushi roll that would devour the shoes of anyone who dared walk to the cardio area. If you know me well then you can imagine how happy I was with the whole fuckedupness of this shit, add to it the constant negative feedback and crass complaints from the SPA members and the bureaucratic crap that stalled any effort to ameliorate the situation, and it sucked.
Those days I could usually be seen sporting an anger green expression before my first cup of coffee and having new skylights in place couldn't come soon enough, and after 2 weeks, it finally did.
Relief, now that we had a roof once more I could actually do something about things.
The maintenance dude, a fat and balding Mexican from the countryside in his early fifties who dressed like a Middle Eastern SQL Developer living in Crossroads (you know who you are, those shirts that have been through 5 discount markdowns at Nordstrom Rack really are a big no no) thought it would take three to four days to treat the green puddle we had for a pool with chemicals to balance it's pH. Gross, right? That's when I was enlightened by one of the best ideas I have ever had and also had someone to listen to it: empty the pool and replace it with fresh, clean water. Maintenance guy said it would take half a day to empty and one day to fill, Eureka! He was to open the OUT valves and leave it emptying when he left that night and I was supposed to fill it up when I arrived, next morning, which I did, ultimately.
I woke up early the next day, picked up an Atole and Torta de Tamal at the subway station (that's something like thin cream of wheat and a tamal inside of a bun, yeah baby I rock the carbs) and made my way to work.
The Hotel's general manager, a gentleman who always had something nice to say and a very positive and upbeat attitude all the time, was standing at the front door as if waiting for me (employees were supposed to use the back door, rule he knew I olympically ignored). He had an expression of worry and fear he couldn't hide.
"Buenos Dias Senor Gerber" - he said
"apparently somebody emptied your pool last night and... floors 14Th and 15Th (exactly below the SPA) on which we have our VIP and Presidential Suites are completely flooded, this had never happened before and we found the cause was that the pipes where overwhelmed by the amount of water..."
I had no choice other than put on my poker face, immediately
and had to retort "are you trying to tell me that my SPA members don't have a pool to swim? I will look into it right away, don't worry about it, EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL" tapped his shoulder and hurriedly made my way to the elevator before exploding in uncontrollable, torture-chamber-cat laughter.
By the end of the day the pool was filled, mission accomplished.
I eventually quit my job, packed my room in a box and moved back in with my Parents until the next itchy feet attack took me to the Caribbean.
This experience makes me thank God every single day for my job and my place. Far away from the whore house where I learned how to dance to Technotronic.
No comments:
Post a Comment