Splitting the Rock

I slept very badly the last night. Not really sure why, and I guess it doesn’t really matter. I got up and stumbled downstairs for some coffee. Then it was time to start waking kids. The hotel is funny about cleaning up. Most places that have kitchens and dishwashers tell you to load it and leave it running and that’s it. Here, you were supposed to do a whole load, run and unload. How’s that supposed to work if you want to have breakfast the day you leave? OK honey, we’re ready to leave, but we need to wait for another 47 minutes for the dishwasher to finish. And in my suite at least, they didn’t have a sponge or dishtowels or anything for hand washing.

So what did I do with my breakfast dishes? I rinsed them in hot water and dried them with a washcloth and put them away. Then it occurred to me, what if the person before me did that too? Were the dishes I used not really clean? Oh well, nothing to do about it now.

After packing up, I realized by backpack was missing. There really wasn’t anything urgent in the backpack, but there was some semi-important stuff and it’s my backpack. So I went to the front desk to ask about it and a young woman with red hair and two very prominent upper incisors told me I’d have to check the lost and found. Where is it, I said. You can’t go there, she said, you need to call. And there’s nobody there so you’ll need to leave a message. Which I did, noting to the young woman that we were leaving shortly.

About half an hour later, I hadn’t heard back so I went back to the front desk and spoke with the manager, telling her that I’d called. She replied, oh, she won’t be in until around 3:30. Well, that was helpful information I hadn’t received before. I noted once more that we would be leaving within the hour, so she helpfully offered to go and check herself and came back 5 minutes later with the bag. This was all fine except for the original clerk not mentioning to me that it was going to be hours before I heard back from lost and found. I’m presuming they give these people some kind of training, but you shouldn’t need any training to know that if someone has come to the front desk about a lost item, that they probably want the item back and would appreciate their help in the matter. I could have called the lost and found without any help.

We dragged all the bags down to the parking lot to await the bus, which came rolling in a few minutes later. Everyone put their bags on the bus and then went to get a packed lunch. There were tuna, turkey and veggie sandwiches. Unfortunately, about 75% of them were tuna, which was not pleasing to the students.

I guess I need to stop for a moment and discuss the food, which I’ve mentioned only in that I’d been smelling it in my room this whole time. The kids referred to the food as mediocre. That is a very kind assessment. The food was bad- poorly prepared and incomplete in part because the guy doing it was not competent. I know that kosher food is expensive and requires special handling, but I could have done a far better job on the reheating and serving (which was the entirety of what this guy did) in half the time, and not forgotten, for example, to put the rice, crispy noodles, and fortune cookies out with the Chinese entrée. I heard less than complimentary descriptions of the guy’s cleanliness too, but I didn’t observe any of that.

So once the lunch grumbling was complete, everyone got on the bus and we were off to Dorney Park. Final episode to follow.