God Bless... Blogger?

Let me preface this whole deal by giving you a little background. I work as an assistant innkeeper at an upscale New England bed and breakfast. I love my job - I have worked in a toy store, a well-known ice cream shop, and various other places where I had to bend to the customer's every whim. Not to say that I am not required to give excellent customer service here, but it's so much... easier. I work for terrific people. It's a gorgeous property. Relatively little is asked of me, beyond assorted concierge duties, general upkeep, and tending to the needs of the guests.

Ah, the guests. And that's where it begins.

For the record, I would estimate that 90% of the people who stay here are overall nice people. Almost every guest I deal with is polite, friendly, and generally happy - and why shouldn't they be? They're on vacation (occasionally on business) in a beautiful New England town, staying in one of the premier historic inns in the area. But from time to time, guests arrive who seem to be determined to dislike everything, and anyone, available. You know the type. They complain about how it's too hot in their room, but they don't want to turn on the air conditioning or the fan, or open the windows (this actually happened). These people seem to want to be let down.

Then there are the people who you suspect skipped their medications that morning. They're not as common, but when you encounter someone who is a complete loon but still somehow remains to be a functioning member of society... you don't forget it right away. Which leads me to my first story.

We had a walk-in a month or two ago at around 9:00 pm. The only reason there was a room available for this man was because someone had cancelled their reservation literally five minutes before he came in. This was lucky for him and helped us out of an awkward situation - we would have had to charge the other woman for the night even though she wasn't staying with us. Anyway, this guy comes in, and the first weird thing about him is how HAPPY he is. In hindsight, he was probably on something - possibly X. As I show him around downstairs, he's trailing behind me stroking the curtains and chairs and gleefully remarking on how beautiful everything is - I smile and agree for about the first two minutes and then realize that this man is not hearing a damn thing I am saying, so I point him in the direction of his room and go back to the desk.

Weird Guy drank about eight cups of coffee between the time he checked in and the time I left, about 10:15 (which, come to think of it, could explain why he was so hyped up - but not the weird stroking thing). He was still wandering around happily when I locked up, so I left him to the company of our innkeeper and went home.

I arrived for my shift the following afternoon and was informed by my manager that this morning she had removed several odd sheets of paper from in between the pages of one of the books in the living room. These papers definitely were not there when Ileft, so they must have been the work of either Weird Guy or the nice southern couple who were in the solarium. My money's on Weird Guy.

Let me tell you about these papers. They were standard 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheets, each with a headline at the top, underlined three times, and were blank below that (with one exception). Here is what those headlines said:

The Battle of Yorktown

God Bless His Excellency Laurence Rockefeller

God Bless His Excellency Ronald Reagan

God Bless His Excellency John Kerry

God Bless the Boston Red Sox

God Bless His Excellency Alexander the Great

God Bless Mel Gibson, The Patriot

and the final one (my personal favorite) said the following:

God Bless His Excellency George Patton

-->The Greatest American Military Leader of All Time.

May Field Marshall Montgomery’s Soul Rest in Hell for His Repeated Failures, His Arrogance, and his Disrespect for General George Patton.

His Excellency George Patton always Has Been and Always Will Be One of My Greatest Heroes.

I was, and still am, completely bewildered. A week or so later, our innkeeper informed me that not only was this guy weird, he was also a crook - he wrote us a bad check and stiffed us for his stay, AND all of the information he gave us at check-in was false. This is why we no longer accept personal checks.