When I got married I was working as a third shift desk clerk at a Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge in Michigan while attending college. We were living close to the bone in those days and driving a 5 year old sedan that had seen better times. I had run over a set of rough railroad tracks that had broken the pins holding the right passenger door on and when you opened it, the door came right off of the car. We decided to just keep the door locked and always enter the car through the driver’s side.
One morning about 2 a.m. a taxi pulled up beside the Gate Lodge and a tired-looking business type from a large computer company paid the driver and brought two heavy suitcases in while he registered at the front desk. I told him that he was the last reservation in for the night and that it was good he had the reservation because Howard Johnson’s and the other decent places were all full due to a convention in the area. He said he had been on five separate planes in the last 24 hours and was so tired he could hardly move his hand to sign the registration card.
I assigned him his room and apologized for the room being in the building down the hill the furthest from the Gate Lodge and on the second floor to boot. There were no elevators so he would have to walk up a flight of stairs to his room. He didn’t look too happy but was polite and understanding. He left with his two heavy bags.
Five minutes later the light for the room I had assigned him lit up on the switchboard. It was a terrified woman yelling that someone was trying to get into her room. I told her it was OK, that I had mistakenly assigned someone else to that room and to tell the man outside to come back to the office.
I scrambled around trying to find out why the mistake had been made and found a registration next to the cash register indicating that the second shift clerk had switched the woman to that room from another room during his shift and forgotten to put the registration in the file. I was breathing a sigh of relief that I still had a vacant room when the businessman, lugging his two big suitcases, walked back into the Gate Lodge. Unbelievably, he was still polite when I explained what had happened. He looked twice as tired as when he arrived.
Apologizing profusely, I gave the businessman the key to his latest room and added that it was another second floor room for which I was genuinely sorry and offered to lock up the lodge and help him carry the suitcases to the other building. He declined, saying something like “You’ve already done quite enough.†I sensed that he was getting surly and was happy that things were straightened out. I held the door open for him.
As I began my nightly postings about 10 minutes later, the switchboard light for the man’s latest room lit up. He said, “You sold me another occupied room. I’m standing here with a guy in his pajamas that wanted to punch me until I showed him the key you gave me.†My mind raced, I asked him to give me a couple minutes and would call him back.
I began a frantic search for another room. As far as I knew, the place was filled but I had to look for something anyway. It must have been my lucky night, due to a vacant room that one of the day shift clerks had mistakenly marked “occupied.†It was a second floor room back in the first building I had sent the businessman to. I called him back and told him to stay right where he was, I would be right down the hill to get him. I grabbed the key to the latest room and decided that he, or we, wouldn’t have to lug the suitcases over to the next building and upstairs. We would drive over there instead.
It was a warm summer night and the windows were down in my car as I drove down the hill and parked outside the building. I took the stairs two at a time and found my guy and his two suitcases standing in the second floor hallway. I grabbed both suitcases, even after he offered to take one, and started down the stairs with him behind me. The suitcases were very heavy and I marveled silently about the great distances he had had to hustle the bags during the last half hour.
I was putting the suitcases in the trunk when I heard a familiar “click†that sent a shiver up my back. “Don’tâ€â€Ã¢â‚¬Å“ I said, but it was too late. He had reached into the open passenger side window and pulled up the door lock and was opening the door. The crash as the door hit the pavement and the look on his face as it happened are still burned within my brain after many years. His eyes and mouth were both gaping open and if he had been a cartoon character, there would have been a hat flying straight up in the air.
“I’m sorry, I forgot about that broken door,†I said, realizing that nothing I could say would change the bizarre experience the man had sustained at my hands. He said nothing, just walked over to the curb, sat down, put his face in his hands and began sobbing. I went over and sat down beside him, saying nothing else while the weight of the man’s day crashed the little energy he had left as surely as the crash of my door on the parking lot.
We sat there for about five minutes and suddenly the man began laughing, almost hysterically. “Do you realize,†he said, that what took place here is so absurd that nobody would believe it really happened? Someday I’m going to have grandchildren, and this will be a whopper of a story to tell if I can put it all together. I think it’s because I’m so tired, but right now, I think it’s outrageously funny. My God, it’s been like living in the middle of a comedy show. “
My shift ended at 8:00 that morning and the man hadn’t been up to the office to check out and I was somewhat concerned that he would make a complaint about his experience. It turned out to be quite the contrary. He was apparently already practicing his story for his grandchildren as he told the day clerk about the once in a lifetime comedy show he was in and that it was definitely the highlight of his long day. He even told the day clerk that he felt sorry for me because he thought I was embarrassed over the incident, which I was.
These days I have grandkids of my own but they’re not quite old enough to appreciate the story of that night. I’m looking forward to the day that they are.
