Hope Lives at a Chain Hotel
I am in the lobby of a Metairie, La., hotel, reading while Lisa performs whatever sorcery and alchemy women do in powder rooms before getting together with other women at fancy places. I’m used to it by now, but I was still unsettled this morning by what sounded through the bathroom door like welding. Under the door, red and purple light glowed on the tile and I swear I heard multiple voices whispering about strategy and world domination.
This lobby might be empty except for me right now if today did not happen to be the first anniversary of the opening of this hotel. In celebration, the staff has gathered around a long bar in the center of the room. The party is loud. Lots of laughs. Lots of joking around. There is cake.
The employees, mostly female members of cleaning and maintenance crews, are dressed in black uniforms. They are Hispanic and African American except for one white woman who is younger, taller, thinner, more relaxed than the rest, and super cute in her little black dress; she is, of course, the manager. This post is not about the old paradigm of the white boss. I am somewhat confident we are making such progress on that issue that in another three or four hundred years it will be resolved to the satisfaction of everyone, maybe.
The gathering upon which I am evesdropping from a comfy, inconspicuous armchair, is a snapshot of modern America; a slice of cultural cake in celebration of mankind’s ability to take the good and bad of a situation and somehow carry on. Along the way, we take time to laugh at ourselves.
My view of this gathering is largely blocked by a TV and a fireplace. The acoustics of hard surfaces, however, make for easy listening when I can filter out the cries of “whoooo” and the Spanish I don’t understand and the local slang. A few good lines stay with me.
- “Ya’ll, I haven’t been working here long enough to eat this cake.” From a coworker: “Oh, yes you have.”
- “If I see one more pregnant woman around here …”
- Across the room, from a desk clerk about to walk out the front door, “Hey, I’m about to get pregnant.” From everyone: Loud glee.
- From a woman who might be a cleaning crew supervisor: “Let us pray. Lord, thank you for this opportunity to be together and please allow us to keep on doing what we do.” From many voices: “Amen.”
Guy D. Johnson is a writer and marketing communications professional. Previously an animation studio owner, daily newspaper editor, reporter and photographer, volunteer fireman, railroad bridge gang helper, FM radio station underling and cave guide. He has lived on farmland trusted to the sun and rain; atop a wooded hill; beside great rivers; upon an arid, high plateau; and at the subtropical coast of the Gulf of Mexico. For 20 years, he worked and wrote in New Orleans.