Caption Sunday: Slacker Sarah.

Sometimes you never learn how weird your best friend really is...and how GOOD a friend she can be...

I learned six months ago she’d won the lottery—a BIG win—but the way I learned was not happy for her at all! Nosy, domineering relatives of hers blabbed about her win—on FACEBOOK for Christ’s sake! A week later at 11pm(!) I heard a knock on my door and my friend Sarah came in. She apologized for being so late, and then spent ten minutes sobbing on my shoulder.

When she could talk, but still crying her eyes out, she said she didn’t really need all that money, but that her life was now HELL! All the people she knows—who she has issues with—were camping out, in her face, demanding a piece of her! She OWED this to them, they said; and it took two straight days for her to get to my place without being followed or tracked! She asked me if I could please, PLEASE, drive her to the airport!

After dropping her off, she hugged me for a full minute, me patting her on the shoulder, until she trotted towards the ticket counter...

* * * * *

Those six months later I got a message from a Twitter tag I didn’t recognise. Very briefly (Twitter is ALWAYS brief, but no matter), this tag let me know she was Sarah, and to please look into my primary bank account, and that instructions on how much the I.R.S. was owed was in my email.

The email said she was now a hotel housekeeper—because it was a good way to serve people...while being totally ignored! I smiled and shook my head—I had no IDEA Sarah was this weird!

* * * * *

My bank account today has 3 million dollars more than yesterday...

Captions Sunday!

Three very different mini stories from Dolores Azul! 

Young Lady Whitshire’s Drastic Downfall

I just don’t know if I made a horrible mistake or if I’m the luckiest woman alive. If I’m NOT lucky, then I made several horrible mistakes—and I inflicted them all on myself! The desire to drop down can strike anyone—it doesn’t seem to be inherited—and the higher I was, the more delicious and irresistable the fall!

In order to go from Lady of the Manor—a very young Lady of the Manor—with an estate of hundreds of acres of meadows and forest, and a 36-room mansion, to maid in your own house—takes a co-conspirator. Agnes, the head of the household staff, was mine. She thought I was daft, but a daft woman’s money speaks as eloquently as money from a ‘sane’ woman! I paid her very well, because unbeknownst to everyone but me I was willing to spend so much of it—to enjoy my “journey!”

Announced to all, I was going on “holiday” for three months. But instead of going to Antibes or Venice, or even just to Paris, I went where nobody knew me: the outskirts of Camden, New Jersey in America! I went with nothing but one suitcase of the cheapest housedresses with one aim in mind: to make myself so fat that even my relatives wouldn’t recognize me! With only my location-disguised internet connection to keep me company, I ate and ate, to the point of discomfort, to stretch my stomach capacity! After three months I gained 3 and-a-half stone—not enough! I cabled home to announce I was enjoying myself so much, I was staying for another three months. I wanted to come back gaining at least six stone—I would have to keep quite seriously eating! By the time my holiday was up, the scale in my room said I’d gained 82 pounds. Close enough! The day before flying home I had my hair cut in front in bangs. With my hair also bleached, my extra weight, and no makeup I hoped no one would recognize me.

Captions Sunday!

I’ve been accused of many things, none of them are true; but my career in medicine is gone. Well, not totally gone...I guess I’m technically still in the medical field... 

I researched ways to combat and reduce the severity of the COVID virus. I NEVER claimed—ever—to have a CURE. What I researched, tested, and discovered was a suite of nutrients, and substances naturally occuring in the body that not only made you healthier, but reduced the SYMPTOMS of COVID until you never even feel sick at all. Yes, you’ll still NEED a vaccine, you still need to quarantine, but not only would the virus NOT KILL YOU, but you would barely feel ill! 

I had six months worth of double-blind testing! The results I got were NOT FAKE! But I think, on instruction from pharmaceutical corporation higher-ups (I will never be able to prove this), I was thrown into enforced quarantine-isolation for one month, I was officially declared “Deceased from COVID-19” and I have only been allowed back into the world of regular community and commerce if I accepted the latest form of “COVID Passport” which overrides the life and identity I’ve had for sixty years—even down to replacing my Social Security Number! No longer able to research scientific AND innovative ways to make people healthy, no longer the peer of my former hospital and university colleagues, no longer equal to the most skilled surgeons, I have been reduced to being a scrub in a hospital!

Captions Sunday!

I was born in Oakland, California, but you wouldn’t know that, if you saw how my family has been treated for the last three years. Being Asian and a woman I thought the “Glass Ceiling” was obstacle enough.

Now, being Asian is an Occupational Hazard, and being an Asian Woman means regressive types target you—literally target you with guns—as CARRIERS OF DISEASE!

I was also an executive in the hotel business, but you wouldn’t know that to look at me now, either.

A general who doesn’t visit the front lines never gets the real news. One of our hotels, in a city I’ve never visited, had morale problems. They sure “smelled” like morale problems: compared to our other hotels, average length of employment was less than seven months! Our other hotels average three years! I’m no general, but time for this officer to visit the battlefield! Unlike most of my colleagues I’m willing to get dirty to “dig up the dirt”! I hired on as a housecleaner—yes, to avoid detection I actually took the job—and found out quickly what the problem was.

The reason morale was down, was because—I won’t soften the blow—the manager of this branch was a racist jerk, and he thought the Asian housekeepers under him were....unclean!

Story: Severe Housecleaning Vacation.

by Dolores Azul

Social downgrade has one great boon, and another huge downside. The great boon is: if you are the sort of person who needs it, who craves it, it keeps you vital, young, and alive! I almost pity my fellow executives who age so quickly because they are fighting so hard, every day, to stay On Top of Things. If those “things” they stay “on top of” are 5G cell phones, they're 5G cell phones; if “those things” are multi-level marketing of Non-Fungible-Objects—that’s what you have to focus on, Brother! Move it, move it!

No, I’m not saying I don’t pay attention—or can’t keep up! I’m saying I have (or, I HAD) a way to de-stress, that my colleagues....don’t. But it does have a downside: you need increasing doses of social downgrade to get you the same “high” you got when you first found out What You Are. Sometimes the dose you end up taking is so big that you can’t climb back out! I knew I was taking LOTS of risks, but I thought I covered everything. 

Well, no...I didn’t. 

Captions Sunday!

More excellent captions/short stories from Dolores Azul. Enjoy! 

“All About Eva” 

Carolina and Eva: two rising executives in the hospitality business. Both of us work for the third largest hotel chain in the world, and we both worked our way up from the bottom—Eva in the kitchen, and myself in housekeeping. 

Eva is still a rising executive. I am...not. Her salary just crossed the quarter-million dollar level. My income is a tiny fraction of what it once was...Both of us took pride in starting from the bottom. Safe to say we both know everything about running a hotel! We both understood what it means to be at the bottom of a corporation—and a society! So when a new hotel-wide training program was due to touch down, we both drew straws to see who got to work incognito and “start from the bottom” as a new trainee! 

I drew the Lucky Short Straw, but Eva generously lent me a whole battery of materials she had intended to use for herself! What an arsenal it was! In order to truly play the part and not give herself away, she got some smaller-than-microdoses of psyllocybin, with cannabanoids, along with MP3 recordings to listen to at night, to gently hypnotize the listener! She used them to up her leadership skills (I had no idea!) but the ones she gave me were designed to keep one cheerful on the job, no matter how stressful! She even lent me a key to a small apartment of hers, so I could immerse myself into my role, riding the bus to orientation instead of my dead-givaway Lexus! I put one of the lozenges under my tongue the day before orientation and put headphones on before going to sleep. 

Captions Sunday!

Three more captions from Dolores Azul. Excellent work. Again, all three short-story length. Enjoy!

Holiday In Plain Sight!!!!

Can an introvert rise up the corporate ladder? I’m proof that you can. I am also proof that it takes its toll! I am also proof that that it takes money to get what you want—even if what you want is to be POOR!

That doesn’t make ANY sense! What do I mean? I’ll explain...

You CAN be shy, and still be a “People Person”. I’m good enough with people that I was pulling down six figures in income a year. But I didn’t SPEND most of that money! I lived way, WAY below my means, and used what I saved to buy real estate. I even have shares in a hotel chain! The hotel chain, of course, manages itself—I mean that I don’t have to manage it—and I’ve hired good people to manage my other properties, who I keep in contact online.

Living for years on a tiny fraction of my income, I got USED to it! That convinced me I didn’t need the corporate world any longer to live the life I want! I set up a very modest trust fund for...myself! For my OTHER self! Most of the fund pays for a basement apartment in a twelve-unit I own just off the bus lines. The rest is for food and clothing—the weekly budget I set up for food is what I used to spend on ONE business lunch! The only “luxury” item I have in my apartment is a tanning bed—so I can “revert” back to my “natural” coloring!

Two weeks after resigning from the corporate rat-race, I used the I.D. for my “Other Self” and hired on as a housekeeper in one of the hotels I own stock in!

Captions Sunday!

Dolores Azul deliver three new excellent captions. Three short stories basically. Very well done. Enjoy!

Undercover in a Rival Hotel! 

I am (or was) a manager of a national chain of hotels, breathing a huge sigh of relief that, with COVID-19 finally under control, people started to travel—and, of course, stay at hotels again! It was I who came up with our newest little slogan: 

“We won’t mask our delight to see you again!” 

After a full year of working seven days a week, eighteen hours a day, I figured I (finally) earned some time off; but I just couldn’t rest, because of a nagging suspicion... 

Most of the national hotel chains were starting to do well, but one new company was apparently making money hand over fist! After only a year in business! How they could erect brand-new hotels in all the major cities in such a short time boggled my mind, that shouldn’t have been possible! I had my personal assistant search the ’web for information—and who should ultimately turn up as the owner but a very famous gentleman whose father-in-law is even more famous! 

Yes, I deserved a vacation, but I couldn’t let this go! Armed with fictitious I.D., and traveling to a city where our chain had no hotel (yet) so where I haven’t visited, I went undercover—yes, undercover, as housekeeper for hire! This was going to be hard work; but I think I look, and physically I think I am, much younger than my forty-eight years. I figured I could keep up with the duties, and NOBODY looking for evidence knew better where to look than I! 

Captions Sunday!

Three excellent new captions (short stories really) from a new contributor, Dolores Azul. Enjoy!

It Took All Her Brains—To Drop Down 

Sylvia Morales had a big problem. Before they passed, her parents got to see Sylvia become a success in life: she dealt in real estate and the stock market (got to diversify after all) and became very wealthy—a multi-millionaire at age 28. 

But success was the last thing Sylvia really wanted. Her desire to drop down the social ladder was difficult, but not impossible for a resourceful woman like herself. First she set up a dummy corporation to purchase office buildings. None of the business tenants were kicked out; in fact, they were offered slightly BETTER terms to stay if they used her maid service for cleaning. Then she set up another corporation: “Jiffy-Spiffy Maids”, and hired a good manager to run it. 

Then, in a vacant apartment building she also bought, Sylvia looked up YouTube videos on how to houseclean “like a pro”. When she got good enough, she went to her manager to hire on at “Jiffy-Spiffy”, impersonating an illegal alien. By the time she sought work, Sylvia had put on enough pounds to be unrecognizable to the manager she hired but only met once! Looking too heavy to do the work, Sylvia begged the manager to let her clean one day—for free—to show she had what it takes...