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! 

One of the odd details my assistant turned up is that each of the hotels had VERY extensive “spa” facilities! Enough for over a third of the visitors to use them at the same time! All sleuthing turned up that the cost of a hotel stay was in line with their competitors —including US! How long would it take for any of their hotels to turn a profit?? I found out very quickly...As soon as I got hired on—I was one of the few ‘White’ people I could see—the staff brought us down to the basement where the “Spa” was and handed us all a little glass of sparkling wine (I doubt it was champagne) to toast to the success of the hotel. I drank deeply, and then while dreamily thinking the spa was sort of spartan for a hotel, I, and I think all of us new hires, fell asleep... 

We all awoke, tied to chairs, and with Kleenex stuffed in our mouths and duct-taped shut!! Our “Housekeeping Manager” informed us that gagging us was not necessary, as our vocal cords were paralysed and that we couldn’t talk any longer! To prove it, she walked up to one poor Puerto Rican woman and tickled her feet—she laughed hopelessly, but with not a sound! Then we were informed that shock implants were embedded in our bodies, and that if we wandered more than ten feet away from the hotel we would get a very severe shock!! To prove THAT, she came up to ME and pushed a button on her cell phone. It lasted only one second, but I think if I had to endure that for a minute, I would prefer to DIE. So that’s how they could keep costs down: very simple, really...the cleaning staff were literally SLAVES! How many other functions of the hotel chain “saved money” this way I was no longer able to find out! 

So I had my answers right away, but it took nine months to be able to plan my escape! Yes, the housekeeping work was very hard, but I HAD to escape—if not for me, then for my fellow housekeepers! The timing of everything was crucial, so I wouldn’t be missed until it was too late, but I went out to the garbage bins, which were close enough to the hotel not to set off the implant shock, and covered myself with the garbage until I got emptied into the garbage truck!! While still deep in the garbage, the truck paused at the stop long enough for my implant alarm to off! With nobody able to hear me!! When it finally stopped I wasn’t even sure I was alive, but I didn’t care. Garbage got emptied into the bin three times before I worked up enough to climb on top of some trash and get out: filthy, speechless, overweight, and abused by agonizing electric shock and by the less-than-dollar-menu food the hotel fed us! For fleeting moments I missed the ‘spa’ where they kept us; until our work shifts we were kept NAKED, but at least we were CLEAN. 

As I can no longer speak, I had to write out my testimony; first to the authorities, then, eventually, to the Board of Directors of my own hotel chain! Since, in my “inexcusable” absence, the Rate-Of-Growth of the hotel’s profits slowed down, I was let go from my position as national manager! “Besides, a person in your former position actually needs to be able to speak...don’t you see?” During the experience my physical appearance went from looking ten years younger than my age, to fifteen years OLDER. I think, to the Board of Directors, I no longer LOOKED like a National Manager. So I had to find work I was still qualified to do... 

* * * 

The hotel where I went undercover is now a fine place to work, on par with or better than most hotel chains. But in one sense, I am still undercover. All the staffs in all the hotels knows that the person who made all their lives better STILL WORKS AT ONE OF THE HOTELS. Because of this, morale and comraderie in ALL the hotels, nationwide, is very high. But they don’t know who it is, and I am too ashamed and humiliated to let on. They can’t manage to guess; even though I am one of the staff who still lives in the “basement spa” and spends most of her off-hours the way we did when we were prisoners: naked, walking with bare feet and sitting bare bum on the tile-and-grout floors, and eating large amounts of the food the hotel provides—much tastier, but just as fattening, as the warmed-over offal we used to live on. 

Since my life choices seem to imply that I have no money or savings, and that I have always been poor, none of my fellow housekeepers can imagine that I might be the ‘heroine’ among them.

 

I’m so furious—I’ve been TRICKED, and there’s NOTHING I can do about it!

My name is Maureen Gulden, of “Gulden Inns,” The hotel chain founded by my father, and now is run by....me. I was browsing the Internet for something to watch, and came across a YouTube channel, “The Good Oligarch.” I’ve been trying to come up with ways to improve the morale and productivity of the staff at my hotels, and this show gave me the way! The “oligarch” in the title would usually be the head of a large corporation who goes undercover to find out how to make their company a better place to work. In honor of my late mother, I would impersonate one of the housekeeping staff. Thanks to her, housekeeper was a job title I could fill—expertly.

Going undercover as a maid was surprisingly simple to set up, but I wanted to do the complete job: I wanted to do it RIGHT. So I set up a false identity in the only hotel in our chain I had never visited—to make certain I would not be found out. I was soon reminded that gathering information on the job was more difficult than I thought, because actually cleaning the hotel rooms had to come first! Lifting up the corners of heavy mattresses, scrubbing and sluicing the bathroom walls and shower doors sparkling clean, pushing around the heavy carts—and all of this had to be done in twenty-five minutes! Per room!

First order of business when I got out of here: Hire More Staff! That was the big finding; but dozens of smaller, but still important details I logged in my little spiral notebook—when not vacuuming the carpets of course!

I only intended to stay deep undercover for no more than a month, when a big meeting was called, with full-staff mandatory attendance. No big deal, nothing unusual, except that my assistant Reneé, the only other person who knew what I was doing, announced to all of us in attendance that I had had a fatal accident while on holiday—and until a new CEO got appointed, she was taking over running the hotel!

It was dinner break before I could confirm the report! The news had broken—that I WAS dead!! My bank froze my assets, and my phone no longer worked! But before I could stow it back in my pocket, Security snatched it from my hands, and marched me to one of the security rooms in the basement. I was stripped, CAVITY-SEARCHED, and kept naked and standing for almost half-an-hour until the Acting Manager of the Hotel arrived.

Taking a cell phone, MY cell phone out of her purse, Reneé asked me if I recognized it! “Of course I do! It’s MINE!!”

She cut me off. “Clearly this phone is stolen property.”

Before I could protest, Reneé continued: “This model of phone retails for $825.00: that puts the crime in the category of Larceny Theft in this state. You can go to jail, or I can be...lenient. I will let you go, if you never show your face in any of our hotels or properties again. I will make sure that every hotel has your photo and I.D.”

“Which course do you choose?”

Having no I.D. but phony undercover ones, I had no choice! But even with the larceny charge downgraded to the lowest misdemeanor, neither could I get any—legal—work! Running out of money in three weeks, even unable to fake being an illegal alien, I had to...prostitute myself...or starve!!

Selling my body, I am able to eat, but I can only afford cheap, fattening food, and cheap polyester lounge dresses. The biggest risk I take is NOT being robbed, or contracting disease—it’s that almost all of my ‘clients’ STAY AT MY OLD HOTELS. Every time I sell my body, I have to hope against hope that none of the hotel security sees that some well-dressed businessman is bringing a prostitute to his room, and that the dumpy, tattily-dressed prostitute is ME!!!! 

She Fell Deep Into Self-Delusion!!

I hate to say it, but I think living for years in the bottom half of the “99 Percent” makes you....stupid!

Well, no, I haven’t lived there—do I LOOK like it?—but you don’t have to live that life if you know what it’s all about! Really...have YOU? Don’t make MOI laugh! The people who always talk about “walking a mile in someone else’s shoes”...what a cliché...just don’t understand what makes the world tick, don’t you think?

Well I know!

It’s WILLPOWER. Good, old-fashioned willpower.

I know ALL about it! It takes WILLPOWER to hold those fashion poses and keep that winning smile on your face. It takes WILLPOWER not to tease the men when their heads swivel in your direction! It takes, not only lots of smarts and good taste to be a high-fashion model, it takes—yes—WILLPOWER. Like I said——I KNOW.

I’m convinced: being way down at the bottom of the “99 Percent” not only makes you stupid, it makes you...LAZY.

Like Nadine, the photographer’s assistant, dared me to work a blue-collar job—like cashiering in a grocery store, or serving meat and fish behind a counter, or working for a maid’s service! I wouldn’t have taken her pathetic bet, except that I wanted to make her less pathetic—by wiping the pathetic smirk off her face! So I took a customer service job in Meat and Fish at the local Piggly-Wiggly. I did REALLY WELL, but I just got tired of smiling constantly at the customers. So I hired on at a maid’s service.

My fellow maids—have NO IDEA how GOOD they have it! All they have to do is scrub and clean all day—no smiling at hotel guests, they clean the rooms all by themselves—and they get to EAT AS MUCH AS THEY WANT. I thought I was going to only do this for two weeks, but I signed on with the hotel for Summer and Fall! It was like a vacation, eating all I want three meals a day and snacks! I knew I was gaining ‘some’ weight, but this was like a vacation! I’m relaxing my willpower for now, because I know when my ‘time off’ is up, I’ll just turn it back on again!

Well, since I’m not used to carrying around this much weight (you think?!) I sprained my ankle rather badly, and I’ve been off my feet for two months (it’s taking forever for it to heal up...). I gained two more dress sizes while resting up; but as soon as the doctor gives me the okay, I’ll be cleaning those rooms, and when my “vacation” is over, I’ll be hard-charging back to my standard vigorous aerobics routines, like I always do, and be slim and shapely again!

Just once I heard from Nadine, how she got my cell-phone number I’ll never know; she dared me, before I came back, to make extra money—posing for BBW porn! She’d read some ‘investigative reports’ that said service-economy women in my position often did it for extra money——and she double-dog dared me!!

Well, why not?? I’ll bet those pornographers have never seen a REAL fashion model pose for nudie shots in front of their cameras! They’d better be getting their shots in—and their eyes full— because once I drop these eighty extra pounds, they’ll never again see the likes of anyone like me, EVER!!!

 

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