April Fool

When I turned the pump on at the pool this morning, a heavy stream of water started spraying out of a valve between the pump and the pressure tank. I flipped it back off and sent a text message to the boss. He examined it and found that the plastic cap was cracked. Of course, this is Culebra, so it's not like we can just run out to the store and get a new one. That's why he has a big garage full of everything we might possibly need for repairs or replacements. But he didn't have a new valve. And it's a holiday weekend, and we're fully booked. Without the pump, I couldn't even vacuum. Then he remembered he had saved the old valve, and the old cap fit on the new valve, so he got it fixed. It pays to be frugal and save things.

Image via Wikipedia

It turned out to be one of those odd days when I'm constantly interrupted, and I gave up any thoughts of getting anything major accomplished. I just spent most of the day reading a book.

Then when I was checking in some guests this afternoon, the printer for the credit card machine jammed. Normally I can realign the paper and all is well, but this time the terminal just kept flashing "Call Help Desk." The cancel button didn't work and the reprint button didn't work. And I didn't know how to call the help desk. So I called the boss. It took about ten minutes to get it through his head that pressing the reprint button wasn't working. Finally he told me how to get in touch with tech support.

I ran an imprint of the guest's card manually so they could go on to their room. I first had to call to authorize their card. I couldn't hear a thing with the air conditioner running, so I turned it off and sat there melting. Good, done. Guests gone. Call tech support. "For English, press 1." After I pressed "1" a voice came on in Spanish. Sigh. "En ingles, por favor?" One time, the person started speaking in English, but before I could state my problem, we were disconnected. The second time, I got no response but must have been put on hold in never-never land, and then got cut off. The third time, the phone just cut off right away. I sat there stewing for awhile with sweat running down my back and wondering what to do next. Finally (if what you did before didn't work, do more of it) I tried again. This time I got an English speaker whom I could understand, and he gave me the code to reset the machine.

Can we just start a new day now?