The Curious World of Johnny Houseman

It was a low, cloudy Sunday morning and I could see Snow and Sunrise hanging out on opposite horizons - politely mingling over the tree tops, planning the day's events - as I walked toward the front door of my new job.

I had followed the instructions presented to me in the phone call that I received from them just the day before: black pants, not jeans; tan shirt; good footwear. I had to scramble to round up the "black pants, not jeans" part. At 31 years old, the only black pants I owned said either Carhartt or Levis on them.

I opened the door and four guys in blue uniforms stared stupidly at me. Maintenance crew. I knew it right away. Move like a herd of turtles, ya know? I explained I was looking for Mary and they pointed me in the right direction. I went down some steps, took a right, passed a vending machine and an impressive mound of hotel-type laundry, a stack of orange five-gallon pails, and into what seemed like complete chaos. People were going in all directions like ants, chattering away in multiple languages, bumping into each other. A lady was folding sheets, another was folding towels; huge washers and dryers rocked more laundry back and forth or tumbled it around in a wagon wheel circle. 2-way radios spat and crackled from people's hips as they stared at clipboards with lots and lots of numbers on them.

I shook hands with Mary, someone else showed me where the time clock was.

"Time clock? I've never used one of those things in my life," I said.
"Nuh-uh. Are you serious?" the nice Navajo gal said slowly, "You never punch a time clock?"
"Well, hell no."
I was beginning to re-think the entire situation. I had been there for eight minutes. I did, after all, have five more job offers over the last seven or eight days. This outfit was the fastest to respond so I decided to try them out.
"Here's da cards. Make sure you put cher name on it. Sign it, huh?" I did. "Dey go in like dis."

She put the end of the card in a slot on the top of the little machine stuck to the wall. The machine gobbled up the card, paused and made some printing noises midway, then shit the card out the bottom.
I was dazzled.
"Huh. Well I'll be damned," I mumbled.
"Dat's it," said the Indian and she ambled away.

I slid the card into slot number 13...for good luck.

I made my way back through the maze of Mexicans and Indians to Mary's office. I had one question to ask and I figured it was a good one.
"What, exactly, am I going to be doing?"
"You ever stay at a hotel?" Mary asked.
I laughed. "Yeah. Of course."

"Okay," she continued, "you know how the housekeepers have that little cart?"

Now, you need to understand just how close I was to saying at that point, "Are you fucking kidding me?" because I pictured myself pushing one of those little Rubbermaid carts around cleaning up after people. Smock. Spray bottle. I decided I would do it for a day and politely explain that it just wasn't my particular brand of whiskey and move on.

"We don't have those," she finished.
"Okay." Whew.
"Because of our layout here," she continued, "we put all of the linens that our housekeepers need for each particular unit into a bag and then deliver that bag to the unit for them. Then we pick up the linens that they have stripped from the unit and bring them back to the warehouse here to be cleaned."
"Huh. I have one more question."
"Okay."
"Am I going to be cleaning these units?"
"Nope. You'll see how it goes. We've been short-handed lately so I'm just going to throw you into it today. You'll be working with one of our housemen who's been here for a year...so...well, you'll see."

And with that she picked up a radio and said, "Mary to Hay-soos."
Static. "Good ahead, Mary."
"Hay-soos, I have the new hire here, Josh. He's going to be working with you today. Drop-shadow. Are you on the mountain?"
Static. "Yes, Mary."
"Okay. I'll see you in a few minutes."
I sat still. The chaos ensued just outside the door of her office.

Hay-soos, indeed, showed up in a few minutes. We shook hands and he said, "You ready?"
"Let's do it," I said.

Now that I have been at the job for three weeks, I can explain it to you as follows:

The job of a houseman for Wyndham Vacation Resort, Flagstaff is - by all accounts - a busy and interesting task. This particular Wyndham is a series of condominiums that have been transformed into time-share ownership units. There are 167 units in total. The warehouse and laundry facility is at the bottom of the hill and the condos are sprinkled about on the hill itself. In the mornings, I load the pickup with as many bags that will fit, and - as was accurately described to me - haul ass up the hill and deliver them to the units to be cleaned. On Saturdays, we will turn (industry lingo) around ninety units. There is a two o'clock check-in and a four o'clock check in deadline. All units must be cleaned, inspected, called into the front desk and all dirty linen, trash, etc, must be taken away from each unit - obviously - before the guests check in.

It is mostly controlled chaos at 1:30 and 3:30, respectively. Some units are one bedroom/one bath, but four out of five are two bedroom/two bath. The majority of all are stuck to the side of a hill so lots of steps or staircases are involved. After the bags are out (industry lingo), I haul ass back up the hill and go about the task of hauling the bags of dirty linens back to the laundry room. As you can imagine, eighty two-bedroom, two-bathroom condos produce an impressive amount of laundry in one day.

And Mary was right: she threw me right into it. Typically, the houseman job is a two man operation for five days a week. One stays at the warehouse and gets organized for the next day's schedule and one runs around like barnyard foul sans cranium. As she said, they were shorthanded - everyone had flaked out and quit - so I was on a solo mission. I started on December 13th...Christmas and New Year's both fell on the following Fridays. The ensuing Saturdays were hectic. To put it plainly, our guests enjoyed themselves heartily.

There are some interesting things I have learned: a king size flat sheet weighs three pounds. (No kidding.) One of our washing machines can hold fifty pounds of linen or towels. We have three of them, so we can get 150 pounds of stuff clean per wash-dry cycle. Therefore, a fraction over 3 units an hour can be handled on the laundry side of the coin because a typical unit requires roughly 45 pounds of clean linens/towels to prep. I handle close to ninety of those clean bags over the weekend days, plus the 45 pounds of stripped linens/towels for each unit. From Friday to Sunday, we will turn about 140 of the one hundred and sixty-seven units. There are five different types of bags to be built accordingly to the type of unit. It's a simple and closed system as long as there are no wrenches thrown into the works. Like when the hot water heater dies and you lose close to 20 hours of "production" and two people quit within one week.

There are other challenges, too. For instance: There are four ladies named Maria whom work there. I have gotten better at sorting it out: Maria Avalos is the tiny grumpy one who pretends to not know English. Maria Rosa goes simply by Rosa so that helped but, there is another Rosa who is an inspector. She goes by Rosa Sanchez. Then there's the aptly named Maria Laundry - easy enough - and another Maria on weekends who is a housekeeper. She goes by, naturally, Maria Housekeeper. There's Lina and Socorro, too. None of them knew my name when I started so I went simply by "houseman." Hence, Johnny Houseman was born.

Then there are the radio calls. We run on channel 2; maintenance is on 1; front desk on 3. (So the other two have no idea at what point in our chatter we are - they just change the channel to 2 and cut in.)

Saturday, 1:45 p.m. as I'm zipping around in the truck with a full load of laundry to be taken back to the warehouse.

"Socorro to houseman."
"Go ahead, Socorro." (What a cool name.)

"Yosh, I need two keeng pee-lo cases and two deesh towels to jew-nit tree tirty seb-in, pleez."
"10-4, Socorro, two king pillow cases and two dish towels to unit 337."
"Tank you berry much, Yosh."
"Front desk to houseman."
"This is Josh."
"Hey, Josh, can you bring a high chair, a rollaway bed and a baby gate to unit R4, please?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Thank you, Josh!"
"Mary to houseman Josh."
"Go ahead, Mary."
"Hey, Josh. The housekeeper at 28A just set the trash out for pickup and I know you're busy but if you could get there ASAP to pick it up that would be great. There's a whole group of ravens eyeballing it and they're bound to scatter that stuff all over the hill."
"10-4, Mary. I'll be there in a minute."
"Good thinking. Thanks, Josh."
"Houseman, please." (Maintenance. Dammit, Rod, what now?)
"Go ahead, Rod."
"Hey, I just noticed that tire on the Chevy is low, you better keep an eye on that."
"Yeah, 10-4. Thanks, Rod. You know, I mentioned that to someone on the maintenance side a couple days ago and nothing happened. Where, exactly, is the air compressor? I can do it myself."
"Well, we will have to schedule something. I'll talk to you later."
"Okay." (Fucking maintenance crews.)
"Rosa to houseman."
"Go ahead, Rosa."
"Yosh, can you bring to jew-nit tree forty one a keeng size ko-bur, pleez."
"10-4, Rosa. A king size cover to 341."
"Tank you, Yosh."
From warehouse: "Unit 343 is ready for inspection. Unit 3-4-3 is ready for inspection and the housekeeper needs a ride to her next unit."
"Mary to Josh."
"Go ahead, Mary."
"What's your 20?"
"I can get her, Mary. I'm right here getting laundry from 339."
"10-4, Josh. Thanks. She's going to R6. My van is full right now. Thanks for the help. Zoom, zoom, zoom."
"Ha. 10-4. It's no problem. I've gotta head that way to keep the trash away from the ravens anyway at 28A."
"10-4."
"Rosa to Yosh."
"Go ahead, Rosa." (The other Rosa. Whose real name is Maria.)

"Can you breeng to me, pleez, two kween cheets for the klo-zet to jew-nit tree too tree?"
"10-4, Rosa. Two queen sheets for the closet, unit 323. It's just going to be a minute."
"Tank you, Yosh."
"Jim to Josh." (Maintenance again.)
"Go ahead, Jim."
"Hey, I just saw you go by and there's a tire on the Chevy that's low. You better get that aired up. We have some compressed air there at the shop."
"Yeah, 10-4, Jim. Thanks. I just spoke to Rod a minute ago and I told him that I had already mentioned that to maintenance two days ago. As well, the left front on the Ford is low as is the right rear on Mary's red van. It's just that nothing...well, maybe it just got forgotten. Just show me where that stuff is and I'll take care of it."
"Well, I'll catch up with you later. We'll have to schedule it."
"10-4. Okay. Thanks, maintenance." (Fuck! Lazy bureaucratic bastards!)
"Front desk to houseman." (Jesus Christ!)
Politely: "Go ahead, front desk."
"The guests in unit thirty-one-oh-four need more towels."
"Okay, it's going to be a few minutes before I can get there."
All cheery: "No problem! Thanks, Josh!"

I make it to the warehouse, fill the orders. Unload the truck. Head up the hill to deliver them. Repeat.


The trick is to decipher the code. See, all of this chatter is coming across a static-laden Motorola two-way radio and most of it is, well, in the neverland between two languages.

The twin, queen, king is the trickiest because it comes out as "tween," "kween," and "keeng." So there's code. "For the closet" helps me out because that automatically means queen sheets for the sofa-sleeper. "Tween cheets" are rarely needed and the majority of the "keeng" sized requests are for duvet covers.

Phonetic listening skills help out and the process of elimination applies itself. One of the signs that hangs on the walls of the warehouse reads: "Don't know? Don't guess. Just ask." No kidding.

"Deesh" towels is easy enough and the need for "pee-lo" cases is only dependent upon it being either "stahn-derd" or "keeng." So I grab both. Saves gas.

Jew-nit numbers are a little hard to get sometimes, as is the color gell-oh. I'm tempted to just switch over to my rudimentary Spanish for such things (amarillo is far more understandable than gell-oh for me) but I'm keeping that talent a secret at the moment. It was helpful though, on Sunday when Maria Housekeeper (the 4th Maria) came flying out of jew-nit R4 and said very quickly something close to:

"No hay el tubo por la bak-yoom in esta casa! No hay! No se donde esta lo pero nesicito lo pronto! No lo hay alla! Puede usted abre el otro casa" - lots of hand motions indicating this unit, the motion of vacuuming a floor and the other unit - "por favor? No hay el tubo! Tengo la maquina pero no tengo el tubo! Tienes un llave? Una tarjeta?"

I said, "Nesicistas usted, el tubo, verdad?" (Grammatically incorrect, I know, but I told you it was a rudimentary skill level.)

"Si, si!" the 4th Maria exclaimed.

"En este casa," I pointed, "no hay nada, verdad? Y en este casa hay esta una?" I asked as I pointed at the other unit.

"Si, si, si! Gracias! Gracias!"

The gist of the emergency was that there was no hose for the vacuum (bak-yoom) in unit R4 and she wanted to know if I could open unit R5 so she could use the vacuum from that one. I did and the disaster was averted.

It's possible that it may be better to have them read the jew-nit numbers in Spanish because "tree-tirteen" is very close to "tree-tweenty-tree" and "tree-teerty-tree." (313, 323, 333 - all of which are in different locales on the property.) You see the dilemma. A gringo like me could end up in the wrong place with the right stuff or vice versa whilst everyone is trying their hardest to communicate with one another. However, Tres trece, tres vente tres and tres trente tres would, in fact, be a bit easier. If you can believe that. 

Welcome to the curious world of Johnny Houseman.