Very Bad Reception, Part 23

I work as a security guard for a winery. The winery also owns the hotel across the street, which always seems strange because it’s a pure production winery, not a tourist winery. Regardless, during my shifts, I am the sole security guard for both the hotel and the winery, but my guard shack and 95% of my job happens at the winery. One Saturday during the off-season, when the winery is completely dead, I get this phone call from the hotel receptionist.

Me: “Hello, what can I do for you?”

Receptionist: “Hi, I wanted to call and report a suspicious car in our parking lot.”

Me: “Okay, please describe the car and why it’s suspicious.”

Receptionist: “The car looks like [description] and it’s suspicious because it’s been parked there for two days without moving.”

Me: “Oooookay, does it belong to a guest?”

Receptionist: “Actually, yes, I think I saw the people in room number [something] get out of it.”

Me: “All right, are those guests still there?”

Receptionist: “Yes, they are, but the car has been there for a really long time. Do you think I should call the police?”

Me: “I think that’s a bad idea, since it sounds like the guests just haven’t gone anywhere while you were there, but let me talk to my supervisor so I know what he wants to do about this situation.”

I hang up as she continues trying to explain why it is so weird that the car hasn’t moved.

Getting my boss’s opinion is really just an excuse to loop my boss in on the exchange I had just had in case the receptionist tries to do something crazy like call a tow truck and act as if I supported the decision. After calling her a moron, my boss asks me to call her back and get more information.

When I call, it’s clearly still the receptionist’s voice, but now with a bad Spanish accent. She gives a different name.

I’m very confused but I roll with it.

Me: “Hi, I just wanted to follow up with [Receptionist] and gather some more info about her concerns. Could you put her on the phone, please?”

Receptionist: “I’m sorry, she went to the kitchen area; she could be anywhere right now, I don’t think I could find her.”

This is not a giant hotel complex. The entire hotel has about ten guest rooms in a two-story building plus a manor house area with a kitchen, a bar, and a few miscellaneous rooms. The idea that anyone could disappear in this place is absurd.

I’m 95% sure that I’m actually just talking to the receptionist but not quite at the point of calling her out.

Me: “All right, well, could you give me [details] for my incident report?”

Receptionist: “Oh, yes.”

She gives the exact same details to the point that my 95% surety increases to 98%. I try to contain my laughter at the absurdity of the situation.

Me: “Okay, thank you.”

I have rarely heard a voice more filled with abject despair and exasperation with the absurdity of the world than my boss listening to the details of my second exchange. For my part, I spent the next thirty minutes bursting into random bouts of uncontrollable giggles as I struggled to force the inanity of it all into a professional format in my incident report.

Related:
Very Bad Reception, Part 22
Very Bad Reception, Part 21
Very Bad Reception, Part 20
Very Bad Reception, Part 19