The Hostel Chronicles, Episode 3: Meanies

The highlight of working at a hostel and being a writer at the same time is that I get a ton of ideas for characters. Each person you meet in a day has the potential to spark a new life--albeit a fictional life. You have your magnetic travel mongers, your shy, questioning first-timers, your easy-going sight-seers, your logical planners, etc. And within these categories come multitudinous layers of being and personality. As a hostel worker, I get to witness all the niceness and warmth of humanity like a gentle coastal wave.

Then, you get the meanies.

Visual approximation of a meanie

Oh, do they exist, and they come at you like swinging pendulums of doom, like car crashes and bad milk. They rot your day into a tiny piece of sidewalk chewing gum and you don't recover until that night or even the next morning (preferably after a couple glasses of wine). 

Most of the time it happens because people are not aware of what a hostel is and how it works. Yesterday I had a group of 8 dudes from Amsterdam, and two came waltzing in (never a good sign when someone waltzes into reception, especially not if they're wearing neon yellow reflector vests). They shot questions at me about the amenities: breakfast, towels, internet, etc. I answered them congenially. Then... they asked about parking. Alas, there is none at the hostel that's private. Nowhere in the entire city is there private parking for businesses. It's all on the street. Old city with crazily winding roads and alleyways = driver's nightmare. So I explained to the young men the situation, apologizing for the confusion. They were having none of it and glared at me as though I were some hired stripper who refused to take her clothes off. Yeah. That bad.

These boys continued to screech at me, demanding discounts and what have you, and of course I couldn't offer them that. They made me call my poor manager (who was in the middle of getting her hair cut) and bother her. On and on it went, they threatened me with "horrible reviews" the likes of which I'd never seen before.... Just all-around meanies, ya know?

"And they were as mean
as sun-dazzled bats..."

So, since there was nothing I could do or say to console them, I took a good mental picture of the leaders of the group, and decided to add them to my list of future story villains and antagonists. Oh yes. You know that t-shirt that says, "Watch out, you might end up in my novel"? Well, it's factual. And I'm not afraid to use names, either. Everyone will know who the villains are and what they did!

Anyway, like I said, the meanies are people who refuse to let things go and are handling a situation in an irrational manner that hurts everybody involved. Even if you're upset, if you're dealing with someone who is being kind and trying to help you through it, you don't treat them like trash still. You just don't. That's not the warmth of humanity, that's the cloud of meanness that shows how afraid you are of the world deep down inside your mean little soul. That's my humble opinion. (And those guys WILL end up in my novel. And they will be sorry.)

Besides... why drive when you can go by Segway?

Oooooh, mama.