Page 15 of Tasty Cherry

Raya is not good at that.

And her tone is a familiar one.

She crosses her arms over her chest. “Maverick, we made clear that our hospitality hires would be doing all types of shifts.”

“And I bet you’re sticking me with maintenance right off the bat.” His posture in jeans and a white T-shirt is defiant. “Let me guess, the women are cooking and cleaning?”

Raya looks to me in exasperation. “This one is yours,” she says. “You handle him.”

She stalks down the hall to her office, her heels clopping on the polished floor.

Yeah, she does that, too. Ditches the dirty work and leaves it for me.

I approach Maverick. “Everybody will do all the shifts. Nothing is gender specific.”

He shrugs. “She stuck in my craw, that’s all.”

Raya didn’t like that I hired Maverick as a favor to my father’s former best friend, who has been family to Arya and me since we were kids. Maverick is his nephew, a classic underachiever with a chip on his shoulder. He barely graduated UC Boulder. His GPA wasn’t exactly inspiring, but then, neither was mine.

“So, should I switch it up? You can make sandwiches in the deli, shovel donkey dung in the barn, wash sheets, or stock deliveries.”

“This is a shit job,” he says. “I have a fucking college degree.”

I shrug. “Then take that degree and get a spot somewhere else. We had close to a thousand applicants for these intern spots.”

He leans against the wall, tilting his chin to the ceiling. He’s tough, but smart, and he knows he’s got something good here. Besides, his student loans have to be killing him, and even the interns get paid well here, plus free room and board.

“Tell me why this is important again?” he asks.

Good. He’s listening now. “You have to troubleshoot fast at a job like this. If you don’t know how housekeeping runs the rooms, then you don’t know if you can really check in a bus full of tourists inside of an hour when they arrive before they’re supposed to. If you don’t know how to fix a thermostat, you’re probably not going to be able to handle an upset guest who wants to warm up after a cold hike.”

“We have staff for all that.”

“We do. But hotel management deals in problems and promises. You have to solve the problem and make the promise you can deliver. Until you know what everyone here really does, you can’t do that.”

He pushes away from the wall. “I’m going to get my shit.”

I watch him head for the back door. That one will be hard to manage, that’s for sure. But I stole one of Raya’s prized spots, so I have to handle it.

Raya leans out of her office. She was listening. “You’re going to regret that one.”

“Maybe.”

She shuffles through a stack of ID badges. “The interns keep getting locked out, so I’m going to give these out now rather than at the meeting.” She untangles Maverick’s and passes it to me. “I’ll pass out the rest.”

“Are they all here?” I spot the name “Brooklyn Henry” on the top ID.

“This one is.” She taps Brooklyn’s ID. “And this one.” The next one reads “Owen Thomas.” She’s about to show me the next one when someone knocks at the back door.

Raya hurries to open it. “And there they are.”

A tall blonde woman and a friendly-looking man enter, both hauling massive suitcases.

“Hi,” the woman says.

“Hello, recruits,” I say. “Let me get you some carts.”

Raya closes the back door and detangles the ID badges again. “Good luck getting Bertie to let any go.”

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