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Frat housekeeper - chapter 5
Feedback and suggestions are greatly appreciated, MalikWhiteSC@gmail.com
Chapter V
After Mr. Jason left for lunch I rushed to Mr. Drew's room to check if he needs any assistance. In fact I was quite nervous about spending so much time on serving Mr. Jason, while Mr. Drew may have felt abandoned. Of course, all guests had plenty of options to get a hold of their assigned servant, including calling the on-call administrator, using the house app to text or call the servant directly, or finally simply pushing the big yellow button with the word "service" on it, located on both bedside tables. There is a brochure explaining guest services in every guest room. In addition, all guests received a welcome text message with detailed instructions. The service button will activate a micro speaker that we all house staff have implanted into our eardrums for emergent messages. The message will be very loud for the servant who it is intended for but silent for everyone else even if the person is just inches away. It's like a permanent invisible Bluetooth headset. And somehow it doesn't need any battery -- I believe it uses body bio-currents or something like that as a source of energy. All I know for sure is that this thing is damn loud. It wakes you up immediately from even the deepest sleep; but it will never damage the ear or anything. We are expected to be in the room within 30 seconds after the service button is pushed. Anyways, thankfully Mr. Drew didn't push the button so far; neither did he request me otherwise. I knocked his door and said:
"Housekeeping, Mr. O'Toole. May I help you with anything, sir?"
"Yes."
I came in and saw that Mr. Drew was already fully dressed. It was a relief finding out that Mr. Drew apparently dresses up unassisted. His bags were surely unpacked which was obvious by clothes being thrown all over the room.
"Good afternoon, Mr. O'Toole. My name is DeShawn, I will be your personal servant sir."
"Yeah, I was about to page you. I need someone to shine my shoes before lunch which is in 10 minutes."
Mr. Drew was wearing brown full brogue shoes, which looked fine at a first glance but I suppose they were indeed not very crisp.
"Definitely sir, I'll be delighted to shine your shoes right now, sir. Would you mind to follow me to the shoeshine station sir, which is right down the hallway?"
"OK, you have five minutes."
When escorting Mr. Drew to our shoeshine chairs I was making a plan on how to best improve the look of Mr. Drew's shoes in just 5 minutes. I was pretty comfortable at shoe shining as it was taught quite well in the weekend housekeeping classes at the McColloughs' "Junior Domestic and Estate Academy" that I had a privilege to attend all the way through my middle school years.. At the end of the hallway there was an L-shaped extension with a little lounge that had two shoeshine chairs as well as some couches and sitting chairs. The lounge was empty at this time of the day. Mr. Drew immediately climbed into one of the shoeshine chairs and I quickly grabbed footrests and inserted them into the brackets for him. Mr. Drew put his feet on the footrests right away. It was obvious that Mr. Drew was well familiar with the shoeshine procedure. I mean with getting the shoeshine, not doing himself, of course.
"Would you like any beverage while I shine your shoes Mr. Drew?"
"Diet ginger ale."
"Yes sir."
Fortunately the refrigerator with refreshments was right there in the lounge. It took me only a few seconds to grab diet ginger ale, a glass, ice, napkins, and a straw for Mr. Drew. I also took a tiny piece of lime for myself. I served the drink at a side table next to Mr. Drew's chair. I then set down on my seat at the bottom of the shoeshine chair. Mr. Drew's shoes were now conveniently located just under my eye level. I quickly picked the necessary supplies from the drawer under the shoeshine chair, carefully rolled up Mr. Drew's slacks a bit, inserted sock protectors, and rolled the shoelaces inside. Mr. Drew was wearing navy socks with brown polka dots matching his navy slacks.
Meanwhile Mr. Drew was making a phone call on his cell. I was able to hear only Mr. Drew's part of the conversation initially:
"Jamal, who packed my bags?"
"...Who is that person?"
"...Was hired a month ago when I was at school? Then you should've done a better job either screening or orienting him."
"...What happened? First, the order is totally different from how Terrell used to pack my stuff. I wasted too much time finding the closing items that I needed. But I realized that we needed to talk when I saw these so-called dress shoes that he packed. I need to show you this shame. Face time me right now."
My face was now just few inches away from Mr. Drew's shoes and now I clearly saw what he meant. The shoes were probably not worn for a while and kept without a shoetree and not in a shoebox. Perhaps even not washed after the last time they were worn. Otherwise there were really no signs of wear and tear. Well, I should de-dust and clean the shoes first. I just wiped the right shoe with a tissue when Mr. Drew began face timing with his house manager. He was pointing at the shoes using the front camera of his phone. I was there in the video as well, of course. Mr. Drew also put Jamal the manager on speaker.
"Do you see what I have to be dealing with when I need to be at lunch already?"
"I profoundly apologize for this totally unacceptable situation sir, and please be assured that I will take a proper corrective action on him, sir. I am glad that you were able to find a shoe shiner sir, so that this inconvenience can be mitigated."
I was about to start cleaning the left shoe, but it looked like Mr. Drew wanted to give Jamal even a closer look at his shoes. Well, at this point at the left shoe, because the right one looked much better already. Mr. Drew took his left foot off the footrest and crossed his left ankle over his right knee.
"That's not the point Jamal. Just look at this:
Mr. Drew was now showing Jamal a very close up view of his left shoe. Mr. Drew grabbed one of the napkins from his side table and swiped his left shoe on camera. The napkin was visibly dusty and there was this dust-free line on the shoe.
"Do you see this shit Jamal? It's the first time in my entire life I am seeing anything like that."
"I immensely regret this totally unacceptable situation sir, and I will investigate immediately what happened."
Mr. Drew thankfully returned his left foot on the footrest and I was able to continue cleaning his left shoe. Mr. Drew also tossed that dirty napkin that he used to show Jamal how dusty his shoes were and threw it down somewhere in my direction. It actually touched my forehead as it flew down and landed on the floor in front of me. I picked the napkin and put it in the trash. I also quickly grabbed a hand sanitizer and offered it to Mr. Drew, who took some and sanitized his left hand after it possibly touched his dusty shoe. Meanwhile I was applying the cleansing foam on both shoes. Mr. Drew took a sip of his ginger ale and continued:
"Strongly consider firing this individual, Jamal. I can't imagine we could make any use of such an idiot. In the unlikely event he is staying make sure he gets the message and never serves me personally again."
"Yes sir, absolutely, I definitely will."
"Let me know in two hours. Also, hasn't my dad instructed you to keep me in the loop when hiring any new stuff?"
"Yes sir, and I believe you were cc'd on the respectful chain of emails, sir."
"I haven't seen anything and you know that I live a busy life these days with school and all the other stuff. Did you get my approval for hiring him?"
"I don't believe so sir, and I will make sure this doesn't happen again. I am very, very sorry sir."
"Jamal, it is not sufficient to cc me on some kind of email for things like that. All new hires must be approved by me, period. My father will grant a final approval, of course. It was especially outrageous in this case because the individual apparently was supposed to be providing some personal service directly to me."
"Yes sir, I..."
"I didn't finish." -- Mr. Drew indeed just took a moment to take another sip of his ginger ale and continued:
"I wanted to make it very clear that it is your responsibility to reach out to me and to get my instructions on stuff like that no matter where in the world I am. Also, I still haven't heard from you who will be managing my schedule in Terrel's absence. I want to go over all my footwear on Monday afternoon to see what needs to be thrown away or added."
"Sir, I have iden.."
"I don't want to spend any more time on this conversation right now. I will be checking my phone in two hours and will read your messages then." -- Mr. Drew hang up, got some more ginger ale, and started checking stuff on his phone."
Jamal was O'Tool's house manager, and Terrel was Mr. Drew's assistant since Mr. Drew was little; I knew both of them. Jamal was a very respected housekeeper in his early 60s but still very energetic. Jamal was in his late 30s, I believe, and I heard that he was in a car accident recently and had some injuries that were not life threatening but required some rehab. So Terrel was probably still not back to work and Jamal found someone to replace him for Mr. Drew, but this new dude clearly screwed up with his very first task. It seems that Jamal still didn't fully acknowledge the emerging leadership role of Mr. Drew. While Mr. Drew was only twenty, his father apparently decided to begin gradually transitioning some of the leadership responsibilities to Mr. Drew. I kinda liked how Mr. Drew talked to Jamal -- respectful to his old loyal servant but firm, confident, and clear. Despite the outrageous mess Mr. Drew didn't yell on Jamal or anything. It was also helpful that Mr. Drew didn't move his feet during the conversation (except when he was showing his dusty shoe to Jamal on his phone). Some gentlemen begin involuntary wiggling their toes, shaking or flexing their feet when they get deeply into a sensitive conversations, which pose an additional challenge for their shoe-shiner. Fortunately, this was not the case for Mr. Drew, reflecting his confidence.
While Mr. Drew was talking to Jamal, I first cleaned his shoes with the cleansing foam, then dried them up, and applied some polish using my fingers. It's really much better to use fingers to apply the shoe polish rather than a polish cloth or a welt brush. You will feel the texture of the shoe much better with your fingers and will distribute the polish more evenly. Anyway, that's how we do it here at McColloughs' house. I then buffed both shoes with two buffing brushes. Despite time constraints I still wanted to give Mr. Drew our signature spit-shine finish.
We are proud to use only our real saliva for the spit shines here at McColough's house. Saliva gives a much better effect than water and it's better for the leather. There are essentially three methods we practice to apply our spit on the shoes: we can either literally spit on them, or use the tissue, or.. well, use our wet tongue directly on the shoes. Spitting is only appropriate when we shine shoes in advance (not the ones worn on the gentlemen's feet at the time of a shoe shine). The `tongue-wash' of the shoes is actually preferred whenever possible. We must use antibacterial mouthwash before licking shoes (or before spitting on them), to make sure no bacteria from our mouths get on the shoes, or, god forbid, on the gentleman's skin. We are, of course, very careful when spit shining upper quarters or that small piece of the shoe tongue under the laces. However, as I said, there is always a chance that the gentleman might unexpectedly move feet, and this is when the accidents tend to happen. It might gross Mr. Drew out to see or feel my saliva on his socks. This may be even more of an issue when a gentleman wears shoes sockless or uses true no-show socks, which becomes more and more common. Also, we don't usually use the tongue method to spit shine the guests' shoes during in-person shoe-shines, unless directly requested. This is because some of our guests may not be used to this method, while others might find it too personal or even intrusive -- some gentlemen don't feel comfortable when servants' heads are too close to their bodies (even to such a remote part of the body as feet).
Well, obviously I didn't get a chance to sanitize my mouth immediately before starting Mr. Drew's shoeshine. Also I didn't know if Mr. Drew was going to be comfortable with a tongue based spit shine. Therefore I went for the third method and started wetting special tissue pads with my saliva and quickly applying it on Mr. Drew's shoes. Those pads have antimicrobial filling so it's quite safe from the sanitation standpoint. I also started chewing that piece of lime to stimulate my salivation. Once shoes were covered with my spit all over I started buffing them with a soft cloth.
This was when Mr. Drew finished his conversation with Jamal and also was apparently done with checking messages on his phone.
"Are you almost done down there?" -- Mr. Drew asked me.
"Yes sir, just few more seconds please".
I buffed the shoes few more times all over and was overall satisfied with the result, of course considering such a short amount of time I was given. The only possible issue that required some fixing was that the toe of the right shoe looked just a bit less glossy than that of the left shoe. I literally had just few seconds and Mr. Drew might have been looking at me now. Yet I decided to take a risk and gave Mr. Drew's right shoe few licks over that toe area and then I quickly buffed just the right shoe again. I think the shoes now looked equal. Mr. Drew did not show any signs of dissatisfaction with me licking his right shoe, at least verbally. I removed sock protectors, and pulled out the shoelaces. Mr. Drew was wearing mid-calf socks which were a bit sagging, and I quickly pulled the socks up. I then unrolled Mr. Drew's slacks, and said:
"I am done, sir. Thank you for the opportunity to shine your shoes, sir."
As Mr. Drew was getting off the chair, he pulled out his wallet, pulled something from it and.. thrown it on the floor in front of me. I now saw that it was a five-dollar bill -- my tip! This was so kind of Mr. Drew!
"Thank you sir!"
Mr. Drew was already on his way out to lunch. He told me already from the hallway:
"Now go make up all that mess in my room. Find out if that idiot even packed any gym gear. I may have time for the gym in the afternoon."
Feedback and suggestions are greatly appreciated, MalikWhiteSC@gmail.com