My Upgoer Five job description, and also my life description

[gominokouhai]

Manage.

What? I defy anyone to claim that isn't totally valid.

Oh, all right.

I run a place where people pay me money to stay over night. The money goes to people in a bigger business in a big city, and I can use some of it to pay my people for the work that they do. I make sure that the rooms are clean, that the breakfast is made well, that the people who stay here can learn all they need to know about the city they're staying in, that enough people stay with us, and that enough money goes to the people who own the building. Sometimes I have problems making enough money, because the place I live is a city that has ups and downs, and the people in the bigger city who own the building don't always understand that. But I am most interested in making sure that the people who stay with us are happy, and that they will come and stay with us again.

I have to make sure that we don't spend too much money on stupid shit, but only on things we need. I also have to make sure that my people are doing what they are told to do. This bit is the hardest.

There are other things too.

(Created using the Up-goer Five Text Editor, using only the ten hundred most used words in the English language, according to some arbitrary corpus that isn't the one I would have picked had I been in charge of this bloody silly meme. Alas I don't get to be in charge of memes, only hotels.)

(Words I was not allowed to use: business, company, spreadsheet, and enantiodromian.)

Comments

[davegodfrey]

Because it uses an American dictionary I had to go with "I tell people where the big dead things are, and where the great white phone to God is".

[spiralsheep]

In the bad old days it was not so bad:
The top of the ladder
Was an amusing place to sit; success
Meant quite a lot—leisure
And huge meals, more palaces filled with more
Objects, books, girls, horses
Than one would ever get round to, and to be
Carried uphill while seeing
Others walk. To rule was a pleasure when
One wrote a death-sentence
On the back fo the Ace of Spades and played on
With a new deck.

- The Managers (extract), by W.H. Auden

[gominokouhai]

Thank you for this. I'm starting to enjoy this poetry larkin [typo retained for ironic amusement value] my old age. He has such a wonderful turn of phrase, although I don't think I'm quite who Wystan had in mind there.

[nanila]

... according to some arbitrary corpus that isn't the one I would have picked had I been in charge of this bloody silly meme.

Ah, but you did discover that "shit" is among the ten hundred most used words. Nice one.

[gominokouhai]

Everyone knows the first thing one does when presented with a dictionary is to go through it for the naughty words. "Shit" and "fuck" are both in there, as is "ass" (but not "arse"). The ten hundred most used words are derived from US fiction: I suspect if they'd used a newspaper corpus it wouldn't have been the same, except perhaps if it was the Guardian.

[nanila]

Perhaps they should have used Blackadder.

"Baldrick, 'turnip' isn't a dirty word."
"It is if you sit on one."