Coveralls

There was a time, a few months ago, that my job had me working on a special project in one of Canada's biggest cities.  Because of the amazing corporate rates, a large number of us were staying at one of the fanciest hotels in that city.  Full suites with bottled water and chocolates on the pillow fancy.  Dress code fancy, although they made an exception for our interesting mix of blue-and-white collar workers, because we mostly just waited for the rest of the crew in the lobby in the morning and then drove to work and put on coveralls anyway.  It was the kind of hotel where one morning the group decided to partake in the continental breakfast, and the hotel put them in a "special" room so they didn't offend the other guests with their sweatpants and baseball caps.

So anyway while working on this project, my Saskatchewan co-workers and I got to know some of the contractors brought in for the project pretty well (I'm going to change names for anonymity of my job on the internet).  In particular, a Brazilian man named "Carlos" had taken quite a strong liking to my friend "Amy", proposing to her on multiple occasions, telling he loved her every few minutes, and asking why she didn't want to be with him because he would give her anything she wanted.  I am not making this up.  There was another young man named "Joshua" who we worked with quite a bit who, while a good worker, was a rather annoying person whose girlfriend called him at work all the time and he was a huge jerk to her on the phone in front of everyone.  He was 23 but his voice had not changed and he had a blonde teen-stache that was obviously his only growable facial hair, so he appeared to be around 13-15 years old.  One time, he struggled to pull earplugs out of his ears, wincing in pain because somehow he had wedged them in too far.  Again, I am not making is up.  I did think his girlfriend was fake for a while until she started calling him all the time, because let's just say Joshua was the type of guy you wouldn't expect to have a serious girlfriend, let alone one who allowed him to treat her like that.  He wasn't the biggest catch I've ever met, that's for sure.

One day at work Joshua and Carlos mentioned that they wanted to hang out with us in the evening, and somehow Amy committed us to going for cheesecake with them.  They said they would meet us at our hotel half an hour after work.  I immediately committed another co-worker, "Alan", into joining us because I did not want to be on an accidental double date with Joshua and Carlos.  Especially since Carlos was clearly trying to match up with Amy, who knows what Joshua's girlfriend would do to me if she found out I went on a double date with her man.

As we were pulling out of the parking lot after work, we saw Joshua and Carlos getting into Joshua's car with their dirty coveralls on.  "Do those guys ever take their coveralls off?" asked someone in the vehicle.  We all laughed.

Half an hour later, I was sitting in the lobby of the hotel with Alan, who I had just convinced NOT to ditch out on the almost-double date at the last minute.  Suddenly, into the lobby marched Joshua...

IN HIS COVERALLS.  "Hey guys!  Where's the bathroom??" he announced loudly.  All the super rich people stared.  Alan showed him to the bathroom, where I hoped he was planning on changing.  Nope.  Out he marched again.  "That is one fancy bathroom!"  The front desk staff was looking horrified.  The security guard didn't seem to know whether he should escort this dirty-coverall-adorned teenager out of the lobby or not.  We told Joshua we'd meet him at his car as soon as Amy came down, so he left, and 10 minutes later we found him stripping out of his coveralls beside his car about a block away from the hotel.

I wonder if that hotel will ever let us back.