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I guess our first objective when we visited the Artists Inn was to find out if we were somehow wildly out of step with our assessment of the owners' policies at the Lord Mayor's Inn. We were confident that our commonsense approach to guests (our belief that they were paying the freight so they deserved every reasonable consideration and cooperation) was the right one, but our clashes with the "owners here" had become so frequent that an occasional nagging doubt would creep in.
One day, Laura somehow managed to come up with the straw that broke this camel's back and I laid into her (verbally!) with a force that had even me scared. Jen was downright gob-smacked, as they say in England--she'd always told me that she envied my even temper and my constant if sometimes seemingly unwarranted sunny optimism, and when I'd done venting at Laura, she said that it was the first time in almost 30 years together that she had ever seen me lose my rag.
The flame that lit the fuse was Laura's constant negativism and mean-spiritedness, which was at least directed at everyone...not only was her meek little husband not spared, but he was her most consistent target.
During Reuben's illness, Jenny and I visited him at the recovery center and took along a CD player and a selection of classical music discs, knowing that the was a huge fan of Mozart in particular.
When we handed over the gift, he seemed a little nervous about accepting it, and we later discovered that he had been allowed a mere four hours of enjoyment of it before Laura took it away from him, saying that it was "inappropriate" that he permit us to make his time in recuperation more enjoyable.
She did not return it to us--she kept it hidden away somewhere until Reuben was back on his feet. Hell's bells!
I remembered that one of the things I did for the Brassers was help them get full use from the DVD hookup to their TV in their new loft in the Walker Building, a few blocks away from the Inn, on Pine Avenue.
I walked them repeatedly through the very uncomplicated steps required to watch a movie, and did not leave until I was confident that they would have no problems in future.
Weeks later, I asked Reuben how he and Laura were enjoying the option to choose their own TV entertainment, and he told me that they had somehow pressed the wrong button and could no longer get the DVD player to work. I asked him why on earth he didn't ask me to fix the problem for him, and he said mournfully that Laura felt my duties at the LMI had to take top priority and it would be wrong to distract me from them!!!
Here was this soft-spoken, seemingly gentle woman who dressed like an escapee from Little House on the Prairie, and behind the mask was a bitter person who was apparently affronted by anyone who was not as miserable as she was. No wonder Reuben was terrified of her...
We learned from Dennis and Jody, then the Innkeepers at the Artists Inn in South Pasadena--employees, not owners--that the Brassers' behavior and attitudes were unlike anything they had ever come across and so, most important, we were not going mad!
Better yet, we discovered that the two of them were expecting to move on sometime soon, hoping that their retirement would coincide with the sale of the AI to one of several potential buyers.
The South Pasadena B&B had at that time been on the market for six to eight years, and when we finally met the owner, Janet Marangi, she explained that she had just celebrated her 70th birthday and had decided that she had better things to do with the rest of her life than worrying about the day-to-day operation of a bed and breakfast inn.
Dennis and Jody were amused by Janet's portrayal of herself as someone engaged fulltime in the inn's operation--they said they very rarely consulted her about anything and felt it was their job to make it possible for her to spend little or no time visiting the place. In fact, things went smoothest when the owner wasn't around!
Jenny and I felt envious of anyone able to do what we had dreamed so long about doing without interference from owners determined to enforce unworkable--in fact, counterproductive--management policies.
We dropped a heavy hint that if none of the pending sales went through and Dennis and Jody still wanted to move on, we'd like to be considered as their replacements.
Sure enough, after a few weeks, Dennis and Jody decided to recommend us to Janet, who in turn rang around a few local connections whose phone numbers we had supplied just in case.
One of them was an old friend who in recent years had become the premier caterer in the Pasadena area, and Peggy's glowing reference bowled Janet over and got us the job.
Our new boss explained that the position might only last a few weeks because several people were interested in buying the business, and one was on the brink of making an offer.
The offer was made by a couple who believed that they could run a B&B while separately servicing busy jobs in the movie business...and then just as quickly, they saw sense, and the deal collapsed.
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