CHAPTER 1 - RUB-A-DUB-DUB, A GROM HOGS THE TUB
So here's what happens on the first morning after grom initiation as the summer staff at Surfer's Paradise (including the new groms) settle into their jobs and life around the hotel. On a note, the third part of this chapter is a take on what happened to Lo in "The Captain, The Grom, His Job and Her Dream", but since Lo is still working at the Pirate Ship and was never transferred to Housekeeping in my fanon storyline, Sabrina (one of my new groms) subs for Lo as the reluctant maid/willing slacker here.
"Come on, hurry up in there!"
"We don't have all morning!"
"Some of us have to work, you know!"
Those were some of the remarks made by some of the female summer staff waiting in a lineup outside the bathroom on the third floor of the staff house at Surfer's Paradise Hotel. Seniors Fin, Kelly, Lo and Emma, groms Ash Harvey and Bonnie Spencer and several other staff members were waiting impatiently in the queue because Sabrina Dunn, the third of the female groms to arrive at the hotel late last month, had locked the bathroom door and was currently taking a bubble bath in the bathtub inside. The staff's impatience was growing because, besides locking out everyone else, Sabrina had been taking her time in the bathtub for over half an hour and made no indication of being ready to finish her bath.
Fin, who was at the head of the bathroom lineup, knocked at the door. "Come on, Sabrina, hurry up!" she called while knocking. "I gotta go to the can!"
"Occupied," Sabrina replied non-chalantly in a sing-song voice from inside the bathroom.
"Hey, your Royal Highness," Ash, the girl with the purple-dyed dreadlocks, called from further back in the lineup. "When you gotta pee, you gotta pee!"
"You ever hear of holding it in?" Sabrina called back.
"I'm serious, Sabrina!" Fin said. "Finish up in there and open the door so I can go!"
"I will, when I'm done," Sabrina said.
"Oh, yeah?" Lo then said. "When's that?"
"When I feel like it," Sabrina said casually, still not caring about anyone else outside the bathroom.
"Ooohh, that's it!" a frustrated Fin said as she left the lineup to head toward the stairwell. "No more fooling around, I'm going downstairs!"
"You mean to the bathroom on the boys' floor?" Lo said, referring to the second floor facilities. "You sure about that?"
"Right now, I don't care, I'm desperate!" Fin said before sprinting off to go downstairs.
Kelly, next in line after Fin, then moved to the front of the line and began pounding on the bathroom door with her fist. "Okay, Sabrina, if you don't get out of the tub and out of the bathroom right now, I'm gonna kick the door in and drag you out by your hair!" the Pirate Ship manager yelled outside the door to the snobby blonde girl. "You got one minute, starting now!" she added, checking her watch.
"You wouldn't dare!" Sabrina called from inside the bathroom. "A minute's not fast enough! What if you do and I'm still naked in here?"
"I'll take that chance," Kelly replied. "Forty-five seconds!" A few moments later, she then called, "Thirty seconds, Sabrina!" While waiting, Kelly heard the sound of water starting to drain out of the bathtub. "Fifteen seconds!" She then raised her right foot up, preparing to follow through on her threat to kick the bathroom door in if Sabrina did not get out. "Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two..."
As Kelly reached two in her countdown, the lock on the bathroom door unlocked and the door swung open, then Sabrina, who was clad only in a white towel wrapped around her body and another one around her hair, stormed out of the bathroom in a huff. "Sheesh, couldn't wait, could you?" she grumbled as Kelly and the others glared at her while she walked down the hall to her room.
"'bout blasted time," Ash quipped as she and Kelly then ducked into the bathroom to brush their teeth at the two sinks, while Lo went in at the same time to use the bathtub herself. Moments later though, a displeased Lo came back out and yelled down the hall, "Sabrina, you left a ring around the bathtub!"
"Not my problem," Sabrina replied dismissively with a shrug of her shoulders.
"You're supposed to clean the tub after you use it," Lo said. "You expect me or the others to use a dirty bathtub after you've used it and left it that way?"
"So use the shower stall," Sabrina retorted before she went into her room to dress up for work.
"Use the shower? Yeah right, that'll be the day," a chagrined Lo, who preferred bubble baths over showers, muttered as she ducked back into the bathroom, left with no choice but to clean the tub to get rid of the ring Sabrina had left around it.
Meanwhile on the second floor, Reef was on his way to the bathroom there, preparing to comb and style his hair into his favored quiff style using his hair gel in front of the mirror when, just as he was about to step through the doorway, Fin suddenly dashed in front of him and into the bathroom, slammed the door shut and locked it. "Hey, what gives?" Reef yelled at the door while knocking on it. "I gotta do my hair!"
"It can wait, pretty boy," Fin called back. "Pee takes precedence over hair!"
"What're you doing in there, anyway?" Reef then said. "This is supposed to be the boys' bathroom."
"Tell that to Sabrina," Fin replied from inside. "I'd be upstairs now if she wasn't hogging the bathroom there." When he heard that, Reef facepalmed himself, secretly cursing Sabrina for her indirect part in keeping him from getting to use the bathroom.
Later on in a trashed guest room at the hotel, Sabrina, who was supposed to be cleaning that room as part of her housekeeping duties, was instead watching a trashy daytime talk show on the room's widescreen TV while helping herself to a bowl of the pillow chocolates she was supposed to put on the guest beds. She was laughing at the antics of the talk show guests and rooting for the fights that sometimes broke out on the show while she sat back against the bed's headboard, when...
The sound of the room door's doorknob turning, then the door creaking open, caught Sabrina by surprise, then she looked to the doorway and saw a shadowy figure enter the room. "What?! Who is it?" she said tersely to the figure, not appreciating having her TV time interrupted.
The figure flicked the room light on, revealing herself as Rosie, the hotel's head of Housekeeping. "I'm your new cleaning partner," she said to Sabrina with a serious look.
"What?!" a stunned Sabrina piped up.
"Yeah, you're taking over Fin's old job here since Fin got moved to teaching surfing, remember?" Rosie said while handing Sabrina a feather duster and a bucket of cleaning supplies. "Now drop the bonbons and grab a mop, missy!"
"Oh, great," Sabrina said sarcastically under her breath while slumping her shoulders, not feeling thrilled about having her chance to slack off on the job ruined by Rosie appointing herself her new partner on cleaning detail.
At the Pirate Ship around lunchtime, Kelly was on her way to get a customer order from the pick-up window when Bummer came along, carrying a soup bowl with him. "Hey, what's with this clam chowder?" Bummer demanded to know, showing Kelly the bowl's contents.
Kelly took a brief look at the chowder in the bowl. "Looks fine to me," she said with a shrug.
"Are you nuts?" Bummer said, showing Kelly the bowl again. "I took a taste of this after I got my order and there's something off about it."
"So take it up with Chef then," Kelly responded. "That's his department."
"Okay, now I know you're kidding me," an incredulous Bummer said while putting the chowder down on the pick-up window ledge.
"How?" Kelly asked. "There haven't been any complaints from other customers who ordered the chowder. They seem to like it, so maybe it's just you. But if you don't like it, tell it to Chef like I said."
"You think I'm going to tell him that what he's calling chowder looks, tastes and smells like that pig swill I fed to the groms last year for their meals?" stated Bummer, who quickly regretted what he said when his comment caught Chef's attention from the kitchen.
"Hey, keep your comments about ze clam chowdaire to yourself!" the French-accented voice of Chef yelled from the kitchen. "Eef you don't like my cookeeng, zen don't eat eet!" Chef's arm then appeared in the pick-up window, grabbed the soup bowl and dumped its contents on top of Bummer's head, causing Kelly to jump back a step to avoid getting her pirate captain uniform splashed by the chowder.
Looking at Bummer with the soup bowl on top of his head like a hat and the chowder dripping from his head onto his uniform, Kelly had to giggle at the sight. "Nice, Bummer," she quipped at the ex-day manager-turned-assistant concierge before walking by him to deliver her customer order.
"I hate this job sometimes," Bummer muttered to himself about his current staff position while rolling his eyes, then he walked off to the staff locker room to change his uniform and get cleaned up.
Up next, Sabrina gets introduced to the realities of working for a living, and ill-chosen words by Bummer create a mess for Kelly at the Pirate Ship.
Stoked (c) Fresh TV Inc. and Teletoon. I don't own the show or any of the characters except my OCs.
Comments and reviews are welcome.