"I think that place is really hurting your soul," the doctor tells me.

I always wondered what that feeling was. The way my stomach aches and clenches from stress as I get ready to go to my job. That resigned sense of dread as I enter the dingy lobby. The mixture of pity and disappointment I feel for every sucker who walks in during my shift. The sheer exhaustion that sets in halfway through, no matter how much sleep I got beforehand. And finally, the weight that lifts from my shoulders when my shift is over. My mother tells me I'm too sensitive. She doesn't have to work there, and she certainly would never stay there.

Why does anyone stay here? I always think to myself as the meaningless hours creep by. When will they finally shut this place down?

=============================

There are ghosts here. I can feel them.

Not the ghosts of people, although some have died in this building. I sense the ghosts of things, emotions. The muted crunch of tires on gravel from suspicious cars coming through the parking lot. The nervous rustle of cash handed over by cheating husbands. The shadows of people gesturing angrily, arguing about nothing outside their doors. Echoes of their betrayal, apathy, and disregard for their fellow man resonate within me.

Before I started working here, a man went crazy in one of our rooms. In the middle of a party he was throwing, he pulled a gun and held all his guests hostage. Then as they all had to watch, he forced himself on underage girls who had done nothing wrong except to be there. He went to jail, but he deserved worse. That night was the death knell of this business; we just haven't accepted it yet.

These are the things that haunt me when I come to the job. I can't make them go away, and maybe I don't want to. Maybe part of us takes some morbid comfort in watching a system slowly break down and destabilize around us. But entropy as an entertainment form has its limits, and I have reached mine.

This hotel is finished. It deserves to be finished.

=============================

Like so many others all over the country, this place is falling apart because nobody cares. Not its former corporate owners who let it fall into decay and disrepute over 34 years. Not its new owners who won't pay a cent to renovate the outdated, smelly rooms. Not the GM who has given up. Not the other employees, one of whom is running sleazy side businesses out of the lobby.

And not the guests. I think they're the ones who depress me most of all. From what I can see, many of them live in a troubled, disorganized, apathetic state--just like the business itself. Maybe that's what draws them here. They come and they linger and they go, not caring what they leave behind. But I do. It's all around me. I couldn't ignore it if I wanted to.

They deserve better than this place, I might think in sympathy. Or this place deserves better than them, I might think in outrage. But maybe these people and this hotel deserve each other. I know at least one person who does deserve better, and it's the guy in the mirror.

That's why I'm leaving. After two years of wading through others' accumulated misery, I will be starting a new job. To paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson: when that day comes, I will flee this hotel forever, like a rat from a burning ship.

A change will do me good, indeed.