After her overloaded schedule this past year I was afraid she would be bored during any downtim, especially since there are only five girls staying in the house. I suggested she take a class to get a hard one out of the way, but she opted for taking on a second and third job instead.

People always ask me if she works so much because she pays for her schooling. She doesn’t, only her sorority costs and spending money. However, she spends a lot of money!

She does get over a little bit though. We just got next fall’s tuition bill in the mail and I thought it had gone up again until I looked at the itemized list and saw that they had included her parking tickets!

Besides the hotel front desk position, she also works at Subway and a gas station convenience store. Several days a week she works nine to three at one place and three to eleven at another. Luckily they are two blocks apart and she has permission to clock out of the first a few minutes early to change and get to her next job.

John and I were laughing trying to remember the old TV show about a small town where the same person worked in every position. We think it was Petticoat Junction or Green Acres. We have visions of a tourist coming into Dillsboro: Brittany checks them in to the hotel their first night. The next day they decide to stop in for a sub and there’s Brittany again making their sandwich. Later they fill their car with gas and there she is again ringing them up!

I just read an article about the Millennials, the group of kids born after 1982 and how bosses need to re-think their job force because these kids refuse to “pay their dues” doing menial jobs. Brittany has never been like that, whether she is unloading a busload of suitcases for a group staying at the hotel or hosing down the floor and scrubbing bathrooms at Subway — she’s always done what needed to be done.

John and I visted her for Father’s Day weekend. We decided if we stayed at her hotel, let her feed us lunch and filled the car up with gas before coming home, we’d be able to share some quality time with her.

I also wanted to talk her into using a different name on each of her work nametags. It would be fun to mess with customers just a little. I was thinking maybe: Billie Jo, Bobbie Jo and Betty Jo.

(Nancy Geiger lives in Hickory and is a free-lance writer.)