Lightening a heavy week with humor, Ammo Grrrll wonders WHAT’S UP WITH HOTELS? We are grateful for her wondering. She writes:
Just one of the many problems with travel is that, unless you have relatives who are still speaking to you after the Trump election – spaced every three or four hundred miles — you’re going to need a place to stop for the night. Back in the day, there were such things as inns and roadhouses where – depending on how FAR back you go – you were as likely to be robbed and slain as to get a good night’s rest in a lice-ridden bed with a mattress of straw.
I do not know whether this is made up or not, but I have read that the derivation of the word “TIP” (as in a gratuity left for service people), is from an acronym for a basket at the foot of the stairs of such inns on which was a broad hint: “To Insure Promptness.”
In the great movie (both versions) True Grit, young Maddie has to stay in an old lady’s boardinghouse and – since all available rooms are already occupied – share a double bed with an even older snoring female stranger. Fun! Apparently, this was fairly common. (In at least one documented instance, Abraham Lincoln had to share a bed with another man, which caused some idiot DEI “historian” to assert that – like virtually EVERY LAST ONE OF US, according to the Alphabet Crowd – Lincoln was gay.)
But, as usual, I digress. My sister once watched some kind of wretched documentary on the unhygienic nature of most hotels, with secret cameras watching Housekeeping personnel washing out the plastic drinking glasses with the same rag with which they cleaned the tub and the like. Since I was often on the road for comedy 10 or 15 days of the month and preferred to know “nothing” in the manner of Sgt. Schultz, I opted not to watch the documentary. Besides, that plastic glass is wrapped in Saran Wrap – if you can’t trust THAT and the strip across your toilet, what CAN you trust?
I realize that people often read this column while eating breakfast, so I will only enigmatically remind people that during the Kobe Bryant trial over an alleged assault in a hotel room, that the pricey room was gone over thoroughly for forensic evidence of a male’s happy ending and some 75 such DIFFERENT DNA samples were found in the room, including on the remote control. Which is only one reason why I do not watch TV in hotel rooms.
All comedians start out having to stay in terrible hotel rooms or condos rented by club owners. I have stayed in motels where I am quite certain they didn’t expect anyone to stay the WHOLE night, if you catch my drift. Motto: “Sure it’s a dump, but your car can’t be seen from the highway.”
In the club owner’s condo, everything that could possibly be stolen – small black and white televisions from 1975 – were either bolted down or chained to a large I-beam. Once there was a note on the ironing board: IF THIS ITEM IS MISSING, IT WILL BE BILLED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD.
Now I imagine in our idiotic youth where “Stickin’ it to the Man” was cool, many of us made off with one Holiday Inn towel. (And yet, somehow, Holiday Inn is still in business!) But – an IRONING BOARD? First of all, would anyone inclined to steal an ironing board even have any use for one? And, secondly, the logistics of the crime alone are daunting. What? You appear at the check-out desk in the morning with the ironing board wrapped in your bathrobe?
“Uh, sir, that is our Motel 3 ironing board.”
“No. This is my surfboard.”
“Uh, sir, we are in NEBRASKA. Where did you plan to surf? Please take possession of the ugly bathrobe and step away from the ironing board. Don’t make me wake up Bubba in Security over a $2.00 ironing board. He is large and very cranky.”
I have never once in my life written a critical Yelp Review of any hotel or service experience. I always figure anybody can have a bad day and hate to cause a person to become unemployed or an enterprise to go out of business. But, hoteliers, I have questions…
Okay, let’s start with the lights. Sure, I realize that you think people use a hotel room for only two things and one is to sleep, so who needs light, right? Well, I do, that’s who. I need to read and write, whether working on a comedy set back in the day or a column today. I need to do Sudoku in order to fall asleep. It is my non-addictive form of Ambien.
I applaud most national chains on their installation of MULTIPLE plug-ins and charger units. But, please, a couple of 15-watt appliance bulbs such as one might find in a refrigerator are not going to illuminate an entire room. Do better!
Yes, Virginia, some people still do take baths. Here I know I am waging a losing battle on the proverbial wrong side of history. Shower stalls take up less space, probably use less water, and it appears that nobody under 70 takes baths. In the not-too-distant future, all of us happy bathers will be dead. So I know this Boomer Bather has to let this one go.
But no, I will not let go the quality of the paper goods in even the finest hotels. I realize that many people are larcenous and will just go ahead and STEAL better toilet paper, even when not in some kind of artificial COVID toilet paper drought. But I imagine a conversation between the Financial Guy and the Purchasing Guy at Marriott:
“Yeah, Frank, this is Ralph in Accounts Payable. We are noticing that one-ply toilet paper has just gone up a hundredth of a cent per roll and we are wondering if there is any kind of half-ply deal you could find, maybe from Romania or Chad? Something with more of a tissue paper feel to it? Maybe something with visible twigs embedded in it?”
I have finally solved this, as faithful readers learned last week, by just bringing my own Precious — Cottonelle 2-Ply Ultra-Soft. Also Aloe-filled real Kleenex. The conversation between Accounting and Purchasing continues:
“Yeah, Frank, while I got you on the line – you know the bathroom faucets, right? Well, sometimes the spout going into the bowl is as much as two inches long. That spout sometimes extends as much as a quarter inch over the bowl where some of the water can run INTO the bowl instead of all over the flat surface surrounding the bowl in a kind of perfect flood plain. I been talking with the guys and – hear me out, Frank!
“They think we could shave off another eighth of an inch – saving $0.019 PER SPOUT, Frank, times a gazillion rooms in our world-wide chain – and guaranteeing that no water would ever again reach the bowl without getting the sink user’s pajamas all wet. Do the math, Frank. $0.019 times a gazillion. The boys here in Accounting are darned excited about it…”
