I just got home from a week at your beautiful hotel and I had the most fantastic time! Everybody was incredible! Dan at the front desk and Samantha in guest services and the entire housekeeping staff! Everyone felt like family! I can’t say enough good things about this amazing property! It was all perfect! I only have a few small quibbles that aren’t even worth mentioning.
- Every time I called down to the front desk for ice, it rang a really long time and nobody answered so I ended up drinking my Diet Coke without ice in the glass and I don’t enjoy it half as much that way. Then when I did go down to the lobby I’d see the front desk clerks happily chatting with each other and I wanted to scream why doesn’t anybody pick up the fucking phone but instead I just said, “Have a nice night, guys.” And why isn’t the ice replenished daily in the little ice bucket that you put in the room that I only notice is empty once I’ve already opened the Diet Coke? Anyway, not a big thing.
- No matter what time of day it was whenever I needed to get back in my room that’s when housekeeping seemed to be there. And they weren’t just leaving either. I was beginning to think it was being done to punish me. Or I was on some hidden camera show. That’s how ridiculous it got. (And on top of that, most nights they did the turndown service before I even left for dinner.) Can you imagine what it’s like to return to your room at 2:00 P.M. to use the bathroom or just, like, take a minute for yourself and they’re still cleaning it? Then I’d leave again and by the time I come back they’ve already done the turndown service! It became a constant source of anxiety. I was afraid to go back to the room because I knew from the end of the hallway I’d see the special “housekeeping is in the room” thing they’d put on the doorknob and I didn’t want to get irritated. Sometimes it just feels like my timing is off. Like I’m having an off day and everything is timed wrong and I can never quite get back on track. This could be related to that. Or it’s not happening every day but it just seems like it’s happening every day. Does that make any sense? Or it happened before and maybe it just happened once on this trip but because it’s happened before it made it seem like more times. That could’ve also been what happened with the ice, too, now that I think about it. I guess the bottom line is I was always expecting someone to be in my room whenever I went back to it because of the accumulation of all the previous times that someone has been in my room when I returned to it over the years. And maybe it was just once that there was someone in there but it felt like many more times. I think that’s what I’m getting at. Regardless, I felt anxious. Like, A LOT OF THE TIME, because of it. But they were lovely and the room was always spotless!
- I went down to the lobby bar one night for a drink and waited forty-five minutes for someone to take my order. And when the server did finally come over he behaved as if I was the one who should be taking his order. But I just laughed and said, “No worries, it’s just that I’ve been waiting a really long time and now I’ve got to leave for dinner in ten minutes so don’t bother, I don’t want anything now.” Then the rest of my night I thought of my passive-aggressive comment. And how I didn’t really have to leave for dinner in ten minutes and felt kind of shitty. And then I thought, why am I feeling shitty, I used to be a waiter, I know what it’s like and I was never rude to anyone. Okay, maybe I wasn’t waiting forty-five minutes, but it was still way more time than a person should have to wait. He took a long time to come over to me after he saw me give him the hand gesture that says, “Hey, hi, whenever you have a chance I’m ready to order, thanks,” even though he pretended he didn’t see it and made me feel stupid to the people who saw me give the hand gesture and saw him not seeing it. I’m sorry, “acting” like he didn’t see it. Look, I was a waiter. I pretended not to see things all the time. So believe me, I recognize it when I see it. Or maybe he didn’t really see me. I suppose that’s possible. He would have had no way of knowing that I wasn’t going to be just another jerk. I know how many of those you have to deal with, having been a waiter myself. I just wish I didn’t say that to him, like try to make him feel bad like that, about it being too late to order. When it wasn’t even. It wasn’t cool. And I hate that he made me feel that way. And that I thought about it the whole night. And that it made me feel bad. And petty. I should’ve just ordered the fucking drink. Plus, he actually seemed nice. I don’t know, I guess I had just had a day. I guess it was that.
- On returning to my room after dinner and scanning your in-room entertainment system (which stinks) I accidentally ordered a Mark Wahlberg movie I had never even heard of for twenty-eight dollars. When I called down to the front desk to have it immediately taken off my bill no one answered (see 1). Anyone who knows me knows that I would never shell out twenty-eight dollars for a Mark Wahlberg movie. Yes, I watch several series on HBO that he inexplicably produces, but paying twenty-eight dollars to see him in a never-heard-of-before film as a working-class dad with little kids (he’s over fifty, by the way, shouldn’t his kids be, like, thirty now?) in either an action or comedy scenario is where I draw the line. Okay, perhaps there was a second I thought it looked good. But literally the moment after I might have ordered it I realized my mistake. I didn’t actually even watch half an hour of it before I turned on HGTV and watched a House Hunters International that I’d already seen instead. That’s how bad the movie was. So I don’t see why I should have to pay for it. The front desk manager could not have been less helpful when I disputed the charge. “I don’t remember ordering this,” I said to them. (This was their preferred pronoun and I am always happy to oblige. I go by he/him btw.) Then they said to me, “I’m sorry, it says you watched the movie.” I only watched part of it! And how can they tell?? The charge should have at least been prorated. But I could see I was getting nowhere with them. If I’m being completely honest this one is really my fault, so disregard. I was still kind of feeling bad about the waiter from item 3.
- My last night, as I was lying in bed trying to sleep, knowing I had to get up at 5:00 A.M. for my flight and afraid I won’t get my wake-up call, I could hear my neighbors through the wall. They were having an argument. Muffled angry voices through walls is one of my triggers. It was very aggressive and it seemed like they had both been drinking. I don’t like when a man raises his voice to a woman. Thankfully she was giving as good as she got. (I should not assume their pronouns, but I had no way of knowing. This is just an educated guess.) It made me realize how odd hotels are. Just these small rooms of strangers right next to each other, stacked on top of each other. All of us pretending we are actors in a play. Putting our lives on hold as we perform our little parts. For the people in the lobby, the front desk, the hallways. These people who don’t really know us. Who we can be anything for. Our lives reduced to only the items we brought with us. At first so liberating, so freeing. To arrive in a hotel room in a new city with nothing but the clothes in your bag. Who will I be? How will I be? They will all wonder who I am. What my story is. This is a new life that I am starting the moment I arrive. I can go to a restaurant and look at new people and imagine my life elsewhere. All that I would do differently. I will just start over from here. Never go back. But inevitably, after a few days or a week or a bit longer, you realize this has all been nothing but a charade. And it’s becoming exhausting. It is not your real life. Not anyone’s. And maybe you want to go home. And make your own bed. Watch your own TV. Pet your dog. Stop playing the character of the traveler, the businessman, the bon vivant, whoever you’ve invented yourself to be. Just to sit at home, with a book, a cup of tea. Something so simple. The thing I wanted to leave now the thing that I am most desperate to return to. Yes, I’d like to return to that. I’d like to return home. I’m ready. And I notice the couple next door has stopped fighting now. But I still can’t fall asleep. Afraid I will wake up late and my plane will already be gone. On its way back without me. While I am left in this bed. Alone. How can someone fall asleep knowing all that? I take half a Xanax. It’s the only way to quiet my mind. But I do get my wake-up call. And make my flight. Thank you.
Like I said, most everything was wonderful. It was only little, tiny things.