The evidence

So back to the awful hotel business.

My aunt (Georgia Aunt P, or GAP) arrived first. I'm sure the facts that she was by herself, exhausted, and hungry upon arrival made the entire experience more traumatizing than amusing. By the time I arrived the next day, things were starting to be funny. What things? Well, for one, the contents of the drawers:

Drawer 1 -
Contents: two cans of Budweiser still attached to the 6-pack ring, and an empty 6-pack ring
Question: Why would you store your beer in a drawer when there's a refrigerator in the room?


Drawer 2 -
Contents: an article of clothing, perhaps a man's shirt?, and an item wrapped in foil
Question: What is the thing wrapped in foil? (We decided it was a joint, which left us wondering how we would explain it to the police when the next tenant in the room reported it and we were the last ones to stay there and why didn't we dispose of that stuff or tell the housekeeper to if it wasn't ours because clearly we were aware of it since our prints were all over the drawer.)

And there were other things. The bathroom floor was dirty (GAP was trying to tell herself it was stained, but how do you stain tile evenly?), so it was necessary to wear shoes if you wanted to be anywhere other than the bed. The phone hadn't been plugged in when GAP arrived, and the man at the front desk had told her to just move the bed and plug it in. When she did so, she realized that there was no plug - just a hole in the wall where it should have been. I'm sure I'm forgetting other things, but you probably get the picture.

When my aunt and I returned to the room on my first night, she showed me the drawers, and it was still a little tragic and not entirely comical at this point. I was talking to G on the phone and settling into my bed when I found the thing that pushed it over the edge into comedy: my pillow.

Disgusting, right? It looked like old stains that hadn't come out in the wash, and that makes it a little better except that means that they washed it and decided it was okay to use. And that side of the pillow was facing up!

The pillow was the last straw, and GAP and I dissolved into school girl giggles. We put our jackets on over our pajamas and marched to the office, holding the pillow from the corner with two fingertips.

When we showed the pillow to the front desk attendant, she echoed our sentiments exactly: "That's disgusting!" She was kind enough to get me a whole new pillow instead of just replacing the pillowcase, and she promised to leave it where the management would see it.

While we were waiting for a new pillow, we struck up a conversation with a guest who appeared to just be chatting with the night staff. She was wearing a housecoat over what looked like pajamas (GAP and I felt right at home) and was drinking a beer. She asked us what room we were in and then exclaimed, "That's the best one! I just missed it by one day! I'm in 28. That's the one that flooded on us last time."

There were too many problems with this to even address. First, we have the best room? It's a (deleted to keep this polite, but it might rhyme with pitmole). Second, you're staying here again? Third, your room flooded last time? Repeat question number two.

We stayed there (GAP all the time, and me intermittently) for over two weeks. It got better. The next housekeeper appeared to actually clean (the bathroom floor wasn't stained in fact), but we never changed into our pajamas without checking our pillows first.

The beer and marijuana remained with us for the entire stay.