Lee Dean: “Did you enjoy your stay?” That depends

‘Did you enjoy your stay?’ That depends

Lee A. Dean screendoor@sbcglobal.net If you do enough business and personal travel, you will encounter a variety of hotels, motels, bed and breakfast inns, and other assorted places to park your carcass for the night. These establishments are often excellent, but not always. Scary hotels are a cultural motif. Alfred Hitchcock knew this when he created the creepy Bates Motel in “Psycho.” Don Henley of the Eagles sang this unsettling line about the Hotel California: “You can check in any time you like, but you can never leave.”

Business travel is anything but glamorous. My companies were fi scally prudent (i.e., “cheap”) and had no good reason to put me up in a fi ve-star establishment. I never complained because I was there to work. All I needed was a roof, a bed, good internet, reasonably edible food, and the absence of six-legged creatures to share quarters with. The worst part of business travel was checking in. Check-in needed to be smooth, especially if you are arriving after a long fl ight or drive. After leaving the front desk, you are so tired you can hardly take another step. You drag luggage to the elevator, which in my case was often suitcase, CPAP, computer, video camera, and tripod. The elevator doors open and you look for that little sign with the numbers and arrows. You fi nd your room number and start walking…and walking…and walking. Is my room in another time zone? At last, you arrive at the room. Relief! All you must do is fi sh out the key card and swipe to trigger the green light and an open door. Instead, this happens: • Swipe, swipe, swipe. • Red, red, red. • Leave luggage in the hall and go get another key card. If the luggage is gone when you return, so be it. You’re too tired to care.

The worst business travel calamity at any of my companies did not happen to me. The owner and sales manager were working a huge trade show in New York City. After an exhausting day, they needed to fi nd a room. They fi nally found a vacancy in a sketchy New Jersey locale After a long day working a massive trade show, you desperately need a shower. My boss stepped into the shower, closed the curtain, picked up the soap and nearly gagged. There, embedded within the cake of soap, was a giant hair. Personal travel has had its own charms. On the most recent vacation with my wife, the Viking Goddess, we checked into the most economical (i.e., “cheap”) place we could fi nd. I sat on the bed, shuffl ed my feet, and heard a loud “BONNNNGGGGG!”

“What was THAT?” the VG asked.

I bent down and saw that the bed was not mounted on wood, as is common practice. This bed was mounted on a piece of sheet metal. If you touched it at all, you created a metallic reverberation that would serve as the soundtrack from the Revelation of John.

Try as I might, for the next two nights, I could not avoid hitting that stupid piece of metal with my heel. When an ambulance came to take an overdose victim out, we decided to make an exit ourselves.

Two things had to happen before we left. First, I checked out and asked the desk clerk if he had any idea who the genius was who decided to place a bed on a piece of thin sheet metal. I received no answer the clerk, who looked less alert than that poor OD case. Then I let that piece of metal have it once more, on purpose and with feeling. Travel brochures occasionally offer coupons to stay at selected inns. We found one and presented it at a hotel in Kentucky. The clerk reacted as if we had insulted her dog and grudgingly accepted the coupon. We asked for a nonsmoking room. She put us in a room with overwhelming tobacco stench, no doubt to get us to check out. We called management instead and got the room changed. I do have a gold star for one group of hospitality employees: the housekeeping staff. No one works harder than they do. Every room I have ever stayed in was cleaned properly, and all belongings were undisturbed.

One hotel experience shines above the others. One winter day, I hopped the Amtrak to Chicago to help an old friend. We shared a room (separate beds) and fell asleep for the night. At 2 a.m., the fi re alarm sounded. The two of us wrapped ourselves in one blanket and stepped outside into the chill.

“I wonder who pulled that alarm,” my friend said.

“I don’t know, but it was the best $20 I ever spent,” I said to my blanket buddy the future Viking Goddess. The huddled masses standing outside wondered whether I was serious. I didn’t say one way or the other – and never will.