Dammit, Ed, we were trying to sleep!
Maybe it was Mr. Rochester 
Hubby and I still talk about a motel we stayed in in Chamberlin South Dakota. The mattress sagging so hard that I swear we could have used it for a pool. At 6:00 am, hubby got up to take a shower and no hot water. When we called the front desk, they said that the water heater always ran out of hot water by 5:30 every morning, but if we were willing to wait 45 minutes, it should be full again unless somebody else in a 10 room section took a shower.
See, instead of staying the night in Chamberlain S.D. you should instead stop for lunch at Al’s Oasis (definitely have some pie).
Hotel maid: *I don’t care if you’re dead
You’re gonna get out of bed
I’m gonna get in your room
Make way for the vacuum…
(RAP RAP RAP RAP RAP RAP) Housekeeping!!*
(“Housekeeping” - NRBQ)
The only appropriate response would be to yell right back.
“TARZAN?!”
Yeah, because those of us who happen to be at the lower end of the economic spectrum are just a bunch of loud-mouthed, inconsiderate drunks, while those with a bit more money are saints who would never even think of disturbing another fellow human being.
:rolleyes:
I stayed in a Clarion last week and the people in the surrounding rooms all screamed into their cell phones so we could hear every word. One woman would go outside into the garden area (right below our window) and proceed to make 15-20 extremely dull calls in a row, shouting into the phone the whole time. The guy next door to us called someone up at maybe 12:30am and started talking loudly enough to wake the dead about some problem he was having with his wireless connection on Windows 7. I was really tempted to scream, “RESTART IT! THEN TRY DISABLING AND REENABLING THE ADAPTER! THEN SHUT UP!” I mean, he must have wanted the help of his neighbors, right? Or why would he be talking so loud?
I would assume that all hotel/motel goers are the same; what changes is the sound-proofing.
Over the past twenty years I have stayed in hundreds of godawful dives in the first, second and third world. $2 a night kind of places. A memorable one was an illegal lean-to shed built out of corrugated plastic on the roof of a building in India, next to which the staff had lit a fire, the smoke of which was blowing straight into the room and round which they were drinking whisky and singing.
I’ve also had the privilege to stay in two or three of the finest hotels in the world.
There is an absolute correlation between noise and the price paid. Sometimes it’s the clientelle, sometimes it’s the staff, but a lot of it is down to building standards - double or triple glazing, thick walls, thick doors.
I think I’m going to have to propose jjimm’s rule: “for every statement made on a messageboard, no matter how apparently innocuous, there is guaranteed to be at least one person who will take offense to it.”
Well, la dee da, aren’t you special, with your rule and all.
(You know the smiley is understood, right? )
Tipping is up to you but I will say that my mom used be a hotel/motel maid and I took her job for a week when she was away. Most of the rooms were okay, some were disasters (including at least one that left a turn on the toilet seat). It may only be a few bucks to you, but it makes a huge difference when you just cleaned a pig sty and the next room left you a few bucks for your pockets.
No need for a smiley - I am la dee da. Look, I’m drinking tea with my little finger in the air!
Anyway that’s about the fourth time I’ve proposed a “jjimm’s rule” on different subject but nobody’s ever gone for it. I’m taking my ball and going to kick it up and down the corridors of a cheap hotel.
silenus wasn’t referring to building standards, which of course may affect noise levels. He was implying that people who stay at cheap motels are by their nature more inconsiderate than others, a ridiculous notion. As for your rule, it is by definition silly to be offended by an innocuous remark, but that’s not what we’re dealing with here.
I agree people act like idiots in hotels sometimes, and I don’t travel nearly as much as you do. But I have to ask, what hotels are you staying in? Most of the hotels I’ve been in have those slowly swinging shut doohickeys on the doors. So unless a person actively FIGHTS the door shut (and even then I don’t know if you could really “slam” it), they don’t slam.
That said, my most recent hotel annoyance was people who, during the morning breakfast hour, take up a 4-topper table when there are only two, or fewer, people in their party, and the larger tables were limited. Our crew needed to do a strategy meeting at breakfast each morning of our most recent project, and every day we’d have to cram us, and all of our stuff onto a tiny two topper table. Meanwhile at the nearby 4 topper, a mere one or two people hogged the larger table. One lady and her husband in particular, and it was obvious that, unlike most of the people at the hotel, they were not there on business, so it’s not as if they had any time pressure. They could have eaten breakfast later after all of the business people were done and out of there for the day (and the hotel had breakfast until around 10am, so it wasn’t as if they would be limited on getting to eat or anything).
The lady would always be at one of the two 4-toppers well ahead of her husband, who would show up quite a bit later. She wasn’t even eating, she’d just sit there waiting for him with a cup of coffee or maybe with a few pieces of fruit, just waiting for him to show up. In the meantime my crew and I are trying to eat and go over paperwork for the day’s work on a teensy little table. Long after we’re done eating and still doing paperwork and other stuff, he finally shows up, so she’s hogged the table for no reason for 45 minutes or so. We would have practically been done eating and finished with our work in time for her to have the darned table for when he finally showed up. And we weren’t the only working folks with 3 or more people in our party to look askance at her either.
She also did this bizarre hanging-around-in-the-way-of-other-people-trying-to-get-their-breakfast thing. As well as a bizarre just-standing-in-the-middle-of-the-dining-room-for-no-apparent-reason thing. So the 20 or so business people trying to eat breakfast and plan their days, were always confronted with her weird standing-in-the-way-staring thing half of the time. The other half of course, she’s single-handedly occupying one of the two useful tables in the room.
And don’t get me started on the family with the ill-behaved little drama queen child during the last two days of our job. Why yes, feel free to let your shrieking little monster run around the dining room and drop noisy wooden toys all over the fireplace coffee table three THOUSAND times over and over again… (after several grueling 14-16 hour days, a person’s patience with that sort of thing wears thin). Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…
So, why didn’t the first three of you who arrived at the dining room simply sit down at the table WITH the single lady? With a breezy, “You don’t mind, do you? We need to sit together.” And then talk among yourselves until that lady retreats to a smaller table.
Do that a day or two and she’ll stop grabbing a large table, or at least flee at the sight of you. 
I can’t speak for party-ers,
but recently at a hotel - I didn’t realize the door closed more quiet if you just let it close by itself.
But my point being - the other guests were ass holes and bullying me over this shit. This is bullshit. It made me NOT want to be quiet.
I guess this is the American way - non confrontational - to be an ass hole and get revenge on everyone versus trying to work something out.
If someone would have politely told me to close my door quietly I would have complied - even call the front desk anonymously and have them tell me - fine.
Don’t take matters into your own hands like this IMO.
I can speak from other experiences of living in apartments and town homes for 15 years - it seems it has become a trend in the last few years to get revenge on people who wake you up.
I worked over nights (third shift) for a few years and am just dumb founded at people’s non confrontational shit.
Maybe you can ask me politely not to run errands early in the morning but you have to be prepared for me to say no - and you have to be ok with that -
because IT IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS in the first place.
Some therapists will argue that light sleepers is more of a psychological thing. Why are you letting it bother you so much to the point you can’t roll over and go back to sleep.
Most hotels have fans on the AC and heaters. Turn this on when you go to sleep -it will help drown out some of the noise.
Ear plugs
Be prepared to get woken up because it is PART OF THE LIFESTYLE.
If you prepare yourself it won’t bother you so much.
Just my (humble?) opinion.
Your point is mostly incomprehensible, but I’ll state, with great fervor, that if your noisemaking is waking me up during night hours (generally, by local law, between 10 or so at night and 7 or so in the morning), your disturbing me is absolutely my business.
What were you doing that people took matters into their own hands?
All hotel doors are fire-resistant by requirement. The weight issue and the fast-close are part of the design. I try to close the door using the handle to prevent the loud bang. But I am not above being loud as I exit the room at 5:30 a.m. if I’ve been kept up most of the night.
Worst hotel experience:
Weather caused my team to have to spend a Friday night in a huge, prominent hotel in Memphis one spring. There were two proms, a small wedding, and one large family reunion happening. My room was within direct view of the front desk of a huge central reception area. The echo was incredible as people meeted, greeted and said loud goodbyes. I also had a floodlight right outside my window and the curtain did not completely cover the window. I used band-aids to tape the curtain to the wall. It was a sleepless night.
Second worst was in the bad part of town of Notre Dame when I switched rooms and the guy at the desk didn’t mark it properly. Someone tried to access the room in the middle of the night. Their key worked but I had the chain on. The replacement desk guy called the cops on me so after I had fallen back asleep, I woke up with cops banging on the door. Oy.
Wow. I’ve had alot of zombie threads resurrected lately.
Has Bart joined the board?