I’ll Pass For Tomorrow

On Sunday when my daughter and I got to our room at our usual, favorite hotel in Troy, Michigan, I was surprised to see some changes.

We’ve been going to the same hotel, requesting the same rooms by the pool for so long now that they see us coming and go ahead and put us down for room 126 or 116 or one of the other rooms surrounding he pool.   So when I walked in and saw the television on—a new, larger television with lots more options, I looked around to see what other changes had been implemented.

And I found this:

On the back it said to hang it on the door handle before 2:30AM for the following day.

My daughter and I don’t make much of a mess so I hung the placard out on the door.   And then I got to thinking about it.   Why 2:30AM?  It must be so they could let the staff know if they would be needed for the following day.   And then I wondered if by asking for my room not to be cleaned, was someone missing out on much needed income to feed their family?   Well, you know me, I had to ask.

Later on, while my daughter was eating a snack up front, I asked the manager at the front desk.   I said I liked the new program and was the 2:30AM cutoff for staffing purposes?   She confirmed that it was.  I asked if that had been hard on their staff.   She said that it had been a big help to the hotel, that there is a shortage of staff across all the hotels in the area.   The new option was benefiting everyone.

Then I asked if many people took advantage of the new option?  I commented at home I didn’t change my sheets, toilet, bathroom, etc. every day.  She said it had been tremendously popular right away, with everyone benefiting from it.   But then she told me this interesting statistic: women more likely choose to skip housekeeping, while most men continue to opt for the traditional daily room cleaning.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been having what I’m going to call, “fast nightmares” recently.   He’s not gotten quite to sleep about ten to fifteen minutes after we’ve turned out the light and shut the door.   We thought it was a ruse to get out of the room and hang out in adult-land but it seems genuine.   He usually wakes up his sister when this happens, who follows him out of the room, asking what happened in the nightmare.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter was doing a “best of” in our family the other day.   She said she was the best at hearing and memory (she’s definitely got the hearing one and probably takes the memory award as well).   She said I was the best at hurting my finger (from the fall last week) although she amended it and said I was the best at running.   Her brother was the best at video games.   Dad?  She said he was the best at snoring.