I make the drive back to Texas every summer to see my family.  It’s just me and the kids on this trip so I break the 12 hour drive into two parts and stay overnight in a hotel along the way.  E travels a lot so we’ve accumulated lots of hotel points for free stays.  I stayed at a hotel in a very small Louisiana town which I’m probably now banned from.  I was driving through East Texas when I received this email from E:

I love you and your pink hair. I responded and let them know there was not an issue with the charges.

I was initially confused but decided to investigate further (and more safely) at our next pit stop.  We rolled into a brand new Buc-ee’s in Terrell, Texas where I finally got the full picture.  There was an attached email from the general manager of the hotel I had just checked out of earlier in the day.  The manager had contacted E via email because it’s his account and information on file, not mine.  This is the email which I have edited for privacy reasons.  I will indicate edited parts of the email with little stars.  Like this:  *

Good afternoon,

I am the General Manager of the *Shit Hole Hotel* in *Bumfuck*, Louisiana. I wanted to write to you in regards to a miscellaneous charge you will find associated with the room that was rented last night under your Platinum Elite rewards account.

Upon entering the room to clean, one of my housekeepers notified me of a tub, shower surround and full set of towels that were all dyed pink. It was evident that someone had used pink hair dye while in the shower. I have processed a charge of $38.33 to the Visa card on file for the towels which had to be discarded and the additional labor and supplies consumed in cleaning the mess left behind.

I hope you will understand my position in this matter. As the GM of this property, I work very hard to ensure our product is up to the standards our Platinum Elite members, as well as other guests, have come to expect from our brand. This is an increasingly difficult task with ruined linen and stained amenities.

Thank you and I wish you a great rest of the week.

*General Manager and Professional Douche Bag*

I had a few more hours of drive time to stew over this whole fiasco and my indignation only increased by the minute.  I felt I needed to defend myself and my pink hair for the verbal attack on our character.  As I was logging onto my laptop late that night (actually, the wee hours of the next morning), I became even more enraged when I saw that the General Manager and Professional Douche Bag (known from the remainder of this blog as GMPDB) had included these two damning pieces of evidence with his email.

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I responded with an email of my own although I didn’t have pictures to back my side up.  I don’t think it mattered.

Mr. GMPDB,

Seeing as it was I, and not my husband, who stayed at your fine 2 star hotel last night, and your stated desire to make sure standards are up to par for not just Platinum Elite members but for everyone, I thought I would personally contact you about this matter.

“It was EVIDENT that someone had used pink hair dye in the shower”.  To quote one of my favorite movies (Princess Bride) “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”  But let me address my reasons for writing to you tonight. 

My children and I arrived around 11 p.m. last night, very exhausted by a long trip, and were greeted – well, not really greeted, that’s not the right word – by a young man who didn’t even acknowledge our presence, even though there was absolutely no one else around, until I cleared my throat.  Again, I had two children with me.  He couldn’t have missed us.  I have bright pink hair as you EVIDENTLY know and have documented with your attachments.  Granted, EVIDENTLY the AC was out so he might have been distracted by the heat.  I learned this fact quickly from the stifling heat everywhere besides the rooms and because the young man had a soaking wet towel around his neck.  It’s for this reason I will refer to him here on out as “Towel Boy” because I didn’t catch his name.  My apologies.  

Finally greeting us, and I use that term loosely, Towel Boy pulled our reservation up on the computer.  In the meantime, I sent my son over to the grocery section to purchase 3 bottles of water.  I made this request of my son kind of loudly because I thought as a Platinum Elite member, I got at least a bottle of water and/or a cookie or something at check-in.  Maybe that’s only at the 3 star hotels and above.  My mistake.  I was actually strongly hinting to Towel Boy to give me my darned bottle of free water.  Towel Boy didn’t catch on.  I’ll blame it on the heat. 

My son hollered (yes, I know this must absolutely horrify you but he is autistic and gets a little louder than he intends sometimes but at least I know for sure that Towel Boy heard him) that there were no bottles of water in the cooler.  Towel Boy ignored us and EVIDENTLY refused to assist us with our drought situation.  I was not able to withstand this test of wills and I broke first, finally asking Towel Boy if there was any water available for purchase, as my son would need to take his seizure medication as soon as we were in the room.

EVIDENTLY, the mention of seizure medication filled Towel Boy with a wealth of compassion.  He heaved a great sigh, I’m assuming to hold back the emotions he was feeling for our situation, and said he could “possibly” find us some bottled water but it would be at room temperature.  Room temperature in the public places of the hotel last night was at least 90 degrees but I took Towel Boy up on his offer.  I sincerely hope Towel Boy remembered to bill my account for the 3 bottles of 90 degree water.  Please double check my bill and add the water charges if Towel Boy forgot to add them.

The kids and I got settled into the room and the kids wanted to get their showers out of the way before bed.  As I was helping my son get everything situated and ready in the bathroom, I noticed there were only 3 full size towels.  If you’ll look at my husband’s Platinum Elite preferences, you’ll see it is EVIDENT I checked “extra towels” in the special requests that your hotel offers.  Extra towels.  That usually means more than what is normally provided.  EVIDENTLY you usually only provide 1 towel for 3 people.  The only other possibility is that my written request was EVIDENTLY ignored by your stellar staff.  Please excuse my ignorance on the towel ration at 2 star hotels.

Anyway, as I had went back through the lobby about 15 minutes before to move our vehicle to a parking spot, I noticed Towel Boy sitting in the lobby, mopping his face with his towel, so I certainly didn’t want to get dressed again, leave my autistic and epileptic son in the shower without an adult in the room, and ask Towel Boy to get off his tush to fulfill a request that was made 24 hours in advance of our stay.  In writing.  On your web site.  I suppose I could have called the front desk and requested that Towel Boy bring me extra towels but honestly, that didn’t even cross my mind and even if it had, I really wouldn’t have wanted to put Towel Boy through that ordeal.  

As for the pink hair, yes, I have pink hair.  You seem awful certain that I dyed my hair in your fine room last night as you used the word “evident”.  Your head of security must have EVIDENTLY attended one of those online college courses because there was no hair dye paraphernalia to be found in the trash cans in our room because I did not dye my hair there.  And believe me, there’s a lot of paraphernalia involved in dying one’s hair pink so there would have been tons of EVIDENCE in the trash can.  Sherlock Holmes would have figured this out.

See, the curse of pink hair is that it continually washes out, no matter what.  I have been dying my hair pink for almost 4 years now.  I carry an extra towel with me when I travel because I normally don’t like being a jack wagon and messing up perfectly good hotel towels.  My son used the hair towel I brought from home, unbeknownst to me until after the fact because there weren’t enough towels in the room.  And remember why there weren’t enough towels in the room?  Please have your head of security see the above paragraph.  

Now, I don’t know if you have kids or not.  It doesn’t really matter.  Imagine a teenage autistic boy dries off with the towel you brought to the hotel to specifically use on your pink hair.  He dries his nether regions with it which may or may not be totally clean, even after a shower.  You get it, right?  Would you use that towel to wrap your hair in the next day?  If so, sir, you need to reevaluate your standards.

When I took a shower the morning of our checkout, the tub would not drain at all.  I took a shower as quickly as I could but the water was still over ankle deep when I got out.  I asked my kids if the tub had done that the previous night and they replied that it had drained slowly but did drain.  It was EVIDENT this was the truth, as there was no water in the tub when I used it that morning.  I messed with the drain, attempting to get the water to go down but it refused.  It was EVIDENT that water was not going down.  Not that day.

When I checked out at promptly noon, I told the female front desk clerk that the tub was completely stopped up and to please warn housekeeping that there was pink water stuck in the tub.  I told her a little funny that my daughter had made, that it looked like I had killed a fairy in the tub and the desk clerk and I had a great little giggle over it.  I made clear again that I wanted her to inform housekeeping of the matter.  She cheerfully gave me a card with information to leave a Trip Adviser review.  It’s not EVIDENT that I will publish a review there yet.  I haven’t decided although judging by some of your Trip Adviser reviews, you are way behind on the high standard goal, at least consistently.

Lastly, “a full set of towels.”  A full set?  I used a small hand towel and a bath towel that my daughter had already used to dry my hair because you did not honor my written request that your hotel offers on the website for extra towels.  That is the EVIDENCE you see on the TWO towels, which is actually only 1.25 towels seeing as a hand towel is 1/4 the size of a bath towel but let’s not get picky here.  Now I know your definition of “extra” towels if a “full set” is a hand towel and a full size towel.  There was no pink on any other towels because my children used all 2 of the other bath sized ones and they have normal colored hair.

We vacation a lot and I have never had one of your hotels bill me for charges due to towels or otherwise.  It is EVIDENT to me that you must not use bleach on your white linens because that usually removes it.  If you do not use bleach, that leads me to really question the cleanliness of your linens.  Out of all the substances found on your hotel towels, you didn’t even wash them to see if it would come out?  Really?  Out of every disgusting thing you find on linens, me and my pink hair is where you draw the line in the 2 star hotel sand?  No, you didn’t attempt to wash the “full set” of 1.25 towels.  It is EVIDENT in your pictorial proof of the 1.25 towels that they were thrown in the trash. 

I am not asking for a reversal of the charges.  I simply want to help you, in your own words, ensure your “product is up to the standards our Platinum Elite members, as well as other guests, have come to expect from our brand.”

I would assume that your brand would want guests to be greeted properly, even in the midst of broken air conditioning.  I assume your brand would want bottled water to be stocked in the grocery section, cold and waiting for customers, priced at way more than a bottle of water should be for the sake of convenience, and not sitting in a random stock room at 90 degrees.  I assume that your brand would also include proper maintenance of your tubs in their standards.  I’m sure it was EVIDENT to housekeeping sometime in the recent past that this tub drained slowly, if at all.  Don’t they rigorously clean the tubs after every stay?  Wouldn’t they have ran water in the tub to clean it?  Either way you answer, you’ll be in the wrong on that one and you know it.  I would assume your brand would want its standards to include honoring requests your own company offers when redeeming points on the website, like extra towels.  I would assume your brand would not prefer the public spaces in one of its hotels to be 90 degrees or more.  Thankfully, although the AC was noisy and woke me from a sound sleep multiple times, it was at least working in the room.  I would assume your brand would want its standards to include a desk clerk who made sure maintenance cleared a non-draining tub when a customer with the best of intentions informed them about it and was up front about the pink water.  I would assume your brand wouldn’t want one of its managers to immediately blame a Platinum Elite member for a tub which was EVIDENTLY completely plugged and would not have been pink had it drained properly in the first place. 

Thank you for your time.

I awoke to find this email in my inbox.

Mrs. Steph,

I agree that you make several valid points in your email. Please give me a call directly at 1-800-IMANASS to further discuss some of the topics. I would really like to speak with you regarding your response. I understand your position and want to thank you for the email; I fully intend to use it to correct some behaviors that I have not previously been able to prove through a guest’s perspective. 

I sincerely look forward to speaking with you at your earliest convinience. 

Thank you,

Mr. GMPDB

I did not call GMPDB because when I pressed “send” after I finished my email, I dropped the mic on the stage and walked away like the fucking pink haired badass I am.  GMPDB, go fuck yourself.  Also, is that all you got?  Because you hit like a little bitch.