Stay Out of My Hotel Room

Doesn't it irritate you how often a total stranger comes barging into your hotel room? It seems to be a daily threat in just about any hotel, but it happens even more frequently at fancier hotels. And who are these strangers? They are the staff of the hotels themselves.

At a minimum, in just about any hotel, you have deal with the maid. Do you see how these people act? First, they knock on your door, but then they open it eight milliseconds later saying, "Housekeeping!" As a guest in the room, you have no ability to react or prevent the intrusion in that amount of time. They just barge right in!

Most of the time in a hotel room, I'm naked or thinking about masturbating or something... when suddenly the door swings open and this maid pounces in! I'm in a sheer panic as I race to grab a pair of boxers, a towel, a bathrobe – anything! At the same time, I'm shouting, "No, no! Not now!" As a paying guest of the hotel, I resent that I have to go through this terror.

And sometimes these maids will come into your room early, like 9 am. I have been in situations where I'm still asleep, and the lady comes barging in, and I'm peering up from my bed trying to give her an "are-you-fucking-kidding-me" look through the darkness. I understand that 9 am isn't the break of dawn or anything, but I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that someone could either still be sleeping or, worse yet coming out of the shower, at that time.

Of course, a way to prevent a lot of this is to liberally use the do-no-disturb sign. When they barge in on me in the morning, I always curse myself because that means that I didn't put the sign out the night before. But even if I use the sign a lot, which helps, it leads to other problems. Sometime I will have the sign out there to ensure my privacy, but then I'll order room service. And, of course, they can't knock on my door to deliver the room service, so I'll get a phone call from the front desk saying that my do-not-disturb sign is out and they are trying to deliver the room service. Then I'll remove the sign and wait for the delivery guy to come back. Of course, now the food is cold because this poor guy had to run up and down trying to solve my do-not-disturb-sign problem.

But even later in the day, after the maid has cleaned the room, your privacy is still not safe... especially at the nicer hotels. You have to contend with the mini-bar guy, who also knocks and then immediately enters. The other day, someone opened my door (without knocking) and they guy announced, "Service!" He had a ladder and needed to fix the curtain rod (which I didn't ask for, so the maid from the morning must have told them). And then there is the turndown service. So here is yet another opportunity to get barged in on while your naked, plus night time is when you are more likely to be showering and changing to go out, or taking your clothes off from the end of the day.

Just look at all these intrusions you must dodge at a fancy hotel in order to preserve your privacy: maid; mini-bar guy; turndown service... that totals a minimum of three, guaranteed, interruptions EVERY SINGLE DAY. It's brutal. And when you stay at a hotel, you never really act how you do at home – you are either on vacation, in between meetings, taking a nap, being naked, having sex, watching porn – it's not your normal routine, so you are even more likely to being caught in an embarrassing position.

I know these service people have a job to do, I would just like a little extra time to respond to a sudden knock (and before they barge in) - just so I have time to go to the door and say something like, "Go away."

And when these people come in, and they see you, they always act so surprised that you are there. I want to tell them to cut the act – what did they expect to see when they bounded into an occupied room with no real notice?

So, the do-not-disturb sign is my best friend, except for when I'm waiting for room service. I leave that thing on 24/7. I mean, they give me enough towels so that I don't need more. I don't need them to make my bed, because I'm just going to get into it again. I don't need them to check on the mini-bar, because I don't want to pay for what I've eaten/drank. I don't need them to fold down my sheets for turndown service (and I don't need the chocolates that they leave, because I’ve already taken chocolate out of the mini bar that I'm not paying for).

The biggest problem with leaving the do-not-disturb sign on all the time, is that the fancier places will make it a point to call your room and ask if you want maid service, etc. So then I get 15 annoying phone calls which pisses me off, too.

At least it all of this makes me missing being at home.