Week of Memories: Day Three

This picture always makes me laugh hysterically. Back in 2005, while 7 months pregnant with Henry, instead of having the traditional baby shower with my sisters and mom, we decided to take a trip to New York and celebrate. We booked what we thought was a top of the line hotel, The Westin Times Square. All 5 of us girls wanted to stay in the same room, so we got a suite that had a king size bed, and a pullout couch. If you know my family you know it's no big deal that 3 grown women were going to sleep in one bed and the other 2 in another bed together. Keely, Angie and I arrived to NYC first, so we took it upon ourselves to occupy the extra large cushiony king bed. Tia and Mom who arrived well into the night would have to settle for the pull out double bed. We were still awake when they arrived and welcomed them in. As we began to get settled for the evening Tia pulled out the couch bed and exclaimed, "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there are men's tighty whities in the bed". We were all completely disgusted, but we also got a good laugh out of the rare findings at such an upscale place. I immediately called down to the front desk, thinking we could get some clean sheets and go to bed, and told them that we had found men's underwear in our pullout to which the man replied, "I'm sorry about that, M'am". When I asked for someone to come up and retrieve the undergarment and give us some new sheets he replied, "I'm sorry but we don't staff housekeepers at night". WHAT? I was one irrate pregnant woman. This snotty man was trying to tell us to SLEEP IN A BED WITH USED MEN'S UNDERWEAR in a room that we were paying $600 a night for!!!!!!!!! This crap doesn't even happen at the Day's Inn as far as I'm concerned. And if any of you know how I react when I feel like I've been mistreated by someone who is supposed to have top notch customer service, you know he was messing with the wrong person. After multiple phonecalls and hours later a man dressed in a suit arrives at our hotel room door. He has in his hands one of those tools used to pick up trash off of the streets (very similar to giant tongs). He walks in, grasps the undies, and turns to leave for the night. To which we all rushed to ask, "What about the sheets?" He was going to leave us to rub our sleeping bodies in sheets that had been used by some strange man who left his underwear in them!!!!!! He then told us that there was no one there to change our sheets. Oh, come on, buddy! If this man valued his job I was hoping he would buck up and change the darn sheets himself.....suit or no suit. Why should we be doing this? Aren't we the customer and the customer is always right (that's what my dad taught me anyway)?

To make a really long and quite funny story short, we ended up with clean sheets that we had to put on ourselves. The next morning the 5 of us barged down to the front desk and demanded a manager. He heard us out and awarded us our 3 nights stay for free. So the moral of the story is The Westin or the local Wild West Inn, you never know what you can find in your hotel bed, or if it has been cleaned appropriately (surprise surprise). The other moral of the story is demand what you know you deserve...you can get free things for it. But, in our defense, we had been mistreated and to have to deal with a stranger's underpants earned us some serious reward, don't ya think?

Here we all are riding the subway (after a crappy night's sleep due to the mystery underwear in the bed....I guess it is called "The City that Never Sleeps")...