We look forward to our summer vacation each year with much anticipation, and this year was no exception. We had been planning our two-week getaway to British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest since last fall, and it turned out to be wonderful. Although we had originally thought to drive from LA all the way to Vancouver and Victoria and then back again, better sense kicked in (about three weeks before our departure) and we opted to fly – our first foray into the friendly skies since the pandemic. All went smoothly, and we came home with tons of fond memories (including getting together with four sets of friends at various points along the way, all of whom live in the PNW – so cool).

Every vacation has a hiccup or two, though, and this one was no different. It came at the very end of our trip and it felt like something out of Hotel California. To wit:

The hotel we had chosen (for convenience) for the last night was a seemingly nice, albeit new-wave-corporate-style, place (you know the type – heavy on the USB ports and recharger outlets but light on personality and warmth). Our intended room wasn’t ready, so the front-desk staff (too young, too beautiful, too Stepford-esque) put us in what they deemed a comparable one in order to get us settled. And while it was, technically, a balcony room like the one we reserved, the balcony looked out not on the street as promised but on a portion of the hotel roof that held the building’s air conditioning units (an ironic twist, as you’ll soon see). Of course, we didn’t notice it until we had unpacked and opened the curtains and, at that point, we were too tired to argue.

Later that night, we realized that the room was too warm. And then we realized why – the air conditioner didn’t work. Calling the front desk resulted in a repair person (I use the term “repair” loosely here) coming by and determining that yes, the unit didn’t work but that no, he had no idea of how to fix it. That resulted in my calling the front desk, their offering to move us to another room (at 10 pm? I don’t think so), and my insisting on their adjusting the room rate to make up for the inconvenience. They did and very generously so. Thinking that that was the last of our issues, off to sleep we went.

The next morning, we had an early breakfast in the hotel restaurant right before we needed to leave. And here’s where things went further south. The hotel offers a $25 breakfast credit, but the only way to take advantage of it is to charge the entire breakfast to your room and then to have the adjustment to your bill made as you check out. For people like us, who rarely charge anything to the room because we want our check-out to be quick and (hopefully) error-free, it was annoying. The front-desk person the afternoon before had assured us, though, that it would “work perfectly,” as did the waitress that morning.

Wrong and wrong. Because when we went to check out, things got really interesting. According to the maniacally smiling young woman at the front desk, our breakfast charge was still pending, even though we had finished eating nearly an hour earlier.

We: “We’d like a final bill including the breakfast charge before we leave, please.”

She: “That’s right.”

We: Huh? “Pardon?”

She: “You’re all checked out.”

We: “No, we’re not. We’d like a print-out with the final charges on it, please.”

She: “That’s right.”

Silence.

We: Waiting. “Is that bill coming?”

She: Smiling.

We: “When do you think we’ll have our final bill?”

She: Smiling in an increasingly disturbing way.

We: Waiting. “Excuse us, is that bill coming anytime soon?”

She: “You’re all checked out.”

We: “No, we’re not. We need the final bill.”

She: “That’s right.”

We: “When will we have it?”

She: Grinning, à la the Cheshire Cat. “You’re all checked out.”

We: Starting to feel like the song is right – that we can check out anytime we like but that leaving is another matter. “Could you please supply us with our bill including the breakfast charge and credit before we leave?”

She: “Oh.” Printing something out and giving it to us.

We: Looking at the print-out in despair. “This still doesn’t have the charge or credit on it.”

She: “That’s right.”

We: Growing increasingly frustrated. “Could we speak to a manager please?”

She: “I am the manager.”

Of course she was. Finally, Ms. Front Desk (or should I say, Ms. Managed?) printed something else out. It now showed the room charge and the entire cost of our breakfast, but no credit. Grrr. Several more minutes passed of her staring at us vacantly and smiling the whole time as we tried explaining yet again what we needed. She then printed a bill with the same amount showing but now with an added line below it reading “$25 credit.” Yeah, no. Although we took it and left (we had already wasted a half hour of our lives that we would never get back), we had absolutely zero confidence that this would “work perfectly.”

So it wasn’t a shock when, a couple of days after we got home and checked our credit card bill, we saw that the $25 had not been credited at all. The problem was happily resolved, however, with one very efficient phone call (maybe the person who helped me should be promoted to manager), and we are now left with a balance of one very amusing (albeit grimace-inducing) story.

Pink champagne, anyone? (No ice, the machine’s broken.)

©2023 Claudia Grossman