Recently it has occurred to me that hotel housekeeping service personnel have lots of free time on their hands. To alleviate their boredom, I offer a simple solution:
Come to my place.
Last week I checked into one of Las Vegas Strip hotels for a two-night business trip. I arrived around 8:30 p.m. to find my room just the way one would expect in a hotel of this magnitude: a king-sized bed with crisp, clean smelling sheets, an abundance of folded towels, a coffee maker stocked with regular and decaf pods and two “complementary” water bottles, even though that word doesn’t actually exist in Vegas. I once received a “complementary” Miller Lite after losing $180 playing craps.
The room rate was $109 a night, but I was also charged a daily $62 “resort fee,” for services I never used. Those included the pool, the fitness center and, I assume, housekeeping.
The next morning, upon realizing I would be in the room for most of the day dealing with Zoom calls and catching up on emails, I placed the “Do Not Disturb” sign on my door, but not before informing a female housekeeper on my floor that I would not be requiring service. I mean, what exactly would she do? Replace the lone towel I used for my morning shower? Change the sheets on the bed that I’d slept in for, at most, five hours? Doing so would require me leaving the room, accompanied by my laptop, and attempting to moderate a Zoom call in a casino.
I take dozens of business trips each year and, naturally, stay in dozens of hotels. When I check in, the front desk staff refers to me as a mineral (i.e. “Thank you, Mr. Schwem, for being a Diamond member” or “I see you have Platinum status.”). One would think I would request, even DEMAND, housekeeping service on a daily basis. Yet I find myself shunning housekeeping more often and I’m not the only one, as evidenced by the responses from Facebook contacts when asked if they do the same.
“If I have coffee in the room, I don’t need the maid service.”
“No, unless I’m staying longer than four or five nights.”
“I hang up my own towels to dry so I can use the same towel. Who uses a new towel every day at home?”
I found the last comment to be a touch ironic because hotel housekeeping service offers guests the chance to experience something we don’t get at home — namely, the opportunity to open our front doors and see everything in a far tidier state than when we last closed those very doors.
As I write this column, I’m simultaneously looking around my one-bedroom condominium, a unit with just slightly more square footage than my Vegas hotel room. A warm stretch of Chicago winter prompted me to open my balcony door, letting in warm city breezes but also coating my furniture with a layer of city dust. My kitchen was a wreck following an Italian-themed cooking experiment the night before that left blobs of tomato sauce littering my counters. My bed remains unmade, with the sheets in need of washing. Ditto for the bathroom towels.
Meanwhile, this column is due in less than 24 hours and I have dozens of emails and texts to answer. Who has time to clean?
Not me. I can live without the housekeeper’s bed-making and towel-folding abilities for a few days. In a hotel.
But not permanently.
I wish to come home to my condo, open the door and find a towel resembling a swan on my freshly made bed. I want the end of the toilet paper roll to be folded, origami-style. I want two clean glasses in the kitchen, awaiting whatever beverage I might consume.
So, Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton and all the other chains I’ve frequented, please round up a few of your housekeepers, send them my way. I will welcome them with utmost gratitude.
Please pay them with the resort fee you have already collected.
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