Rothman's Guide To Hotel Etiquette. Part Two.

Picking up from last time:

If you want to sleep in, make sure that you put the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door, so you can provide the non-English-speaking housekeeper the opportunity to ignore it, bang on your door, and yell "Housekeeping!!", which, of course is the only word she knows in English, waking you up at the ungodly hour of 10 AM.
This forces you to yell back "Later please!!!!.
That is, if you want to be polite.
If you don't, it is certainly acceptable to leave off the "please".
Then, at 1 PM, when the front desk calls you to ask if you want your room cleaned, you have every right to say "Of course!
Whaddya think? That I'm a slob or something?? Send 'em right up!"
Then, when they still haven't showed up at 4pm, feel free to call down again and say "I'm still waiting!!!
This reminds them that your room hasn't been cleaned yet.
Then, when the housekeeper shows up at 4:45pm, feel free to rant that if she had shown up at 4:05, I would be leaving the room and be out of her way.
But since it's 4:45, I have to stay here to watch Keith Olbermann. So it's your fault.
Don't worry about hurting her feelings.
Not only can't she speak English, she can't understand it either.
So, no harm, no foul.
One of the reasons I want to sleep in late is that they serve a very early free hot breakfast downstairs, which I get up for and avail myself of, before I go back to sleep.
Now some of these hotels have very good hot breakfasts.
They have an omellete station, and a waffle machine.
Or at least one of the two.
Of course, the one I'm currently staying at has neither.
This gives me the opportunity, already knowing the answer, to ask the front desk, "Where's the waffle machine?" and "Where's the omellete station", and enjoying their sheepish grins as they tell they don't have them.
Then, when you tell them that you've stayed at cheaper hotels that do, you know they're not going to say "Then why don't you stay there?"
Because, as I indicated, they're trained to smile and shrug, and nothing else.
Back to the ones that DO have omellete stations.
This matters to me, because I don't want to put the cholesterol associated with egg yolks in me.
At omellete stations, they invariably have egg-whites or Egg Beaters available.
As opposed to the mushy, bland, cholesterol-loaded scrambled eggs available where I'm currently residing.
There is a downside to omellete stations, but merely a minor one.
Each one that I have encountered has a tip glass on the counter.
And there are always a few bucks already in it.
This is, of course, a scam.
He put the few bucks in the glass himself to encourage other poor saps to kick in.
I have proof of this.
I am often the first one down there for breakfast.
And there are already a few bucks in the tip glass.
So where did they come from?
Of course I find this offensive.
I mean, this is the man's job.
To make omelletes.
At a buffet.
A buffet I'm already paying good money for.
He's simply frying the omellete, putting it on a plate, and handing it to me.
He's not bringing it to my table and serving it to me.
Just handing it to me.
Unlike the "waitresses" whose only job is to pour me coffee, who I don't tip either.
But of course, I hold my tongue.
Because I am always multi-tasking.
Getting my juice, making a waffle (Okay, so I'm not a fanatic about cholesterol.), and if I say something about the tip-glass-scam, I leave myself open to the omellete-maker spitting in my eggs.
So I hold my tongue.
I do make a minor attempt at not holding my wrath when some slob waiting for his omellete ahead of me puts a couple of bucks in the tip glass, and hearing the omellete maker say "Thank you, sir."
Then, when the omellete maker turns back to work on my eggs, I boldly sneer at that slob because he is about to make me look cheap for NOT doing it.
Back to where I am staying now.
Most hot breakfast buffets at these places have conveyor belt toasters, enabling everyone to toast their bread or bagels at the same time.
This is very good.
Where I'm staying now, there is this one four-slice toaster.
It means that you have to wait for others to finish their toasting before you can start yours.
This is very bad.
Yesterday, I had a bagel that needed toasting.
I went to the four-slice toaster.
There were four bagel halves filling it, being toasted.
So I waited.
And I waited.
The bagel slices had stopped toasting, but they hadn't popped up.
I waited a full fifteen minutes.
I think that fifteen minutes, under the circumstances, is more than enough waiting time.
Then, I popped up the slices.
They were about two-thirds toasted.
Enough to satisfy me.
So I took them.
I appropriated them as my own, and placed my soggy scrambled eggs upon them.
I began to eat them.
About five minutes later, a ten-year old girl went to the toaster, and discovered that her bagels were gone.
I discerned this because she came rushing back to her table, coincidentally located next to mine, and exclaimed to her mother, "Mommy! Somebody took my bagels!!"
She was willing to let her bagels sit in that four-slice toaster a full twenty minutes, for Chrissakes!
I was pleased to see that it was a little girl.
It at least meant that she was young enough to learn an important life lesson:
When there is only one four-slice toaster, it is inconsiderate to leave your bagels unattended.
Most adults, excluding myself, of course, are far too set in their ways to learn anything.
As I was eating the kid's bagels, I was grinning like a Cheshire cat.
So you can turn lemons into lemonade.

I guess that's about it.

Once again, I'll close where I left off in the song:

"When the steeple bell
Says "Good night, sleep well,"
We'll thank the small hotel together

And when the steeple bell
Says "Good night, sleep well,"
We'll thank the small hotel......together!!!


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My books ,"Show Runner" and it's sequel, "Show Runner Two", can be found at the Amazon Kindle Store.
Along with the newer ones, "The Man Is Dead", and "Report Cards".
You can search by typing in my name, Cindy Williams, Laverne and Shirley, The Odd Couple, or Happy Days.
Check them out.
You don't need a Kindle machine to download them.
Just get the free app from Kindle, and they can be downloaded to an IPhone, IPad, or Blackberry.
The paperbacks, "Mark Rothman's Essays" and my new novel, "I'm Not Garbo" are not e-books.
But they are available for people without Kindle.
I have many readings and signings lined up for those, and the thing about Kindle is you can't sign one.
If you'd like one of the paperbacks, personally autographed, contact me at macchus999@aol.com.
And now, we've got my reading of my "Laverne and Shirley Movie" screenplay on YouTube, and my 4-hour interview at the Television Academy's Emmy TV Legends Website.
Here's the link:
http://www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/mark-rothman

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