Hotel Cautionary Tales: The Iron

There are certain things I’ve come to love about living in a hotel all the time (maid service, someone making my breakfast, valet service, etc.).  However, I’ve also learned a couple hotel lessons the hard way, namely the iron. 

Every week, my routine on getting into the hotel room is throw my suitcase on the second bed, change the thermostat and check the iron.  Checking the iron may seem like a ridiculous habit, but, in just my few months on the road, I’ve stayed in at least half a dozen hotel rooms with irons with the bottom covered in rust.  The first time I noticed this was unfortunately while sleepily ironing a shirt to wear that day when I saw a huge rust stain on the front of my shirt.  Shirt was totally ruined - not a great way to start the day at 6am.  (Fortunately, the hotel did pay to replace the shirt). 

And apparently this isn’t an isolated incident.  Since hotels buy all their irons at once, they all tend to go around the same general time frame.  So, if you’re staying in a certain Hyatt they seemingly do not have any irons in the rooms that aren’t at least slightly tarnished.  Meaning that following the iron inspection every week is a phone call asking the front desk to replace my iron... again...

So, upon checking in today in my not-so-perky-Monday-morning-just-got-off-a-plane-haven’t-had-coffee-yet mood and finding yet another rusted iron, I decided that phone calls were no longer sufficient. I grabbed the iron, marched down to the front desk and calmly but assertively told the manager that I was tired of reporting the iron every week only to get them replaced about half the time (putting hotel pillowcases on top at least protects the clothing). The manager assured me that this would be taken care of with the housekeeping manager and that rusted irons were not acceptable. 

Feeling victorious much better after speaking to the manager directly, I looked forward to coming back to my room tonight to discover.... just a slightly less rusted iron. Here’s to better luck next week!