It's curtains for you...

[KuariKaydrith]

It's about 9:15pm on a Tuesday in my sleepy little city, and just before 9pm my phone rings.

I recognize the name as belonging to one of the guest at our hotel tonight. Considering that I'm the emergency contact I'm expecting something along the lines of being told that the toilet has overflowed or something along that nature.

Nope.

They called to complain about the curtains in the room. That when the a/c unit in the window is blowing that it causes the curtains to billow up and lets the light in, and is there a room in the hotel where the curtains are shorter.

I explain to them that the curtains in all the rooms are the same length and a few tricks to keep the curtains from billowing up so that less light gets in.

Nope, not good enough. Am I sure that there is no room with shorter curtains?

I am absolutely certain about the curtains. Why? I've been in ALL the rooms in that building and all the curtains are the exact same length, therefore, they will all have the exact same issue. Not only that, if they were shorter they'd still billow up and out when the a/c fan is on and it would actually be worse because there'd be less weight from the fabric to hold them down. Instead of just billowing, they'd be flapping about.

I nicely explain this while keeping the 'wtf' out of my voice, and the guest is like "I don't know what to say..." I apologized for any inconvenience and explained that we cannot move them to another room over the curtains. The guest disconnected.

Now, in the 4+ years that I know those curtains have been in place there has never been a complaint about something like this. My gut, which is rarely wrong, is telling me that they hoped to be moved into a better room than they had paid for through X-peedeeya, but no such luck for them. I'm sorry, but you're not getting an upgrade from a standard room with a regular jetted tub to one with a jacuzzi for what amounts to 50% the market rate for a jacuzzi room over something we have no control over such as the length of the curtains. Curtains that are the same exact length in those jacuzzi rooms, for that matter. Bad leak, bugs, ceiling collapse, broken bed, or worse, yeah, that warrants a room move. But curtains? No.

Off to go notate the reservation for the poor guest services agent who gets to deal with them in the morning...

[Nunavut Pants]

Made me think of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9heYnC-CX0&t=2s

[Ironclad Alibi]

I hated hotel curtains that did that. But instead of complaining, I just found a way to anchor them down so they wouldn't billow out. A lot easier and quicker than fussing at the front desk.

[KuariKaydrith]

Worse - they called me at home to complain about this. Guest services was closed and all of our room information sheets have my cell number listed as the emergency number...so I suppose that billowing curtains are now considered an emergency? Let's add that to the list that also includes corkscrews....

[Nunavut Pants]

Well, if they had a corkscrew, they could screw through the curtain into the AC unit to keep them in place....

[Slave to the Phone]

Does nobody carry safety pins anymore?

Binder clips also work in a pinch.

[Arcus]

I've stayed in many hotels that had this happen. All I did was grab the book that is almost always in the drawer and use it to hold the curtain back so that I may have the peace of mind I need to rest.

[Android Kaeli]

If you didn't work in a different country, I'd say you got one of my aunts -- she's the type of person who would've complained about that. Course she also probably would've said something five minutes after getting into the room and not several hours later. There's a reason why some of us don't travel with her often.

[taxguykarl]

Once the curtains were the perfect length and the window sill was wide enough that we were able to use the room iron to weigh the curtains down in place.

[Ironclad Alibi]

This discussion has me thinking I should pack a roll of duct tape for my next trip.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Eh, I wouldn't use duct tape. It tends to leave residue behind and that could get you dinged for damage to the room. Use painter's tape.

Good idea.

[Nunavut Pants]

Just bring tinfoil and painter's tape. You can foil over the whole window if you need to!

[RealUnimportant]

Depending on the wardrobe, you may also find one of those pants hangers that works like a huge binder clip which you can use on the curtains if there's a gap. I say it depends on the wardrobe because I have stayed a couple of places where the hangers cannot be removed without unscrewing the pole in the closet!

[XCashier]

The place was AWFUL, there were half a dozen other MAJOR issues and several minor ones. (Unreliable elevator, sticky carpeting (sticky like syrup had been poured on it and allowed to dry), horrible lumpy beds, inoperative (totally broken) security doors, drunk people wandering around the grounds at all hours, leaky toilet- just ick)

Yikes. Sounds like the dump we stayed in for one night back in April. It used to be a decent place years ago, but has gone straight to Hell ever since.

First room they gave us, the lights didn't work. Second room had a broken window, tattered curtains and a huge crack in the sink. Third room was already occupied! Fourth room was -- barely -- tolerable. And when we tried to check out in the morning, there was nobody at the front desk, nobody answered the bell, we waited there half an hour before I managed to catch the eye of the maintenance man taking the trash out of the pool area. Fifteen minutes later, he came up to the desk and checked us out, but couldn't give us a receipt. There were also things like a dank carpet, broken and leaking bottles and cans in the bottom of the vending machine and a very dark lobby.

It doesn't have to be a five star hotel, but it should be clean, comfortable, and everything works and is in good condition. Any manager that runs a place like that dump, and any chain that lets their hotel get into that condition, ought to be ashamed of themselves.