Why we won’t be staying there again

So we booked a moderately priced chain hotel for the NYC portion of our trip and whilst we may stay in a moderately priced chain hotel again, we won’t be staying at this particular Uncomfortable Lodging, and I’m so glad you asked me for the details.

For starters, the room was almost impossibly tiny. Which was kind of expected but for real, you couldn’t swing a kitten in there let alone an actual cat. (Note: I do not condone the swinging of house pets unless the pet appears to enjoy it and then only under OSHA approved conditions)

Example of smallness: refrigerator located under tiny desk so that there was no space for legs should you wish to sit at desk for any reason. No actual wardrobe or closet, just a few hangers on a funky little rod hanging above a tiny shallow niche.

The rooms were reasonably well appointed but came with a hodgepodge of amenities that varied from day to day. Housekeeping took the soap out of our shower the second day but failed to replace it with a new bar. (Why take our soap? Like what the hell?) We used the washcloths but they never replaced those either. We had no ice bucket but the kids did. Whatever.

They never vacuumed the corridors during our stay. There was a giant snarl of hair on the floor outside our room, like someone had cleaned out a hairbrush. It appeared on the morning after we arrived and was still there when we left. The elevator just got grubbier and grubbier with bits of debris. When we went down to the basement for ice ( at the only ice machine for an eight story hotel) we were shocked to see two vacuum cleaners parked right outside a housekeeping closet. We didn’t know they had any.

The elevators were out of service part of the first couple of days we were there, but I suppose this could happen anywhere. To their credit they did get someone in right away to fix it.

Oh, the toilet. When we first arrived it made noises like a fighter jet taking off when flushed. This went in for a couple of days. Then it became blocked, and they sent “engineering” to plunge it, after which it did stop making that noise.

Breakfast. We were supposed to get breakfast each day. Just continental, nothing complicated. Our expectations were not grandiose. Which was handy, because they managed to not come close to meeting them.

First off we would send a couple of the kids down to get the food and each day they acted like the kids were lying when they were told there were five of us. So that’s nice. Secondly, there wasn’t always food available at the the appointed times and when Rhonda called down and asked if/when it would be coming the horrible gargoyle working the front desk would say “I don’t know!” as though it were a stupid question. “They haven’t told me anything!”

When we did get “breakfast” we got a brown paper sack with a granola bar that often contained nuts (I’m allergic), a Kool Aid Slammer (similar to a Capri Sun), always fruit punch flavored (the worst of all flavors), and either a banana or an applesauce cup. Uh, thanks. I guess.

I did check for bedbugs and didn’t see any evidence of them, and the linens were clean, the bed was comfortable, the tv worked, etc. I mean, it wasn’t gross. But it wasn’t that clean. The carpet felt kind of … greasy? underfoot,

2/10, do not recommend.