I have a few questions about the behaviors of hotel guests, and I was wondering if you could help answer them. Of course, I have had my own share of hotel stays, but I would have to say I'm a relatively pleasant guest. I leave things clean because I know first-hand about cleaing up messes. I don't stay too late, and I don't try to check in ridiculously early. I'm a good guest :) But there are those guests who forever leave me pondering. If you know anyone who does any of the following, or if you yourself are a fellow culprit, please put my curiosity to rest: why do hotel guests do these following things (all of which are perpetually annoying to housekeepers)?
1. Rejecting the Privacy signs. Here they are, in your room. They are just waiting to be placed on your door handle. Please use them if you need them. Many guests do; good job! Far too many, however, don't use them. Then they yell all sorts of complaints if we knock on their doors at 9am. (I guess that's early for some people? I wouldn't know...) It can also lead to problematic walk-ins in which we come upon people who are sleeping, in the bathroom, or in other situations where you'd really want privacy. Of course, that means I typically run out of the room wildly embarrased. That embarrassment could have so easily been prevented by the placement of one little sign. Please, tell me why you don't use that Privacy sign. I don't understand!
2. Ignoring knocks. This one goes right along with #1. If someone knocks and calls "housekeeping", why not answer? Why not just call back and let us know you're in there? We do it twice, to allow plenty of time for you to respond. We don't just throw the door open haphazardly. This question also follows up with my last post, involving the naked man incident. These situations are so easily avoided by merely responding to the knock and call. We do yell and knock quite loudly. We are required to do so. The only people exempt from this questioning are the hearing impaired, but as for the rest of you, even those with somewhat poor hearing, you have no excuse: please tell me, what's the deal with this one?
3. Tissue stuffers. Lately, I've been noticing an increasing amount of facial tissue stuffed in the door peep holes. Guests have been stuffing it in those tiny door viewers and then just leaving it there when they leave. I don't understand; it's about a centimeter wide; I'm not sure what the purpose of this is. Can you shed any light on this one?
4. Towels on the shower bottoms. Certainly, plenty of people pile their dirty towels in the showers or on the floors when they check out. That's fine by me; it saves me the time of collecting them, and I appreciate it. The habit that's been bugging me is the people who have trouble regarding where to place a bath mat. Rather than placing the bath mat on the floor in front of the tub where it belongs, they have been putting the mat on the bottom of the tub during their shower, soaking it to oblivion, and leaving me to wring out this disgusting towel covered with their hair and dirty bathwater afterward. Seriously, what is the deal, dude? You don't put bath mats in the shower! I'm completely bewildered by this behavior. Do they think the shower floor is dirty? It's been scrubbed with much more bleach than your home shower, I can guarantee that. Do they think that it's too slippery? Um, it's a shower...I don't know how it could ever not be slippery. I just don't know what to think. I've pondered with one but come up blank.
5. Kid Chaos. This is for the guests that grace us with their children's presence. Now, I love kids. Obviously. I'm a teacher as well as a housekeeper. And most kids are great; friendly, fun, eager to learn; not to mention hilarious. Other kids are trouble; nobody can deny that. Even parents tend to admit when they have difficult children. However, it's the parents who don't even attempt to parent that bother me. I see this in my other job, too. Parents who pretend to themselves that their kids can do no wrong and then ignore when their kid punches another child in the face, or parents who assume it's someone else's fault when their kid doesn't do any homework and starts failing school. These are the anti-responsibility parents, who don't completely ignore their kids but don't take an active role in their lives either. The kids are kind of just there, tagging along. Now, in the hotel business, this leads to ultimate room destruction! Dun, dun, dun. The parents go off to do whatever it is they want to do, leaving the kids in the room to throw garbage around, wipe dirty hands on bedspreads and mirrors, break the occasional lamp, hide the TV remote, rip the curtains, etc., etc. I'm not sure what goes down at the actual homes of these families, but the destruction left behind in the hotel rooms in rather embarrassing. A general rule to follow is to treat the hotel room as you would your own home. Follow that rule, and, for the most part, the rooms won't be as trashed. Although, I guess I should take into account that maybe some of these people don't take good care of their own homes; that's fine, it's their own choice, obviously. But please, please, teach the kids a basic sense of responsibility and respect. Too many children are running around nowadays blaming everything on others and ignoring whatever doesn't personally and immediately impact them. Whoa, this is getting a little intense. It may in fact be evolving into a moral issue, but I really just want people to make sure that their kids don't trash the hotel room.
6. Staying over free-for-all. I guess this goes along with the previous one. Some people, while staying over at the hotel for a day or two, toss their stuff all over the place, leaving it nearly impossible to clean. For those of you who know people who do this, remind them to please, at least pick the stuff up off the bed so that we can make it, and try to clear off places we need to clean, like countertops, etc. Unless, of course, they don't mind us lifting your stuff to clean underneath it.

Well, that's a wrap/rant for now. I'll probably have more to complain about later. Please let me know it you have any explanation for some of these odd behaviors. And thanks for listening.