slipjig3 | Arisia—The Necessities of Life Part 2: Water

As many of you know, this was the year of le Hotel Drama de la Suck. If you've not been following, the Hyatt had informed Arisia coordinators that because rooms were being renovated, multiple floors would not be available to guests. As luck would have it,

rafaela and I landed a room on the fourth floor, one of the few floors for which renovations had been completed. I must say that the changes involved certainly seemed worth the effort—stylish decor, flat-screen TV, comfy space all around. We had no complaints at all about the living area.

The bathroom, however, does not qualify as the sleeping area. In general, the bathroom was fine, except for one teensy little wisp of a quibble, which I hesitate even mentioning in that it's just the minor detail that THERE WAS A HOLE IN THE WALL WHERE THE TUB FAUCET HANDLE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE.

Your eyes do not deceive.

To be fair, the handle itself was in fact still sort of attached when we arrived, although all the hardware that belonged behind it was stacked neatly on the toilet seat. (Not on the vanity. Not on the back of the toilet. On the toilet seat. As in, we had to move it before making any use of the bathroom at all.) The state of "attachment," however, ended when I made a vague attempt at turning it, at which point it snapped off in my hand with a little *doink!* noise. Yes, this was at a business-class Hyatt. No, I was not in a Chevy Chase movie. As far as I know.

So. I hauled my glaringly unshowered self down to the lobby, where I showed the woman behind the desk the above camera phone pic, and she assured me that someone would look at it right away. This much was true: when I popped back into the room about 20 minutes later, there was indeed someone looking at it. When he got bored with looking at it, he left. For all I know, he then walked out of the hotel and got on a bus heading to points West, because we never saw him again. After two hours of radio silence, I spoke again to the woman behind the counter, who told me that they would be transferring us into another room, and to speak to the Arisia Innkeeper about getting a new room number assignment.

The Innkeeper, to the best of my knowledge, was on a Greyhound heading west, chatting with an AWOL hotel maintenance guy.

Finally, as early Saturday afternoon segued into late Saturday afternoon, I returned once again to the front desk, and talked to the same clerk, for whom I was starting to feel a little sorry, and she declared a state of well-fuck-it and gave us a new room on the sixth floor right then and there, Innkeeper be damned. The new room hadn't been renovated yet, but it was plenty nice with no noticeable anomalies, so we were quite content. In the end, the manager I spoke to on Monday at checkout was very gracious and professional, and comped us one night's stay as an apology (thanks to

felisdemens for coaching me on my Disgruntled Customer spiel). Still, never let it be said that you can't have a fleabag experience for luxury prices.

Coming soon: Arisia—The Necessities of Life Part 3: Love.