I was recently staying at a hotel, and all was comfortable and peaceful.
Then, at 3:30 a.m., classical music started to blare from the room next to mine.
It was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and then it was one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s cello suites, so it could have been worse.
Igor Stravinsky would have been very hard to bear at that early hour.
I made a call to the front desk, and a staff member knocked on the door of the room in question, which I heard open quickly. A request was made of the guest, a grunt was made and the door was shut just as rapidly.
Five minutes later, the music was back on at the same volume.
Someone else complained, I also heard, but there was nothing anyone could do.
In some ways it was fortunate I was afflicted with a blocked ear, as I was able to turn over to sleep.
The next morning a hotelier apologized profusely.
Here is where things went askew. I was told that the guest had rushed out of the hotel at 6 a.m., though the hotel already had his credit card details, name and address. When two staff members went upstairs to check on the room, they saw that the long table on which sat the TV had been moved so that it faced a completely different, 90-degree angle and that the shower had been “redecorated” with a felt-tip pen in indecipherable language, save for one word “beer” and one number “150.”
People who had seen this guest suggested he might have had a mental health issue.
I had not been angry at any point, but when I heard that I felt only sadness for the guest, and that completely changed my attitude to the situation.
The hotel was ready to offer me some recompense, but I did not push the idea once the staff member had told me about what they had seen and heard.
I assume this must happen occasionally in every hotel, and I am sure hoteliers are trained in how to deal with such a situation. It is not the hotel’s fault in any way — well, certainly not on the first occasion.
I assume this guest will not be invited back.
At home, I am woken up probably half an hour before I really want to be by one of my cats, Super-black, vigorously scratching the bedroom door and demanding his breakfast. So perhaps there is little difference and I have no reason to feel slighted by my hotel experience.
Once, a very well-known luxury brand’s hotel did not give me a wake-up call — they had them in those days — on the morning I was due to run a marathon.
I was so quick to get up when I woke up naturally, my thoughts were clear, I prepared my bag to leave at the finish and got down to the start line with about 20 minutes to spare, which I felt was the perfect amount of time on that occasion, so I did not feel churlish to complain after I had set a new personal record and felt very good about the day.
Maybe I am just not a complainer. Maybe I am very English in this regard. Maybe things happen for a reason.
Maybe we should hear the circumstances of episodes and not jump to angry conclusion.
Maybe I am naïve.
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