At a previous job at a software company, I was newly promoted to the sales team, and was learning the ropes. I was assigned to tag along with one of the other sales reps on a trip to the Chicago area, and sort of watch the process. The other rep, "Jerry" told me not to worry about anything, and that he'd take care of all the reservations, so I didn't pay much attention to the details. First mistake. Upon leaving, I discovered that Jerry hadn't booked separate rooms for us, and just planned on us sharing to keep costs down. That's not a huge deal, but at the time I was in my late 20's and married. I didn't really need to be sharing a room anymore. But, whatever, I went along with it. We drove to Chicago and made a few stops at potential clients. As evening set, we decided to find our hotel.
I can't remember the name of it, but it was in one of the Southern suburbs, and it was kind of out in the boonies. I remember thinking that I didn't remember there being so much forest near Chicago. Anyway, we pull up to the place, and see that instead of it being a single building, this hotel had several cabins surrounding a central office. no big deal, but it was just something I noted. So, we walked in the front door of the central office, and up to the person at the desk. Now, Jerry had booked the room on hotels.com and pre-paid for it, so armed with his printed confirmation sheet, he asked for our room. The person behind the desk was pleasant enough. She asked if we found the place alright, and made us feel welcome. But things started to go poorly when she confirmed our room as a single, King bed.
"No," Jerry replied, "We'll need two doubles."
"I'm sorry, we only have King beds in our rooms," she responded.
"Only Kings? Does the couch pull out? Or could we get a cot?" Jerry asked
"No, we don't have any cots, and the there are no couches in the rooms. We're a specialty hotel."
She emphasized her last sentence, but it went right over Jerry's head. "What do you mean you don't have couches?" he asked, confused.
"We're a specialty hotel," she said again, really pausing on the word specialty, "I'm not sure we can meet your needs."
I was fairly sure of what was going on, at this point, but it was still flying past Jerry. "Look, we already paid, can you give us two rooms?"
"How about I give you a key to one of our cabins, and you can go check it out and see if it's what you're looking for?" she said. A very reasonable woman.
"Yeah, okay" said Jerry, who was not quite annoyed, but clearly not understanding why we couldn't just get a room.
So, she gave us the key, and told us to check out the first cabin to the right of the office. We walked over, and put the key in the lock. I was pretty sure I knew what we were going to find behind that door, but I wasn't prepared for the extent of it. It was pretty much a sex dungeon. The first thing I noticed was the giant heart shaped bed, covered in leopard print sheets. Then, it was the mirrored ceiling. Then it was the complete lack of carpet anywhere on the floor. (for easy cleaning, I suppose) There was a hot tub in the corner. There was a glass-walled shower in the very center of the room, complete with a conveniently heighted bench inside. There was a dial on the wall by the bed that illuminated the room in any number of colors, when you turned it. There wasn't really any furniture, other than the bed, but there were several "surfaces" on which a person could recline, kneel, and/or hang upside down from. It was ludicrous and awesome.
Jerry just started laughing uncontrollably, as did I. He exclaimed "I need to get a picture of this! I'm going to go get my camera." We took some pictures of the room, and then went back to the office. The gal behind the desk barely said "Hello" when Jerry laughingly shouted "Yeah, that's not going to suit our needs! I'd love to bring my wife here, but it's not going to work for the two of us."
She smiled and said that's what she had assumed. So, end of story, right? Not exactly. The hardest part was convincing hotels.com to refund the money. They just couldn't understand why we couldn't use the room. The desk clerk had them on the phone and was trying to explain why it wouldn't work, and they just wouldn't accept it. She kept saying "We're a specialty hotel" over and over again. Finally, Jerry got on the line and said, "it's a sex hotel!" and they finally relented.
And the worst part, is that wasn't our only bad hotel experience of the night. It was nearly 10PM at this point, and we couldn't find any more hotels with vacancies. We ended up driving another 45 minutes until we landed at a Best Western, but the room we got there was full of bugs. Like infested. And Jerry was so grossed out that he refused to stay there at all. We ended up at a Holiday Inn by roughly midnight, and it was fine.
