Blogandt: Bottom of the Barrel

I generally shy away from subjects such as this, so I’ll just state the facts. Here we go.

On Thursday night I checked into my hotel in Anaheim, and relieved myself after a fine day of drive-thru fast food. The next morning I realized that my final flush didn’t really take, and there was some stuff left in there. So I flushed again, and again no dice. We’ve got problems.

With ace timing, house keeping then knocked on the door. I figured they would handle it, so I grabbed my running shorts and went for a jog while the room got a cleaning. I ran for awhile while waiting for her to clean—I knew she needed some extra time. After 35 minutes I circled past the room and saw her cart still out in front of the room. So I circled back and kept on running. Five minutes later and I had now run for 40 minutes, and the cart was still there. 45 minutes. Still there! It was good to get such a long run in, but I had a meeting scheduled that day and I really needed to get going. Finally, after 50 minutes, I reentered the room, sat down sheepishly at the desk and checked some email. Painfully, I heard grunting and plunging from the bathroom. Finally, exhausted and defeated, the woman came out of the bathroom and looked at me. Awkward!

This was so bad that she needed backup. She picked up her radio and said something in Spanish (I can only imagine) while standing next to me. Then she waited for help to arrive, and we shared a few more awkward moments while I typed and she folded towels. Finally, a burly guy showed up, surveyed the situation, and told me “I need to go get the snake to fix the toilet.”

I was really running late now, so I hopped in the shower while the dude was getting the snake. I showered quickly, fearing he would enter the bathroom and find me naked while he was holding his snake. I finished in time, and was toweling off when he came back. I answered in my towel because I couldn’t wait around any longer, and because, hey, once someone has plunged your own stuff and then met you face to face, what’s left to cover up? I might as well have just changed in front of the whole staff.

So he went into the bathroom to work while I put my clothes on in the main room. Then I got the hell out of there before he was done. Who knows how long that was going to take.