WHY DO WE BECOME HELPLESS AT HOTELS?

Zohar Ginosar
Sep 7, 2018 · 4 min read

Sometimes, even a familiar hotel can be a warm home within the chill of a foreign city.

I arrived in the city of Lima in the framework of a project I had in Peru, which frequently brought me to the region. Upon landing, I chose one of my favorite rooms, in the hotel that had become a second home to me.

I entered the familiar room, opened my suitcase and began arranging my stuff in the closets, preparing for the long-awaited shower after 20 hours of flights.

Upon entering the shower, I discovered again the meaning of the term ‘the higher the expectation — the greater the disappointment’; when I turned on the faucet, I was greeted by a pitiful drizzle of water, sporadically shifting the temperature between hot and cold.

After some struggle with the shower’s bi-polar syndrome, I quickly dried myself up and went down to the reception, shivering with cold and rage, to explain to the receptionist about the problem, with what little Spanish I could muster at the time. She brightly smiled at me in response and said that the problem will be taken care of first thing in the morning (“mañana”)…

The following evening, I came back from a long work day, longing for the soothing sense of the warm water-flow, awaiting me in the shower. Once again, I turned on the faucet but, to my surprise, I discovered the same disappointing and temperature-shifting drizzle. Obviously, this made me really angry. I showered to the best of my ability and vowed to myself that if the issue was not solved by tomorrow, I would leave my beloved room and complain to the Hotel Manager.

The following morning, I was welcomed by a different receptionist with a much more positive attitude, who assured me that, this time, the problem “will be solved today” (“Hoy” in Spanish). That evening, when I returned to my room, I was prepared for the worst. With a belligerent feeling, I turned the faucet on once again and, once again, no longer surprising but definitely outrageous, I discovered that the problem remained the same!

Tired from the long day and getting angrier by the minute, I decided to, once again, wash myself to the best of my ability, and then go down immediately, to find the Hotel Manager and to “give him a piece of my mind, once and for all!”

A short moment before I opened the door in my furious path to the reception, something in me suddenly paused, and I heard my internal voice asking: “What would you do if this problem appeared in your own shower, at home?”

Since I often fix things at home, the answer came swiftly (frustration is the mother of invention): within seconds and with several circular movements, I took the showerhead apart, found a small stone that was blocking the water passage and, by using a small toothpick, I removed the nuisance. Within less than 30 seconds, I had an abundant waterfall of warm and soothing water.

After I finished my self-flagellation regarding the asshole I was and the two days of wasted energy, anger and suffering in the pitiful shower, I sat myself down to think why all this had happened…

The first obvious conclusion was that when people come to a hotel, they adopt a certain “I am the client” mindset and the hotel is supposed “to serve me.” This mindset is some sort of a package deal, in which things are being fixed, being cleaned, being arranged, etc. for me, while my basic attitude shifts between a passive service receiver and a raging complainer, if something happens not to my full satisfaction.

In this passive-aggressive state of mind, all my know-how and personal abilities to deal with things left the platform of my possibilities, since it was “not my job” and “that’s not what I paid for,” etc…

The only difference, in this case, was that in a moment of despair, I left this role-playing scene and did the most basic thing, which I would have naturally done in a different context.

It was an import of a simple ability, from my home — the place where that ability is always available to me, to a different context of need.

________
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Zohar Ginosar

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Working with governments and leaders on designing a better future, whilst trying my best to be a worthy father to our twins, who are its residents.

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