Changing hotel sheets

I’m a big fan of Mark Hurst and his This Is Broken website. But today’s

entry, to me, speaks much more about the ridiculous level of American self-entitlement

than it does about bad design. Hurst stayed at the Marriot

Monterey, a big hotel in a part of California which is both environmentally

fragile and evironmentally aware. Hurst’s complaint?

At the Marriott Monterey…

… the only way I can finagle new sheets every day, in this $200+/night hotel,

is to

(a) read the card and

(b) remember to put the card on my pillow every morning.

Otherwise they reserve the right to give me the same sheets each day.

(If they’re saving water as a result, shouldn’t they give me a price break?)

The language about the price of the room (which seems utterly normal for this

kind of hotel in this kind of location to me), along with the language about

wanting a "price break" for the water they’re saving, makes it clear

that Mark thinks this is a cost issue: that the main incentive here is to save

money. The idea that saving water and electricity might be a good thing anyway

doesn’t seem to have crossed his mind.

I don’t know Mark very well, but I’ve met him a couple of times, and he certainly

doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who changes his sheets every day at

home. (Does anybody do that? Donald Trump, maybe?) In fact, I daresay

that if I told him that I changed my sheets every day, he’d think me

very wasteful, and/or obsessive-compulsive to a point nearing outright mental

illness. So why does he seem to think that any halfways-decent hotel should

change his sheets automatically?

Obviously, if sheets are dirty, they should be cleaned. If a guest requests

new sheets, he should get them. And new guests get new sheets, always. But I

see no reason for a hotel guest to expect a level of wastefulness and environmental

unfriendliness which would be outright shocking to most Europeans.

Let’s just think of everything that Mark is expecting on a daily basis as a

default setting here. The bed to be stripped, and all sheets (used once) to

be scrumpled up into the laundry. Then the sheets from hundreds of hotel rooms

to be washed – a massive operation, involving vast amounts of water, electricity,

and nasty bleach. Then all those sheets to be dried, and folded, and stored,

and then made into new beds. Never mind the cost of the water, how much labour

does Mark think all this involves? How much does he think a reasonable wage

is? Why does he feel that he is entitled to all this? Because he’s paying $200

a night for a room in a full-service hotel in one of the most expensive parts

of the world?

Different places have different levels of environmental consciousness. Britain

is somewhere between Germany and California; California is somewhere between

Britain and New York. If Mark goes to a hotel in Germany, he won’t find the

hotel apologising for not changing his sheets every day, because the hotel doesn’t

think that’s anything to apologise for. They won’t change his sheets unless

they’re dirty, and he won’t notice or care. And that’s not broken: that’s as

it should be. And Mark needs to get over himself.

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12 Responses to Changing hotel sheets

  1. Gari N. Corp says:

    The water rates in that part of California are nuts. Utterly nuts. Thousands of dollars a month nuts. Staying at a home in Monerrey two summers back I was given very strict, and very parsimonious, toilet-flushing instructions. Water supplies have been tight for a while in that part of the world. So, if yer man wants fresh sheets every day, let him pay extra.

  2. The Union Station Wyndham in Nashville was doing this five years ago (at least), and their water rates are, I’m sure, far more reasonable. The card was obvious and easy to understand (on my pillow when I got in), and I was really happy to see such a logical and sensible policy in place (plus, I’m no fan of overly starched, industrially cleaned sheets). I look for the card now every time I’m in a room. I haven’t seen one since (and I’ve been to other Wyndhams — I got the impression it was a chain-wide policy). I figured such a win/win (lower costs for the hotel while providing an environmentally friendly option) idea would be pervasive by now.

  3. bafc23 says:

    Methinks Marky Mark doesn’t get out much, becuase I’ve lived out of many hotels the past year, from Austin to Montreal and lots of points betwixt, and EVERY hotel, cheap or expensive seems to be doing a similar water conservation/environmental impact reduction program. Particularly Marriott, which seems to have a chain-wide policy. Most of us I recon, find this comforting – that a large corporation is making an effort to help reduce it’s environmental footprint. As you rightly point out, Mark needs to get over himself, and I’d add – get with the modern world, where we all could do more to limit unneccessary useages of natural resources and the production of waste. But then again maybe he’s really making a mess of those sheets every night and NEEDs them to be changed. I mean, who really likes sleeping in the wet spot anyway, especially when it’s of ones own making.

  4. Mike says:

    I dont think he actually stayed in the hotel there is no mention of that in the article!

  5. Jean DiMaria says:

    My company just bought a hotel in Monterey, and we found the area to be unusually water restricted, even compared with the rest of California. There is a water moratorium on the Monterey Peninsula, and no new water fixtures can be added to residential or commercial buildings until it is lifted. Hotels in Monterey are required by the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District to post signs promoting water conservation. I understand the guest’s concern for hotels nationwide, but in Monterey specifically, this one is actually governmentally regulated.

  6. Jean DiMaria says:

    My company just bought a hotel in Monterey, and we found the area to be unusually water restricted, even compared with the rest of California. There is a water moratorium on the Monterey Peninsula, and no new water fixtures can be added to residential or commercial buildings until it is lifted. Hotels in Monterey are required by the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District to post signs promoting water conservation. I understand the guest’s concern for hotels nationwide, but in Monterey specifically, this one is actually governmentally regulated.

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