How was your journey? That’s great. If you just pop yourself down over here, we’ll go through the usual check-in procedure and have you in your room in a matter of hours. But first, I have to pretend not to be able to find you on the register, and ask you to spell your name 14 times, thus starting a massive row between you and your wife about who was supposed to have made the booking. Ah yes, here it is, under your name, in exactly the right place all along.
Now, let’s get you all checked in. I just have to take down dozens of irrelevant personal details while your tired, hungry children roll about on the floor, desperate for lunch in the restaurant that I haven’t yet told you closes in six minutes’ time.
Tap, tap, tappety tap, I go on my keyboard. No, I’m not writing my memoirs, I’m just doing that endless silent typing that all hotel receptionists seem to do – like airport check-in staff – for absolutely no reason at all, at a time when you just want to get up to your room and have a wee and a wash and a £15 Diet Coke out of the minibar and some of those caramelised nuts on the side that look like they might be free, but aren’t.
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OK, that’s all done. If I could just take an imprint of your credit card, because even though it’s your honeymoon we don’t trust you not to make a run for it in the middle of the night without settling up. Thank you. It’s the same reason we have those thief-proof coat hangers. Just to make you feel, you know, special.
Here are two key cards that won’t work, so you’ll have to come down and get me to reprogramme them while your starving family wait at the room door. It’ll fail again in three days’ time when you’re all standing there in wet swimmers because I’ll programme in the wrong checkout date. Yes, I know there was nothing wrong with the old metal keys but they’ve invented these now so we have to use them.
Now, you’ll find we’ve given you a twin room because although no married couple has slept in separate beds since 1951, we are worried that if we gave you a double bed, you might, seeing as you are on holiday, try and have your bi-annual shag. And nobody wants that, do they?
You’ll find the lights in your room all have different ways of turning off and on, and it will take you half an hour each night to get the room even slightly dark. There is a master switch on one side that turns them all off, except for the ceiling light over your bed, which is controlled by a hidden switch even our maintenance guys can’t find. And even if you do manage to switch it off, the red light on the thermostat is so bright you could put it on a skyscraper to warn off aeroplanes. Most people hang a towel over it.
All the electric sockets are behind the huge desk, so if you want to charge your iPhone or anything, you’ll have to move it, which will unplug the fridge and set off the fire alarm.
Children’s swimming is from 5pm–6pm, although that’s also when kids’ dinner is served, and they are not allowed in the dining room at any other time. And anyway there’s no diving or jumping, which is the only fun thing about swimming pools.
The Wi-Fi code is a mystifyingly long sequence of symbols, letters and numbers that will take six goes to type in correctly, and is wrong anyway. It’s written on a small card that has slipped down the back of the sofa. And, no, the windows don’t open. This is a hotel. The windows never open in hotels.
Finally, I’m afraid your room is not quite ready yet. Check-in is from 3pm, as you know, and although I can see that you requested an early check-in and we said we would see what we could do, we were lying. The bar is over there if you want somewhere to wait, but the barman doesn’t come on till six. In the meantime, my name is Giles; if you need anything else, dial ‘0’ on the phone that isn’t there. And have a great stay at the Hotel Wonderful!
