Demetri Martin's Findings

Courtesy of Toren Atkinson, I've discovered a new favourite comedian:



Here's Demetri Martin's site.

Yes, Please Clean Our Room

Once we'd moved into our hotel room at the Inn at False Creek, Kyenta and I thought we'd make it easier for both the cats and the hotel staff and use the "Do Not Disturb" door hanger throughout the week. That way, the cats would not freak out at having strangers invading their space, and the hotel staff would only have to clean 156 rooms instead of 157.

Our first weekend here, I ran into one of the maids in the hallway outside our room.

"Clean your room now?" she asked.

"Sure, yeah," I said. We'd been here a week and I could use the new towels. "Thank you."

"And during the week? What time do you leave?"

"We both go to work," I replied. "But it's OK, we don't need the room cleaned."

"Oh," she said. "But we can clean it when you've gone."

"Well, we've got two cats. So it's OK if you don't clean it. We're fine."

"If you have the sign on, we have to go home."

"Yes, it's OK. We're OK with that."

We went back and forth like this for a few seconds before I finally cottoned on to something she said: "We don't get paid by the hour." The hotel cleaning staff gets paid by the room; the more rooms they clean in a day, the more money they make. If a guest leaves the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door for the whole day, it's the same as an unoccupied room to the hotel.

I thought I was being polite and considerate, and to the staff I was being the exact opposite.

"Ah," I said. "Sure. Please clean our room."

"Thank you!" she said. "Thank you so much."

I remembered the cats. "But no vacuum cleaner. Just towels will be fine."