Don't drink the water...

So the other day my mom emailed me a video from some sort of “hidden camera” news show. They were visiting various hotels and placing their cameras in the bathrooms, to see how the housekeeping staff handled the dirty glasses. And of course it wouldn’t be good TV to show the housekeepers placing freshly-washed and sanitized glasses on the counter – so I knew nothing good could be on those hidden recordings. And sure enough, the video footage showed housekeepers taking dirty glasses, rinsing them with water, and wiping them off with towels (the same towels they were supposed to be replacing)… or worse, some housekeepers would place the glasses in the sink, spray them with blue glass cleaner (some sort of generic Windex, I suppose – clearly labeled “do not drink” on the bottle), and then wipe them with towels… and even worse than THAT, one of the housekeepers haphazardly “cleaned” the drinking glasses immediately after she’d been cleaning the toilet – she didn’t even remove her rubber gloves.

And all I could think as I was watching this video was, “why, oh why did my mom have to send me this? Oh vile hotel housekeeping – how many ways will you find to encourage my germ phobia? Will you not be happy until I have crossed the fine line between ‘good sense’ and ‘obsessive-compulsive’?” Apparently it’s not enough to know that they never wash those hotel bedspreads – now I have to live with the knowledge that my shiny, crystal-clear hotel glass may be harboring E coli and cold viruses and possibly an ammonia-based industrial cleaner.

This is horrible news for a hotel junkie such as myself. I am already in the practice of immediately removing the bedspread as soon as I get to a hotel room. It makes me cringe to see anyone lazily flop onto a fully-made-up hotel bed, because all I can think about is all the OTHER people who were lazily flopping on the bed previously. And lately, I’ve also embraced the habit of wiping down the TV remote with hand sanitizer when I get to the room. And sometimes the light switches and door handles. I mean, forget that mysterious blue glass cleaner – housekeeping doesn’t even ATTEMPT to clean the TV remote. And what do most people do as soon as they get to a hotel room? First, they lazily flop onto the unwashed bedspread… and then they pick up the remote and turn on the TV. And then they sneeze… and change the channel… and wipe their nose… and turn up the volume… you see where this is headed, right? Must… clean… remote…

I just hope that no matter how many “hidden camera” hotel room reports the news shows broadcast, I’ll never be deterred from getting out and seeing the world. Okay, so I have to toss the bedspread on the floor when I get to the room… and clean the TV remote… and possibly bring my own disposable paper cups… But those are just small inconveniences to put up with for the very great privileges of traveling and discovering new places and experiencing new things. And hopefully those “new things” will not include a remote control-borne illness…

And then I think about all the times I’ve traveled, and all the hotels I’ve stayed in, and the innumerable sips of water I’ve taken from (possibly) shoddily-cleaned glasses, and I realize – I can’t remember EVER ending up sick after a stay in a hotel. Even the ones with hundred year-old bowl-shaped mattresses… or the practically-bare rustic cabin we slept in at Yellowstone Park… or the Travelodge in Waxahatchie with the roach under the sink and the phone ripped out of the wall… I’ve always emerged unscathed, even if I’ve accidentally touched the bedspread or forgotten to clean the remote. So really, are those “hidden camera” exposes all that “informative”? Or are they just deliberately searching for the worst of the worst, to spread fear and paranoia amongst the general public?

For the sake of my borderline-OCD hotel rituals, I’d like to assume it’s the latter…