Thrift Lodge: Come For The Bed, Stay For The Hypodermic Needles!
Xmitter was checking his Thrift Lodge bed for bed bugs when he discovered a bag filled with hypodermic needles. The clerk on duty refused to offer either an apology or a refund, and explained that "you can even find needles [in] 5 star hotels." When told that this was an inappropriate response, the clerk asked: "Is this a test?"
The clerk on duty at this time was Phil. Phil seemed pretty annoyed at my intrusion. "There's a problem with my room, I need to check out." I said. "*Sigh* what's the problem with the room?" He said all annoyed.
"Well." And I admit I was pretty snippy and angry and assholish. "Here, let me show you what I found under my mattress." and I showed him the photos (still on the camera's tiny LCD screen)
Phil squinted and looked and puffed and huffed, and said he couldn't tell what he was looking at. I tried showing him a couple of different ones. He said one definitely looked like some hypodermic needles.
I told him that was pretty crazy and that I wasn't staying there again, and asked him what he can do for me. He said nothing, and that I would have to speak to a manager, and that the next time a manager would be in would be at 9am tomorrow. I told him to call the manager. He said it was too late and that he couldn't do that. I told him well how about I call the police? He said to go ahead and call the police and that they would just say they couldn't do anything and that it was a civil matter.
He said something about how you can even find needles and bed bugs and all that in 5 star hotels and blah blah blah. I told him oh yes, I definitely have found bed bugs in nice hotels.
At this point I was pretty much beyond upset. "You know," I said. "You haven't even apologized to me."
"Oh I see," he laughed. "Is this a test? You're testing me?" I pretty much lost control verbally at this point and told him to fuck off or something like that. I'm not sorry about that, I was pretty upset. I couldn't take any more and left to go sit in the rental car, and he yelled something out about "Oh now you can apologize to me for saying ‘fuck you'!" Feh. So I fled that horrible nasty pee smelling syphilis dart factory, and came out to the suburb of Beaverton, and checked into a room that costs not quite twice what the bed of needles did.
Xmitter acknowledged that he might have been blowing things out of proportion, but we really don't think it's unreasonable to expect your hotel room to be free of hypodermic needles.
Update: Xmitter later added:
OK this morning I spoke with Mr Karia, the manager of the Thriftlodge (I incorrectly called it the Budgetlodge, I've fixed that.) He said they've cancelled any charges and nothing should appear on my bank statement. I thanked him for that and asked what else he could do for me. He said there wasn't anything else he could do. I told him that I had to find something at the last minute and he should cover the difference in cost for my room that doesn't smell like pee or have needles in it. He told me that was my decision to go elsewhere and that he didn't make me do that, so he wasn't going to pay up."
Travelodge Sucks. Also the Portland Thriftlodge sucks real bad. But you probably already know this. [Xmitter]
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Comments:
Doesn't that tell you they didn't change the bed sheets either? Surely the maid should have found them while doing that, if they were under the mattress. I assume he meant between the mattress/box springs.
This article reminds me of why I refuse to stay in any place of lodging with "budget" in the title.
@Gmork: Don't know about you, but I'd think twice about picking up some needles without some serious gloves on.
@takotchi: Nah, some hotels won't change the sheets every time. If it looks clean, they'll just remake the bed. Unless the needles belong to the housekeeping crew...
@Five: Not to mention, you'd be leaving fingerprints on the bag.
I would have taken one look, taken a photograph, and called the police. Let them deal with the front desk and request an explanation.
I stayed in a Super8 a few days ago and it was pretty grubby. The AC unit made up for it though, it got the unit down to under 60 degrees. It was about 58 all night long. The sheets had holes in them, and half the lights were burnt out, but I'd stay again just for that AC.
Sometimes decorum just goes out the window and I think this is one of those times when I'm with the OP. At least he didn't say "This is fucking ridiculous." He actually told the desk clerk to "fuck off or something like that."
Makes me wonder what kind of place the clerk sleeps in at home if he's not even willing to go look at things. Maybe it looked ok to him? Was he thinking the OP tool the pictures somewhere else?
Am I the only one who found the clerk's response on finding needles in 5 star hotels funny?
I stayed at a Travelodge once. The room was totally disgusting, and I got an offer from a hooker that looked as if she were in need of a bath but was standing outside my door.
On a side note, that motel was later consumed in a blazing inferno. Justice was served.
the pics on his blog show that they were between the mattress and box spring. also - he mentions that he doesn't think diabetics hide their syringes like that. [personally, i don't, that's gross] BUT those ARE diabetic insulin needles. two different brands. the ones with the rounded ends on the caps are becton dickinson [the center one facing away in the above pic - i checked the larger ones on his blog,] the one with the flat ended cap is ulticare. i've used both brands.
if you didn't know already, insulin needles are marked in units of insulin, not cc's. makes them really hard to use for any other injectable.
i've never done intravenous drugs but those needles are designed for subcutaneous use and won't go into a vein easily. heck, i've bent that kind of needle on my skin before.
i have no idea what the person who left them there was doing or what they were thinking - but i'd be willing to bet they weren't using them for anything but insulin.
still gross and inappropriate to leave them behind, still a biohazard, but not too likely to be for nefarious purposes.
and yes, i know not everyone is familiar with any of these details, and before i was diagnosed i probably wouldn't have known the difference either.
OMG.....needles in my room! Don't assume the needles were from some crack smoker or druggie. I am more than sure that I have left syringes behind a time or two when I have stayed in a hotel/motel room. I am diabetic and I hide my syringes when staying out so no one can get to them or find them. They may have just been left behind by some diabetic. And about the maid not finding them.....maybe they were so far under that they didn't feel them when remaking the bed. I do agree that an apology should have come from the hotel.....but only for not cleaning better.
@Gmork: Sounds like Phil didn't want to go look. I suppose Xmitter took a photo rather than handle the needles himself. My favorite hotel medical-device find was a pile of used peritoneal dialysis bags stacked up in the hallway across the door of my Las Vegas hotel room.
@Five: This is why I go to the counter when we do stay at a hotel and get fresh linens from them. I would rather change the sheets myself than discover spoo or other fluids from a fun filled evening!
We are thankful enough to have not checked into a hotel full of bed bugs. (Knock on wood)
I'm all about saving a buck, but geez - Budget Lodge just sounds like a haven for crackhead prostitutes to turn tricks.
You don't have to spend hundreds of dollars to stay in a decent hotel room. I just stayed at the Hilton Washington for under $75 a night via hotels.com
Why is a needle from a diabetic any less disturbing?
I agree location has a lot to do with the creepiness factor. An apology was definitely merited.
What is up with people feeling like they have to apologize for being upset? Sorry, but if you're in customer service, part of your job is dealing with people when they're upset. If the first place you go when people get upset is, "You are angry! I'm going to shut down" then you should probably find another line of work.
Granted, customers don't have the right to be downright abusive or completely irrational. However, customers do have the right to get angry - even really angry.
At this point I was pretty much beyond upset. "You know," I said. "You haven't even apologized to me."
What's the deal with everyone demanding an apology? Does it really make that much of a difference? I can understand the OP being upset by the needles, but I think he's trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill. Why not politely request a refund on the grounds the room is not clean and THEN go to the next town for a room? Why get snotty with the clerk and then demand an apology? Although the clerk could have pretended to give a shit, he owed nobody an apology.
@CaptZ: try a portable sharps container that's big enough for about three needles and came in a pack of three at CVS for under $5. you're supposed to turn the lid over to permanently lock it when you use it, but i just use mine to carry them home and dispose of them in a larger puncture resistant container. it makes life so much easier and it has biohazard warning stickers on the outside so if someone sees it they aren't likely to pick it up when cleaning a room
if it was me, I would not leave it up to the clerk to "figure out" what he could"do" for me.
I would have simply asked for another room.
@catastrophegirl - just add kittens: I hear you - but I have seen junkies shoot up with bent needles. The stuff that they put in the needles is brown, so they really don't care what brand they are or what their intended use is for. My grandma has had people steal her diabetic needles, so I know for a fact that they don't care.
@Vanilla5: wow. oddly, all but 4 states have laws that allow the purchase of up to ten needles at a time without a prescription just to keep junkies from stealing or reusing needles. most of the laws went into place at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
stealing a grandma's needles is just wrong in so many ways.
and potentially life threatening to her if she's out somewhere when it happens and she's caught without needles.
@Vanilla5:
I keep my heater at 50 in the winter, so the pipes don't freeze. I will sleep with my window open during winter even when it drops below freezing. I'd prefer if it never got above 65..ever.
Some friends and I stayed at a Microtel in Atlanta a few years ago and noticed a hypodermic needle in the light fixture above the bed. We laughed about how disgusted we were (still do), but we didn't complain. I guess you get what you pay for.
@Gmork: I would have been afraid to pick up the needles too. And I wouldn't have been down there looking for an explanation. Just a full refund on my room and a return on my key with the photo to show why I was checking out.
This just skeeves me thinking about it.
I'm really wondering what 5 star hotels the clerk has been in with needles.
@kduhtoe: I think it does b/c the clerk started OUT being snotty and acting like he didn't want to be at work before the OP even told him what he wanted. An apology isn't just an apology - it's an acknowledgement that there was something wrong with the service being provided.
"I'm sorry about your experience here at Budget Lodge. Would you mind if I transfer you to a different room? If not, I understand and will refund your money."
That's how that should've been handled.
Pfft. Needles. We once found dried blood splattered on the doorframe to the bathroom at the Days Inn, as well as the baseboards. There were also dried white "mystery fluids" on the furniture. We didn't even let the kids sit down. Back to the office to inform them, then we left. Why would we want another room at a place with that lax of standards?
BTW, the clerk didn't seem surprised. It was the last Days Inn we ever tried.
@catastrophegirl - just add kittens: That was my initial thought too. They're friggin easy to buy. But I guess if they can steal them that's easy too. She lives in a place where there's always a nurse on staff so I doubt she'd be without one while she was there but lots of people come in and out of there throughout the day.
@tenners: OH. MY. GOD. I stayed there once in a freak layover gone wrong and I swear it was the most terrifying hotel I've ever been in. And one would like to think that I was exaggerating but I'm absolutely not. I'm looking for the photos I took of the room but can't seem to find them on my laptop.
The first thing I saw when I got out of the sweltering lobby was 2 junkies get off the elevator. How do I know they were junkies? Nobody else half-sits in the corner of an elevator, holding their arm, eyes rolled back in their head. People on my floor were yelling at each other all the way down the hall in a foreign language. Like seriously yelling. That place is a dump.
@catastrophegirl - just add kittens
FYI, 1 cc 1/2" insulin needles are the PREFERRED needle for IV drug use. Just poke around (haha!) online...
If I were a house keeper at a place like that, after a few times of almost/actually jabbing myself on a needle, I would just quit looking in the places that people commonly stick them... Mebbe that is the case here?
Oh, one more thing...
The qtip with bits of the cotton torn off pretty much guarantee that these were used by an IV drug user... They pull the tips off the qtips to filter the dope after they
cook it. Also, portland is apparently has a big heroin problem.
"I pretty much lost control verbally at this point and told him to fuck off or something like that."
I think you wanted a confrontation and you got a confrontation. Perhaps the next time you're in such a situation, take a moment to think about what you want the end result to be before you speak to someone about something that's upsetting you.
You were the victim in this situation, so why did you act like the aggressor? Sometimes we project what we fear the end result of a situation will be. In other words, perhaps you felt the hotel clerk would not care and so you fulfilled that scenario.
This certainly sounds like an unpleasant experience but it doesn't mean you can't learn anything from it.
It does not matter if the syringes were clean, used for insulin, or used for illicit drugs. Under the mattress, they were a negligible hazard. If Xmitter thought that was a reflection of the general level of hygiene of the motel, that's perfectly OK. But his behavior was extreme given the situation. The clerk probably had a more realistic assessment of the actual level of hazard, but unfortunately gave illogical and arcane excuses.
As someone working at the desk of a kinda crappy budget motel (as we speak, actually), I've got a bit of sympathy for both sides of the story. Obviously the situation is unacceptable, I'd be mortified to have to deal with that sort of thing on my shift - you feel like a bit of an arse when you constantly have to make up for the shortcomings of your hotel to the guests. However, I can't say I have any sympathy for people flying off the handle at desk clerks either. People at the front desk of a hotel (esp. the crap budget ones) are often quite limited in their power to resolve things independent of a manager. I can't say much for the gentleman mentioned, but contacting my manager is next to impossible unless he's standing right next to me. So, yes, take steps to resolve situations as you will, but please don't yell at the desk clerks. We're frequently caught in situations where we're given great responsibility without the great power to back it up. A helpful question to ask is - "So, what can we do right now to fix it up, and what needs to wait until morning?" Any clerk will be able to change your room, that's fairly basic, so unless the hotel is full up you can ask for that.
Demanding a personal apology from a clerk, like the OP did, would frankly just irritate me and reduce my drive to help. It sounds like the clerk in the story was a bit of a dick, sure, but animosity against him only exacerbated the situation.
@twophrasebark: Yeah, telling him to fuck off probably wasn't the wisest thing to do, but I bet it made him feel a hell of a lot better.
You know those annoying car warranty phone calls (that are illegal)? I usually threaten bodily harm on the person's mother. Does it help? No. But it makes my afternoon a little brighter.
I'm sorry for that Sir. let me put you in another room.
problem solved and you are not the butt of jokes on Consumerist or the rest of the web.
I am always amazed at the thought process people use -or not used as the result confirms- when being fuck ups.
@catastrophegirl - just add kittens: Now I do not know for sure, but it sounds like this took place in Portland (i live in beaverton, the suburb they slept in) and I know that there are needle exchange programs less then 10 mins public-trans ride from the only Travelodge I know of around here. As per what I have heard all you need is any hypodermic needle to get a clean one. So even if they were not used for drugs they could easily have been intended to be exchanged for ones that could be.
@dragonfire81:
motel 6's aren't that bad, back when I toured tournaments throughout the north west US we would stay at motel 6's whenever camp grounds weren't available and it was quite nice. Swimming pools were always clean and the units were never grimey.
@Gmork:
come live in canada, summer is only 2 months the rest of the time its chilly or nut grabbing cold
"Well." And I admit I was pretty snippy and angry and assholish. "Here, let me show you what I found under my mattress." and I showed him the photos (still on the camera's tiny LCD screen)
Phil squinted and looked and puffed and huffed, and said he couldn't tell what he was looking at. I tried showing him a couple of different ones. He said one definitely looked like some hypodermic needles.
I told him that was pretty crazy and that I wasn't staying there again, and asked him what he can do for me.
I don't understand this, he only showed him pictures? What happened to the actual hypodermic needles? If all he did was show some pictures to the guy the next day then maybe the clerk didn't believe him.