I’m in a Holiday Inn in Roanoke, Virginia now, three hours from my final destination. (whoohoo!!!)

So I’ll share something interesting with you today. Now I am the last person to use a blog as a venting tool, but I think you’ll find this story worth reading. My apologies for the lack of visuals! I didn’t take any photos of the events as they occurred. But please try to read it all the way through!

Here goes!

I was at the height of all frustrations last night. For some reason, one by one, EVERY little thing started going wrong. This series of unfortunate events began as soon as I walked into this Holiday Inn.

First off, it took forever to check in. And I mean FOREVER. There was a family ahead of me complaining about something or other about some wedding and  some room to the clerk, and only one clerk was supposedly on duty. That clerk also moved slower than a freakin snail. The kids were adorable, though.

Meanwhile, dangling from my shoulders were my purse; my laptop bag filled with my work laptop, my macbook pro, all my chargers for laptops, phones, camera batteries, etc.; my clothes and toiletries bag; and my Nikon d40 camera.

All after another 7 hour drive. Yes, my patience was wearing thin.

I end up standing there for a good five minutes (which is long in hotel check-in world) and then retreated for the couch, while keeping an eye on the front desk. Finally after lots of feet tapping and pondering whether or not I should walk to the Marriott next door, the family moved on and it was my turn.

(FYI, the moral of this story is to never, ever go to this Holiday Inn. You’ll see why.)

“What are your rates? Do you offer corporate and/or AAA discounts?” This is the line I rehearsed at every hotel check–in desk on my trip.

“It’s $109/night,” she replied.

Impossible, I thought. For a Holiday Inn in Roanoke, VA? SO I repeat myself. “That’s with a AAA discount?”

“Oh. AAA. I can get you a room for $97.”

My brain pauses and just tells myself the woman is probably just really tired like me. Or just incompetent. Who knows. I agree to the new price. Now all I can do is give her my credit card and ID, and stand and wait.

“The system appears to be down,” she said in a slow, monotone voice. I scrunch my forehead signaling for elaboration. What do you mean the system is down?

“Um. You seeee….. the systems is dowwwwn….. so I can’t sign you in. Um. (looks around) Here, I’ll give you the key. Someone will be up to your room soon so you can sign stuff.”

Someone will be up in my room? Lady, I just drove for seven hours. I don’t want anyone coming into my room unless it’s room service with a three-course meal, chocolate cake and a glass of Pinot Noir. Of course I don’t say any of this. My sweet self just smiles, nods and thanks her for the keys and for her help. I know, I need to work on embracing my inner bitch, as Robin Meade puts it. Who knows, one day when I’m ready, I’ll go public with that other me.

“Can I have my credit card back?” I ask the clerk.

“Oh. Um. Wow. Here,” she hands me back my card, shaking her head.

So I get to my room. Of course, she put me RIGHT next to the elevator on the 5th floor. I don’t mean just one or two doors across. I mean, you can hear people ringing and dinging all day and night. I sigh and just pray it’ll be a quiet night.

Fifteen minutes later, hotel staff came to my room so I can sign my check-in papers. I know, GHE-TTO. Anyway, I greet him with a warm smile as he hands me a sheet of paper marked with X’s on where I need to sign. I look up for a pen. He’s slouching, looking around the hallway with this annoying smirk on his face, and can’t seem to keep his feet still. Maybe he suffers from ADD like me, although mine is self-diagnosed.

“Do you have a pen?” I ask.

“There should be a pen in your room,” he says rudely, as if it were that obvious I should have grabbed the pen before opening the door for this dodohead.

By this point I’m still patient, sweet little Angie. I say, “Oh OK!” and run to grab my hotel-provided pen and run back to sign the paper that I should have been given at check-in which should have happened faster than it should. It gets better.

Then I realize, I’m REALLY hungry. I didn’t eat since lunch! And lunch was only french fries because Burger King gave me a chicken sandwich with rotten cheese (or something was rotting in there) and I got a stomachache from taking one bite of it. So obviously I couldn’t eat that!

I pick up the phone for room service. But the phone’s room service button doesn’t work. So I call the universal front desk number, “0″, and get connected to who else but my favorite lady of the night.

“Hello. What’s the number to room service?” I ask again in my sweet voice which even began to annoy me by that point.

“Um. Room service’s number is Room Service?” she says super rudely.

I imagined myself running down the stairs and strangling her (sorry Mom! I didn’t mean that. I’m just venting!) How could hotel staff me this rude! So I ask to be connected to Room Service, and again I am still nice to this b. She does one thing right and connects me.

Then I reach their voicemail. Room service has a voicemail? They say they will call me right back. So I leave a message with my name and room number, and hang up.

I then log onto Hotels.com to book my hotel for the next week. But for some reason, the site wasn’t working and it wasn’t letting me book my hotel. Then facebook’s site stopped loading too. Can this hotel do anything right?

Then I get a call from room service. Thank THE LORD.

I tell her what I want. I want the chicken pasta and a glass of tap water.

“I’m so sorry ma’am,” she says. ”That will take a very long time because I just received an order of $160 from another room and our grill is full.”

“Is there ANYTHING you can make for me that won’t take 45 minutes to prepare?” I plead. I’m starved. I’m desperate. I’ll even eat blocks of cheese at this point and I’m lactose intolerant.

“I’m really sorry ma’am.” She sounded frazzled. I felt bad. I thought back to my old restaurant days when I screwed up a large delivery order and had to deal with unhappy customers on the phone. It’s not pleasant.

So I didn’t place the order and called a local Chinese restaurant instead. It was located several blocks away from the hotel. And again! The worker there was rude also! Maybe it’s just Roanoke, VA people? anyway, after placing the order he told me it would take 45 minutes to deliver. I tell him that’s a very long time and wonder why it will take 45 minutes to delivery fast-food, probably already pre-made Chinese food to hotel a few blocks away.

So I cancel my order and just decide to go on a vending machine search. I couldn’t find one and had to go back to my lady at the front desk who then directed me to the 2nd or 4th floors.

My mouth was disgustingly parched by this point and I stared into the chocolate bars and bags of chips in the machine and frowned. I don’t want any of that. I need protein. I need real food. I need… WATER.

So I turn around and slide my dollars into the beverage machine. But it wouldn’t take my dollars. Then I realize the stupid machine needed exact change to work, and all I had were dollars. Lucky for me, there was another beverage machine right behind it. But the red light was on that too. It was broken! Again I asked myself, does anything in this hotel work??

I go back to my room and by now it’s 10: 20 p.m. I’m dizzy with hunger and just gave up. I called room service back and placed an order for mushroom soup, pasta marinara with chicken, and most importantly — a glass of tap water.

I ran to my door when I heard a knock. Ah. There was my gourmet meal of the night. Finally.

Then I tasted the soup. Believe me when I say it was the worst soup I ever had in my life. It tasted like you were just drinking heavy cream straight out of the carton.

Then I tasted my pasta. The spaghetti was so overcooked I didn’t even need to bite it before swallowing. It just went straight down.

And they forgot my tap water.

I shook my head and just forced myself to breathe before I really lost it. Then I got up to go to the bathroom and tripped over all the wires of my chargers and almost fell flat on my face.

That was when all hell broke loose. That was also when my inner bitch started revealing herself. I actually jumped up and down screaming (somewhat silently), waving my hands ridiculously in the air. Oh you would have loved it.

I ended up eating the rest of that horrible pasta. Yup, that’s how hungry I was. And there’s nothing worse than getting full off of terrible food!

So what did we learn today, class? Never. Ever. EVER. Go to this Holiday Inn.

-Angie

P.S. The only reason I wanted to go to a Holiday Inn was so I can say I went to a “Hotel Motel Holiday Inn!” I guess that wasn’t enough justification for God and he wanted me to have an ughwefrjwoifjaf kind of night. hahahha. Sigh, I can laugh about it the next morning but let me tell you, I was NOT laughing last night.

Food for thought:

Isn’t it strange how some nights, everything can go wrong at once?