Thursday, November 29, 2007

Peabody Bites It

This morning around 4am, we arrived at the Peabody: by all accounts a very nice hotel. I groggily rolled out of my bunk on the bus, far more tired than usual, and dragged my luggage up to my room, which we'll call 931.

I slide the keycard into the door. Red light. Tried again. Red again. My key didn't work. Now I realize this is ironic, given that I just finished expounding on how not pro this is. But at 4am, all irony is lost on me.

I trekked down to the front desk to be greeted by a woman (let's call her NinnyPoo) who basically inferred with her tone that I was stupid and didn't know how to properly use a keycard. I insisted that she make me another and she grumbled as she did it.

I clunkily dragged my bags back up to the ninth floor and tried again. 931. Green light! The keycard worked. I just wanted to go to sleep, but I slunk into the room, dropped everything and took my daily hotel portrait for this very blog. As I was doing this, I heard my locked hotel door opening.

This was very unusual.

"Hello?!"

It was the familiar but confused voice of Kay Hanley.

She said that she thought this was her room. And her key worked in the door. Mine didn't. We consulted the rooming sheet. They listed us both in 931. Which was wrong. We haven't shared rooms at all on this tour, and there was only one bed anyway.

So what could we do? We took a group hotel portrait. And then we called down to NinnyPoo. Guess what? I had to go back down to the lobby and have a third keycard made. I was supposed to be staying in 932.

I took the annoyingly slow elevator back down to the lobby. On the way I encountered our delightful road manager, Jack Albeck, and quickly said "They put Kay and I in the same room."

He looked me in the eye and said, "So then everything worked out."

We love Jack. Anyway, I showed the rooming sheet to NinnyPoo. She squinted at it, blinked once and said "Well, what the hell?"

She didn't say sorry. Just printed me a new card and sent me on my way. She did, however, give me a pamphlet on the history of the Peabody, just in case I was in for some late night reading about useless trivia.

Ummm. Not so much.

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4 comments:

  1. Wow... Would that suck. What time did you end up actually falling asleep at?

    Do you know when Brandi will be back on the road with you and the band? I would love to see photos of her from tour.

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  2. Man, that sucks that you had such a crappy experience in such an otherwise great hotel. Seriously, I love the Peabody. Just for that, you should steal a duck.
    Aaron

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  3. oh, that's funny. you could have kept the horrible picture of of us at 4am, btw. it's your e-diary for the love of crikey, so don't let my vanity get in the way of your journalistic integrity. see you at bus call tomorrow, oh timely one.

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  4. Anonymous, I think it was around 6am. Booooo.

    I'm not sure when Brandi is joining us. I'm pretty much in the dark about all that.

    Aaron, I totally agree. The Peabody was otherwise wonderful, but I do feel that they owe me a duck.

    Kaykay, that horrible picture of us is now on my Flickr stream for all to see. By the way, what is this "journalistic integrity" of which you speak? Never heard of it.

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