Luxurious but Not Practical

I'm staying at a hotel that's a branch of the Hilton family tree. The staff is friendly and helpful. The bed is comfy. The lobby is an atrium with a tropical garden in it. The room is nicely decorated. The towels are soft. There are lots of little touches that point toward luxury.

But there are also a few things that point toward extremely annoying. First, I was exhausted when I walked up with all my luggage and no one was there to open the door for me. And it was a heavy, awkward door. After some mix-ups at the front desk, I get to my room, and the coffee table and dining table are so close together it's impossible to roll a large suitcase through to the bedroom. And the coffee table is too heavy to move out of the way. All the coffee they left me for the coffee maker was decaff. I called Guest Services for regular and they happily brought it up. But now all my regular's gone and housekeeping left me two packs of decaff again. The computer desk doesn't have an outlet nearby for plugging in your laptop battery.

Last but not least, the shower. You have to reach around half a glass wall to turn on the faucet. I have very long arms, and I'm still halfway into the shower trying to reach the faucet, getting a face full of cold water when I finally turn it on. After my first shower I stepped out onto a soaking wet bathmat. (And I was so tired and stressed out, because that was the morning that was the second day of the terrible packout, that I burst into tears.) There's a half-inch open seam down the middle of the glass, separating the glass door from the glass wall. Also, the seam along the bottom of the door is weak. Water leaked out all over the floor. On the plus side, they provide lots of fluffy bath towels, so I used most of them to cover the floor. On my second shower I realized I should open the door into the shower for stepping out in order to prevent even more water dripping onto the floor. On my third shower I figured out how to adjust the stream so water wasn't shooting directly toward that open spot. Yay dry floor! But there's still no way to turn on the faucet without getting a face full of cold water. I just don't get it. Sure it looks great. But I'd rather have plain-looking and practical, especially when I'm this tired.

I know I'm tired and probably over sensitive this week. But is it really too much to ask that I'm able to roll my suitcase across my room? Or plug in my laptop battery while using it at the desk? Or turn on the shower without a blast of cold water in my face? It seems like a beautiful room was designed and built into several thousand units nationwide without anyone giving them a test run for usefulness.