Fiction - The Howard Johnson’s Motel

Introduction

What follows is a work of fiction.  Any characters, places, or sentiments are purely the product of the blogger’s imagination and any resemblance to any actual character, place, or sentiment is purely coincidental.  The sole exception is the staircase, which is based on an actual staircase of the Penthouse Apartments on Abrego Road in Isla Vista, California, which is used fictitiously.

Confirmation

Congratulations!  You have booked a double-queen-bed double-occupancy doubleplusgood guest room at the spacious and elegant Howard Johnson’s motor hotel in the charming, semi-sunny mini-tropolis of Seaside, California!  While lodging at the Howard Johnson’s (hint:  call it “HoJo” and you’ll sound like a local!), you’ll enjoy fabulous amenities including Rise & Dine™, our copyrighted, patented, totally free heart-healthy GMO-optional organic-ish continental breakfast, just like what is served on The Continent to expatriates who want to feel like repatriates!  Gluten and gluten-free choices available.  Vegan, vegetarian, ovo-lacto, and meat-lovers’ selections also offered (where available). Child-friendly pastries?  Check!  Fair-, non-fair, and unfair trade coffee and tea products on tap?  Yours to discover.  Fresh milk, that pours out of an old-school pitcher?  Got that.  Weird simulation milk/creamer/kreamer based on corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, dipotassium phosphate, mono- and diglycerides?  Got that too, in an array of stunning flavors!  Plastic coffee stirring sticks that might mess up your hormones?  Check, please!  (But there’s no check—like we said, it’s totally free!)

In-room, you’ll also enjoy free wireless Internet access using the very latest 802.11ac standards, brought to you by Howard Johnson’s and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE (hint:  say it “eye triple-E” and you’ll sound like a local!).  This totally free connection will support data rates far in excess of what you ever believed possible, so you can surf like a modern-day Kahanamoku on your favorite websites, from Facebook to Gracebook to Disgracebook!  All without dipping into your precious 4G LTE data plan! 

And did somebody ask about carpet?  This guest room has it—from wall to wall, in breathtaking reddish colors and with the kind of luxurious and yet versatile foot-feel you can only get from real simulated-wool nylon!  Comfortable chair in-room?  You betcha (where available).  Hot running water?  Got that too—with HoJo’s special MildChildSafeSelect™  water temperature regulator so your little ones—who stay free at HoJo, by the way—won’t blanch the flesh off their hands like at that last place!  In-room coffee?  Yes, in a snap, with that big funky teabag-cartridge type thing that James Bond would use if he weren’t an Englishman who drinks tea instead (and yes, you also can choose from in-room fresh brewed tea selections!). 

As would-be valued members of Wyndham Rewards (would-be members, not would-be valued, since you’re already valued!), you could be earning up to 1,390 points, valid toward toilet and toilet paper upgrades, Real™ in-room dairy creamer upgrades, welcome mat monogram upgrades (allow six weeks for delivery), and priority ice machine access.  But since you’re not Wyndham Rewards members, at least not that you know of since you may have lost track (hey, we understand, we’ve been there), you’ll instead be receiving daily e-mail updates providing detailed information about how to join the élite cadre of travelling professionals (and retirees!) who enjoy the full benefits, and prestige, of Rewards membership.

Terms, conditions, caveats, and qualifications

Wyndham Rewards void where prohibited (e.g., competing motels).  Check-in is at 2p.m. sharp, but guests are invited to use the parking lot—complete with free wireless Internet access—from 1 p.m. onward except during holiday Blacktop Blackout™ periods, which are reserved for Family Fun Time™.  Hopscotch and Four-Square encouraged.  Blacktop-based ball games are BYOB (Bring Your Own Ball) and BYOC (Bring Your Own Chalk).  Pets are allowed near all guest rooms (no pets in-room, please). 

Howard Johnson’s is not responsible for Internet backbone congestion, WiFi radio interference, mobile device battery life, websites you wish you’d never visited featuring images you wish you could un-see, or poor quality television programming. 

Howard Johnson’s makes every effort to provide a clean, comfortable room, but our housekeeping associates are only human.  We cannot guarantee you won’t find a pair of a previous guest’s underwear briefs hanging from the inside doorknob of the bathroom, or an old earplug under the bed.

HoJo offers in-room ClimateControlSelect™ heating/cooling/ventilation systems (hint:  call it “HVAC” and you’ll sound like a local!) which should assure your comfort regardless of weather conditions.  In certain situations you may discover that the ClimateControlSelect™ unit cycles loudly on and off all night no matter what you do with the controls, and we recommend turning up the in-room refrigerator to mitigate HVAC-based sound pollution.  HoJo is not responsible for lost sleep.  Be careful driving or operating heavy machinery after any night disrupted by ClimateControlSelect™. 

Urban myth has it that a HoJo guest once found mushrooms growing in the bathtub.  That simply never happened, at least at a HoJo property.  However, HoJo cannot guarantee that this will never happen at a HoJo Motel (hint:  call it “HoJoMo” and you’ll sound like a local!).  In the event you discover mushrooms in a HoJoMo bathtub, please note that they are almost certainly not mushrooms but toadstools, and consuming them could lead to illness or even death.

The HoJo Company (hint:  call it “HoJoCo” and you’ll sound like a local!) acknowledges that, despite what we said earlier about James Bond drinking tea, he actually does not drink tea, and once said to his secretary, “I don’t drink tea.  I hate it.  It’s mud ... be a good girl and make me some coffee.”  This does not mean you may address a HoJo guest services associate as “good girl” (hint:  call her “HoJoHo” and you’ll sound like an asshole, so don’t do that either).

There may be a full-size posterboard picture of our strange bearded mascot in the lobby, which may scare small children, nearsighted seniors, or tripping teenagers.  HoJoCo is not responsible for cardiac events, swooning, or freaking out associated with this corporate branding. 

HoJoCo is also not responsible for explaining what has happened to society such that weird bearded dudes who scare children and seniors have replaced what by any measure would be reckoned a much more pleasant image.

HoJo has made significant progress in property design since the early days when an orange roof was considered clever and avant-garde.  Our HoJoMos feature award-winning architectural features combining the best of scalable, repeatable designs that look great while keeping our properties affordable.  Note that the following photo may or may not accurately depict a HoJoMo interior:

It is possible that the HoJoMo property you visit will have a lobby more closely resembling a structure your kids made out of Lego back when Lego was just simple bricks, before they got all fancy.  HoJoCo reserves the right to substitute, for the backlit, indoor staircase shown above, an outdoor staircase with no risers, only treads, made of extruded concrete and studded with little smooth pebbles (like so many staircases in the ‘70s) that become incredibly slick when wet, so you might slip while descending and find your foot slipping beneath the railing, which may peel the skin off your shin like the curls of wood off a carpenter’s rasp, leaving a permanent scar.  By reserving this room you agree to release HoJoCo from all liability stemming from this or any injury, real or imagined.

Maximum occupancy of each room is limited to four persons.  In the event that you exceed this by packing 8 or 10 bicycle racers in the room, along with 8 or 10 bicycles, HoJoCo is not responsible for your brother’s girlfriend claiming you were hitting on her during the night when all you were doing was trying to pull more of the blankets over to your side.

Review

Loved this place!

««««« Reviewed 2 days ago

I’m crazy about HoJoMo’s!  Call me HoJoLoCo and you’ll sound like a local, LOL!  The manager opened up the Rise & Dine™ continental breakfast half an hour early so my daughter could fuel up for her bike race and still get on the road on time.  As a famous cyborg once said, I’ll be back!

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From the Archives - Business Travel

Introduction

I used to travel a fair bit on business. Not so much anymore, partially due to technologies like conference calling and net conferences. I realized recently that I’ve gone over a year now without a business trip. In observance of that anniversary, I offer here a humor piece on business travel, from my archives.

Rest assured I did not actually submit this extravagantly detailed report to my employer. That said, every item, thought, feeling, and reflection presented here is 100% factual.

The photo below has nothing to do with this post. I just think it’s funny.

From the Archives - EXPENSE REPORT

“Please include all details of Meals, Entertainment, and Other expenses (IRS REQUIRES).”

Date: 8/4/97

Amount: $14

Description (names, titles): Myself, Super Shuttle to SF Int’l Airport

Details: The van showed up early, catching me just out of the shower. Ran to van with belt and shoes in my hand, hair wet, tripping over my duffel bag. Van got me to the airport almost two hours before my flight.

_____________________________

Date: 8/4/97

Amount: $4.15

Description (names, titles): Myself, Burgers, Etc., SF Int’l Airport

Details: “Burgers, Etc.”: the name suits the place nicely. Totally uninspired, dutifully descriptive; they could have called it “Burgers & Crap.” If you’ve looked at my receipt, you may wonder why I had a meatball and a tuna sandwich at 8:13am. It was a mistake: the clerk, Rhad, was new and hit the meatball sandwich button by mistake. He then made matters worse by canceling the tuna, rather than the meatball, sandwich. If you’re wondering why I got a 20% “Airport Employee Discount,” it’s to compensate for the price difference between the meatball and the tuna (so Rhad wouldn’t get in trouble for botching his over-ring).

_____________________________

Date: 8/4/97

Amount: $333.59

Description (names, titles): Myself, flight to Columbus, OH

Details: Asked for exit row for more legroom, got wrong exit row seat that had no extra legroom and didn’t recline, had no left-hand armrest. Felt guilty for ignoring flight attendant’s safety instructions. Airline magazine had pointless article about Ruth somebody, founder of Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, and how it was called “Chris’s Steakhouse” for years until our enlightened period when she could put her own name on it. I wonder if the waitresses still wear short denim miniskirts. Ads in the magazine were for Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and for a variety of products and services aimed at executives: seminars by either Steven Covey or Charles Kurault, on either improving quality or increasing shareholder value, or both. Dozens of ads for new laptops, new cell phones, new two-way pagers, more ways to accrue frequent flier miles—evidently ads designed to rub travelers’ noses in the frantic pace of their lives.

SkyMall catalog was equally depressing: pages and pages of ads for inspirational posters, framed or unframed, with captions like “DEDICATION: If we don’t take care of our customers, somebody else will” below, incongruously, a close-up of a handshake. Or, “ATTITUDE: It’s the only buzzword you lowly cogs of industry could ever hope to understand,” below a picture of a grossly magnified drop of water hitting the surface of a pool. The silent movie was “Dante’s Peak,” starring Pierce Brosnan. Another Hollywood loss-leader, mercilessly foisted upon the trapped traveler, and I wasn’t about to spend $4 on headphones to find out if it’s any better with sound.

In-flight “meal” was blanched pressed ham product, white foam bun, little Pepperidge Farm “Exquisite Cookie” which was a sandwich cookie the color of an undercooked waffle with a brown middle tasting like the faintly minty product they put in green mint chocolate chip ice cream. Beverage: my usual tomato juice, of which they must have a glut, because they gave me the whole can, which I spilled. Paper napkin became a red, stringy mess, like a murder.

Flight attendant’s singsong voice was a perfect replica of some prototypical flight attendant of long ago, who should be paid royalties for his or her now classic inflection, with special emphasis placed on those words that are the most unnecessary: “Please do be sure to check around your seat for any personal items you may have left on boaaaaard. Be careful opening the overhead bins as items may have shifted duuuuring the flight. Should your future travel plans again call for air travel, we do hope that you will again choose America West as your airline pro-viiiii-der.”

_____________________________

Date: 8/4/97

Amount: $4.51

Description (names, titles): Myself, Pizza Hut, Phoenix Airport

Details: I do not know why the receipt says “Manhattan Brew T8.” It must be a ghost of what this Pizza Hut once was. This was my layover. I had one glistening cheese pan pizza, purchased after an endless search that kept turning up the unhelpful trio of “America’s Best Bagels,” “Hot Dog Factory,” and “Cinnabon” repeated in disorientingly identical food courts throughout the airport. The other alternative was an airport bar full of miserable smokers. Had just enough time after my Pizza Hut “meal” to stand in line at a phone booth behind three other business travelers, all apparently running late and ready to murder a women who couldn’t get her calling card to work. Gave up on getting voice-mail. Saw several joyous family reunions at the gate, wished I was travelling on pleasure.

_____________________________

Date: 8/4/97

Amount: $143.15

Description (names, titles): Myself, Avis, rental car, Columbus, OH

Details: Car was a midsize, Buick Skylark or equivalent, as promised on my itinerary. Can’t remember what it was, but it was exactly equivalent to—certainly no better than—a Buick Skylark. That is to say, it was the kind of car that nobody would actually buy; the kind of car people win on game shows. A car that was so nondescript that it got lost in parking lots—I would find myself wandering about, befuddled, comparing the license plate number on my keychain to that of a hundred other fleet cars. Felt trapped because the seatbelt would automatically lock me in when the engine was running. This would have made it awkward when dropping off passengers, though I had no passengers. Just somebody else’s car stereo presets.

_____________________________

Date: 8/4/97

Amount: $18.86

Description (names, titles): Myself, Grady’s American Grill, Hilliard, OH

Details: Service was, as usual, impeccable. Everybody in the Midwest is so nice. They bend over backwards and it’s really unnecessary: I’m eating by myself, with nobody to impress with my choice of restaurant, no business to conduct that requires silent, efficient service with no distractions. Don’t make too much fuss, I want to say, it’s just me, taking in my nourishment. The waitress was new. I asked her if she recommended the seafood pasta, and she said, “Well, that depends. If you like pasta, and you like seafood, then I would recommend it. But if you don’t like seafood, then I wouldn’t get it.” Fair enough.

During the meal the waitress—perhaps sensing my loneliness—refilled my water six times, brought more bread, and asked, “Does the seafood pasta taste good?” I assured her the taste was excellent. We did not discuss texture, appearance, or quantity, all of which were excellent. On my left, a couple, the man grand, the woman petite, having a fine time, the man eating most of his wife’s dinner and all of his. A group of six were loud and boisterous. Another couple, perhaps on their first date, were eager, polite, reserved, and stricken, either with love or shyness. I alone was quieter. I wish sometimes for a restaurant that only seats single diners—all tables of one.

(Before settling on Grady’s, I had wandered into TGI Friday’s and was immediately scared off by its lively music, “fun” crowd, and paper-lined plastic baskets of onion rings, fried mushroom buttons, and other munchables. A fun place, you know, to take a bunch of friends, especially if you’re all losers. I also ruled out Spageddies, as I had eaten there once before and found it highly mediocre. I remember that meal well: I’d had a fettuccine dish consisting of limp pasta in what had to be Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, with the lightest dusting of fresh Parmesan cheese, dispensed ineffectually by the waitress, who was new, and who held the excellent Zyliss rotary cheese grater backwards and upside down, turned the handle the wrong way and unscrewed it from the grater, until finally I gave up and said “when” and that’s all the cheese I got.)

_____________________________

Date: 8/4/97

Amount: $97.23

Description (names, titles): Myself, Homewood Suites Hotel, Hilliard, OH

Details: Depressingly palatial. Huge living room, desk with two chairs, sofa, armchair, TV, VCR, kitchenette with range, fridge, dishwasher. Two closets. The bed was longer than my queen at home, and wider than it was long. Could’ve slept my three brothers and myself easily. I used just one edge of it, like Gulliver in the seldom remembered “Brobdingnag” episode of his travels. There was a second TV in the bedroom—I could have watched two shows at once. Two bureaus, two nightstands, two Gideon’s Bibles. Imagine: a traveling couple cannot manage to share a Bible, so they each take one up and sit there, side by side in that gargantuan bed, reading.

I imagined putting up all my friends here the night before a bike race. Three would easily fit in the hide-a-bed in the living room, four in the bed, a dozen more on the floor. We never had such nice accommodations when I was racing; we’d be crammed into the available floor space of a single room. Here they have a pool, a spa, cable, continental breakfast, even “getting to know you night,” which is every night, and which is free food down in the lobby. Free food! Imagine! The calendar on the fridge tells what food is on what night: on August 4, it was “baked potatoes with the works.” The next night was Spageddies night. I never did attend “getting to know you night,” because I am depressed by the thought of getting to know the hotel staff. Am I really here that often?

Actually, this is my first stay at the Homewood—the latest stop in my nomadic search for the least offensive hotel. You see, as embarrassed as I am by how seriously these places take my simple needs, I’m strangely irritable in all matters of hotel comfort. Since convenience is the only benefit to travelling, the silver lining on being away from my wife and everybody else I know, I have become slavishly devoted to it. The slightest flaw becomes egregious. I gave up the Sheraton Suites because, besides being too far from the office, they insulted my intelligence by having Nintendo in the room, and had this ridiculous round mirror, on an articulated arm, bolted to the main bathroom mirror. What its use was I’ll never know, but it just banged around and got in my way, and distracted me as I found myself struggling, time and time again, to figure out its purpose. The Wyndham Suites was too noisy: the air conditioner shrieked like a wind tunnel, the bathroom fan was always on, wheezing and rattling, and a construction project—a badly needed renovation—caused various annoyances like a half-mile detour to get to the elevator. Beyond that, the shower head came out around my chest, so washing my hair became a contortionist’s act.

The Sumner Suites, meanwhile, is so convenient to the office that it took a huge number of grievances before I finally gave up on it. For one, the elevator bell was way too loud, which not only woke me up (I sleep nervously on the road) but insulted me with its needlessness. I mean, who doesn’t notice that his elevator has stopped, and that the doors are open? Then, their workout room was absolutely swimming in Lemon Fresh Pledge. One time, the housekeep left my door open all day. What’s more, once when my Vingcard stopped working, the front desk staff gave me a new key, no questions asked, meaning any respectable-looking fellow could get instant access to my room. And, perhaps most annoyingly, when I routinely smuggled the extra bath bar into my toiletry bag, they never replaced it. As though the housekeeper was saying, “I know your kind—you soap stealers, do you think we’re stupid here! I saw your squirreled-away soap! You’re not getting two bars a day just to take home!” Damn it, that soap is rightfully mine. It’s like my consolation prize, something to take home to my wife as a peace offering after leaving her home alone all week.

Now, the Homewood Suites is much better. I’m sure I’ll have my minor grievances—I’ll tire of the two identical paintings which won’t vary from room to room, and of the sandpaper-like fake Kleenex, never more than five tissues to a box. And, I’ll probably never get over the fact that the windows won’t open. I read an article about hotels, actually, and about what they’re willing to do for customers and what they aren’t. Your nicer hotels are willing to use tan-colored towels, for example, even though they can’t bleach them—a nice touch. But almost no hotel will have windows you can open, because, among other things, they’re worried about people jumping.

dana albert blog

Motel

Introduction

I’m with my family at a motel to be near my mom’s house during a visit. When I’m traveling on business I find hotels a bit depressing; something about them makes me lonely. With my family here, this feeling is absent, giving me an opportunity to investigate the institutional setting from a fresh perspective. This post delivers my findings. In short, it is precisely because this utterly satisfactory motel is completely typical of its kind that I worry for the American people. The people’s tractability is a cause for alarm, as they blindly accept certain amenities that ought to repulse them.

The lobby

My eight-year-old and I are on day four of a tradition of getting up before her mom and her sister and sneaking out to the lobby, she to read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and I to write. Alexa’s eagerness to read brought about this morning tradition: she is forbidden to read her book if anything or anyone else (e.g., my brother’s family) is reasonably competing for her attention.

There’s no TV in the lobby, but I can hear the blather from the one in the adjoining breakfast room, seeping in like second-hand smoke, with phrases like “mysterious murders at the resorts,” “won’t press charges against the quarterback” and “illicit sex with a minor” and nauseatingly upbeat ads for things like Zyrtec, whatever that is. Other than the TV noise the lobby is a fine place: it features a faux-ornate picture frame surrounding a “painting” of flowers so innocuous they are incapable of being looked at for more than a couple of seconds; big dark-red armchairs that are surprisingly comfortable, their underlying foam structure being utterly pristine, as though we’re the first ever to sit in them; the carpet a red and gold and green pattern of diamonds and stars and curlicues trying and almost achieving fleurs-de-lis, made of fabric a bit plusher than Astroturf; and fake plants minimally convincing, at least at a distance of four feet or more. A giant baseball trophy (“Father’s Day Tournament Champions 2009”—I’ve just dispatched Alexa to read the plaque for me) is the only décor element not obviously chosen by the home office.

I have no need for aesthetic elegance in a motel, and this lobby is a great place to get some writing done while Alexa enjoys her book. But in addition to the TV, the breakfast room next door exerts another negative influence, which persistently threatens our arrangement: Alexa has known the pleasure of the simple starches it offers, and they exert a powerful attraction for my kid which I must periodically combat. For now I’ve bought some time by letting her have a Danish.

TV

You may be wondering, why not just bring my daughter in there and give her breakfast? For one thing, I’d rather have breakfast with the other half of my family, and I like to get some writing done while I have the chance. But the main thing is, if we wait long enough, the breakfast room will clear out and I can silence the TV. I’m not some lunatic who thinks TV is pure evil and cannot tolerate it at all, but I have a big problem with its presence at meals. I won’t even read while eating if I have my family to talk to, and a blaring TV is hard to ignore. Meanwhile, in the breakfast room we aren’t even free to choose the program.

Another horror of the TV-afflicted dining area is the spectacle of other guests eating while watching. Of course I shouldn’t look at them, but it’s like a train wreck—you can’t not look. Yesterday an old white-haired couple, presumably not in town on business and thus here on vacation like me, completely ignored each other while watching the “latest” “scandal” on the screen, their jaws working mechanically on their meal, their gaze never leaving the screen. The “scandal” in this case was the unimaginative media’s attempt to wring yet more morbid fascination out of the Tiger Woods story. I guess the media have become so addicted to this story they’ve lost track of what is truly scandalous; this time it’s a Nike ad that—gasp!—is using Tiger’s late father’s actual voice, from a recording made before he died. Without his permission! Imagine!

Now, I’m sure the ad agency that handles Nike’s marketing is savvy enough not to commit a single misstep, so it’s doubtful they did anything truly scandalous or even questionable. I cannot imagine the voice-over of Tiger’s father was anything like “Go ahead and cheat on your wife, Tiger … you’ve earned it.” I’m sure the sound bite in question is something life-affirming that will help rebuild Tiger’s image, as Nike attempts to recover their substantial investment in this sports icon. So where could the scandal come in? Pure fabrication I’m sure. (I can’t comment with precision because I was trying my best to ignore the broadcast entirely. I can say that it somehow managed to span two segments, each bracketed by ads. Unbelievable.)

The TV itself and the fact that people choose to watch it are two separate problems. If the TV were like a swarm of mosquitoes that everybody complained about, that would be one thing. But I have to face the fact that people have actually learned to need (if not enjoy) the TV at mealtime. A stat-shot in the “USA Today” I glanced at during our stay here showed that of all dinnertime behaviors, the most popular—36% of the total responses—was watching TV. If I were to grab the remote and turn the set off in the breakfast room, these fellow guests would be as taken aback as if I suddenly snapped off the lights. They actually want the TV to be on. I can generally live in a state of denial that this is the case, until I’m faced with the squalid spectacle of people actually giving this box—and a program as intellectually bankrupt as this—their full attention. This slap in the face and the TV itself are, though intertwined, two discrete annoyances.

Breakfast room fare

Like the TV in the breakfast room, the food offerings are attuned to a clientele that has lost its way. Perhaps as a general rule, food that makes children wide-eyed with anticipation is on the wrong end of the charisma/wholesomeness scale. The Danishes looked tasty enough and weren’t grotesquely oversized, which is nice, but I instinctively avoid the muffins. During a multi-week business trip some fifteen years ago, I enjoyed a large breakfast each morning at a hotel in Pasadena, and one morning I didn’t have time to finish my muffin and brought it along to my meeting, perched on the dashboard of my rental car. When I got to the office and grabbed the muffin I saw that it had left a large grease spot on the dash, right through the paper cup. (I associated the grease with with the ten- to fifteen-pound weight gain I observed during that trip. The weight gain itself didn’t much bother me, but the suddenness of it did.)

So at this place, not because the Danishes would actually be lower in fat than the muffin, but simply because I was indulging an irrational desire to avoid an unpleasant association, I initially steered Alexa toward the Danish. I was thinking of having one myself, and exacted my standard parental tariff from hers. Normally my kids cooperate very well with this process, but Alexa was really protective of her Danish. “Don’t worry,” I told her, “I shall be merciful and swift.” One small bite was enough to change my mind about having my own Danish. It was cloyingly sweet, strangely springy, and left a waxy, powdery grease residue on the roof of my mouth. How do people eat these things?

The presentation of these items does nothing to increase my appetite. There are Plexiglas domes, with hinged doors, over trays of innocuous items like English muffins, biscuits, and bagels; what’s unsettling here are amateurish labels stuck on each saying “Please use tongs.” Somebody at this motel, or from the home office, had to go buy a label-maker and make all these labels because something was happening in these breakfast rooms the dome manufacturer never anticipated. In theory, tongs wouldn’t be necessary, if you only touched the pastry or bagel you took. Had there been complaints of people fondling the pastries? Poking and prodding them like produce? Or something even worse?

There’s a giant juice dispenser that seems to work awfully hard. When you dispense juice—which really ought to be poured to begin with—there’s this amazing turbine sound, like something serious is going on within the machine. Of course what comes out of the spigot is scarcely drinkable so it’s not like actual oranges are being squeezed or anything. Even when the machine is not in use, it hums and throbs much louder than any fridge (and I’ve had some loud ones). What is its deal?

On a tray, covered with nested Plexiglas domes that swivel so you can line up their apertures as necessary for access, are six or eight peeled hard-boiled eggs. The eggs are eerily small, suggesting that they either came from unhealthy chickens, or that more than just their shells have been removed. Surely labor costs are too high to have a human peel these. Is there some machine that does it? What would that look like? Each day, at the tail end of the breakfast hour, there have been plenty of eggs left. Does the motel staff put these in the fridge overnight and then put them out again tomorrow? If so, is there a system for tracking the age of an egg, or could some loss-leaders have been recycled in this way for weeks or months?

I learned through bitter personal experience that the biscuits-and-gravy offering was horrific. I never meant to try it. Lindsay had asked for a biscuit with just butter, and since the biscuits were cold I cut one in half and toasted the halves for her. This took surprisingly long; they must have been really dense. By the time the biscuits were hot, my mind had wandered and I found myself unconsciously ladling the lumpy, chunky, slightly congealed gravy over them. It was just one of those totally brainless motions—I had biscuits on a plate, there was gravy, so I put them together. “What are you doing?” Erin asked in astonishment. “I … I don’t know!” I said. Lindsay refused to eat my mistake, so in the spirit of not wasting food I gave it a try. I have nothing against MSG except when it’s used as culinary Bondo to mask deficiencies in a prepared food, and especially when it fails in its lowly task. But in this gravy the MSG had no flavor to enhance except that of the salt. The gravy’s texture, meanwhile, was that of reduced saliva. In short, the gravy was a dietary travesty. I threw the whole plate away. “I hate to waste food,” I said to Erin, “especially when a pig died for it.” She replied, “Well, not much of a pig.” (I immediately thought of Charlotte’s Web and “Some pig!”)

There is fruit. But the apples are shrink-wrapped. Why?!

Lecture

When selecting breakfast on the first day, Alexa pointed at the Froot Loop dispenser and asked if she could have them. I told her, “Absolutely not.” She begged me, and demanded to know why she couldn’t. From the parenting standpoint, I considered Alexa’s appeal to be entrapment: by not blindly accepting my decision, she brought a long lecture on herself. Here it is, as close to verbatim as my memory can achieve:

“Well, Alexa, let me explain to you how the food industry works. Food companies buy produce from farmers. If they just sold this produce directly to consumers, they wouldn’t make much money. But if they do something to it, to make it more convenient or tasty to eat, that’s called a ‘value-add’ and means they can charge more money for their product. So a company will take something like oats—when’s the last time you sat down to a plate of oats?—and turn them into Cheerios, which are easy to eat and which, due to the ring-shapes, are fun.

“Now, if the food producers want to make even more money, they need to either sell more of their product, or charge more for it, or both. In the case of Froot Loops they add tons of sugar, so that the cereal ends up having more sugar than oats, and they add food coloring. Do you think food coloring is good for you?” (Alexa answered, “No,” which suggested that she was actually paying attention.) “You’re right, it’s not. But kids like the bright colors. And all the sugar enables the manufacturer to sell more, because sugary foods actually make you feel even hungrier. And so they can charge more, they give the cereal a fancy name, Froot Loops, and advertise it during Saturday- and Sunday-morning cartoons, so the kids will beg their parents to buy it. If the parents don’t, the kids whine—and you know how I hate whining.

“So, the sugary cereal is basically poison, and the advertising is poison, too—poison for the mind. So if I let you eat this cereal, I’m basically rewarding this company for poisoning both your mind and your body.” (As you read this, you may decide I’m some sort of fascist, or hugely overstating the case with my synopsis. Both may be true. But I cannot combat blatant marketing to my kids with subtlety and restraint.)

At the same time, I felt conflicted. I had the impulse to reward my daughter for having the attention span and open-mindedness to be inculcated, in dribs and drabs, into a worldview resembling mine. So I decided to throw her a bone. “But you know, Alexa, I did get to try Froot Loops as a kid. In first grade, we used them to make abacuses. (Perhaps abacuses represent the only truly valid use for Froot Loops.) And of course I was curious what they tasted like, having never had sugary cereal, so I decided to try a few. I had about five—and I got in big, big trouble for it. The teacher was furious at me and sent me to the corner so I couldn’t continue with the project. To this day I can’t figure out why she was so angry. Anyway, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to let you have five Froot Loops. And you won’t even get in trouble. That’s a better deal than I got!” Alexa acquiesced to this.

Of course, dispensing the Froot Loops was easier said than done. The cereal dispenser struck me as something you might feed cattle with. It was literally impossible to dispense a small amount. A massive pile of Froot Loops spewed forth, as from a grain silo. This gave me plenty of Loops from which to select a pair of each color (one each for each of my daughters). The rest I threw away. I’ve always exhorted my kids not to waste food, so I explained, “I’m not wasting food, because this isn’t food.”

Hope

The encouraging fact that Alexa seemed responsive to my lecture gave way to another compromise: she asked for a waffle, and I capitulated, though I knew the batter probably doesn’t have a single thing going for it nutritionally. I was relieved that there was no aerosol anti-stick product involved, as there had been at other motels. That non-stick aerosol is pretty wicked stuff: scanning the ingredients once, I noted that it contained both butane and propane. Why is there an allowable amount of butane and propane the government lets food companies put into our bodies? It seems insane to me. I don’t know what’s in the latest version of Golden Malted batter that makes this spray unnecessary, but I suspect it’s not a petroleum-based propellant. That gives me some tiny sense of progress being made. (The waffle-making process isn’t immune to further criticism, of course: the alarm that sounds when it’s done is an incredibly loud, shrill shrieking tone, like the hotel elevator sound that has replaced the simple tinkle of a bell. Why do people put up with this?)

When Lindsay arrived, and I offered her Raisin Bran, Cheerios, plain oatmeal, or a waffle, she accepted, without reluctance, unsweetened plain oatmeal. I added milk and she said “when.” She proceeded to eat it, despite the fact that it wasn’t ultra-refined, artificially colored, artificially flavored, and highly sweetened. That Lindsay can still gratefully accept simple fare, and Alexa will give me her attention for a long lecture on why she can’t have Froot Loops, gives me hope for the next generation. I’m up against a giant machine that is trying to turn people into the mindless automatons that blindly ladle inedible gravy on their biscuits and then eat this while watching monstrously mindless TV, but at least within this tiny sphere of my family, at least for now, I can beat back the flames. Perhaps tractability itself isn’t always a bad thing, so long as a person can be guided in the right directions. dana albert blog