O’DAY’S TRAVEL WOES #78: “Are you licensed to use a steam iron?”

"Room Service? Send up an iron!"

May 1996 (continued):

(You might recall my having deeply offended a British Airways employee at London’s Heathrow Airport by asking her to check to see if my luggage had made the trip safely. She assured me that her airline does not misplace passengers’ luggage. That was followed by my almost being arrested in Dusseldorf.)

When I first came to Leipzig, a few years earlier, the airport was quite tiny and primitive. To my shock, this time I arrived at a considerably larger, very modern Leipzig airport. They essentially built an entirely new airport over and around the old one.

Few feelings are worse than that which creeps up on you at an airport baggage claim carousel, as the crowd of fellow passengers from your just-arrived aircraft scoops up the luggage as it comes tumbling down the chute and the crowd gradually dwindles away, leaving only…

You. Without your luggage.

Despite the BA employee’s snooty assurances at Heathrow, I was in Leipzig, Germany, without my luggage.

So as I dejectedly made my way to the hotel in Leipzig, my suitcases enjoyed a spontaneous adventure somewhere, presumably, in Europe.

The local Lufthansa representative had promised to contact London and find out where my luggage was. (The trip began with a Lufthansa flight, making Lufthansa responsible for my baggage.)

In my hotel room at last, I figured I would salvage something out of this day by using my computer to check my e-mail. To this end, I had made sure I was given a room that had dataports for modems. (Yep, this was back in the day of telephone dial-up to the Internet.)

Mine did have modems.

But they didn’t work.

Or they worked and neither I nor any hotel employee could figure out how.

A perfect day.

The problem with connecting to the Internet from hotels often is caused by having to go through their PBX system. But usually a hotel has a fax machine…and that fax machine usually has its own outside line. So I considered sneaking downstairs and cajoling my way behind the Reception Desk (this was a nice, fancy place) and hooking the phone line that feeds their office fax machine into my modem.

But then I realized perhaps I first should find a way to wash the clothes I’d been wearing for two days, so I could wear them when I spoke at the conference the following day.

Not having a change of clothes, I didn’t bother to try to find a laundry or ask the hotel to take care of it. But it shouldn’t be so hard to wash those few items in my bathroom sink. I’d let them drip-dry overnight. Of course, the shirt and pants probably would be quite wrinkled by then, so I’d better borrow an ironing board from the hotel.

I was supposed to have dinner at the hotel that evening with The Research Group’s Jason Kane and Mark Fradrick and Lucy Smith of the National Association of Broadcasters. But I knew I’d be too distracted by my missing luggage situation (and by my desire to get out of those grimy clothes) to enjoy the meal. So I joined them, late, at the restaurant, just to tell them I wouldn’t be dining with them.

Jason, Mark & Lucy affected the appropriate note of sympathy for my travails. Delighted at the opportunity to moan about my troubles, I sat with them for a while. Since I was there and it was, after all, a restaurant, I relented a little bit more and ordered some vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberries. It was delicious.

Jason and I traded war stories about being United Airlines 1K flyers (which at the time we liked) and flying through Washington’s Dulles International Airport (which we hated).

“1K” is the designation United uses for its frequent flyers who log at least 100,000 miles with them in a calendar year. Since “K” is the common abbreviation for “thousand,” you’d think they’d call a 100,000-mile flyer “100K.” But they don’t.

The companionship, ice cream, sympathy and airline war stories perked me up measurably. I excused myself from the table and ambled over to the Reception Desk to liberate an iron & ironing board for my evening’s in-room entertainment.

I told the desk clerk I needed to borrow an iron.

I might as well have asked him if they could lend me a rhinoceros. Flustered, he said, “You had better to speak to our manager.”

“Okay,” I said.

The desk clerk looked at me uncertainly. I returned the look, waiting for the manager to be called. The desk clerk’s eyes darted about; clearly he was uncomfortable.

“So….Are you going to get the manager for me?” I asked.

“Right now?”

“Yes. I need the iron right now, and you say that first I have to talk to the manager. So I’d better talk to the manager right now.”

“Certainly, sir.”

He disappeared, and a few minutes later the Night Manager introduced himself and asked how he could help me. I explained about the lost luggage, my lack of clothing, my speaking engagement the following day, and my need for an iron and ironing board.

“I’m very sorry, sir, but we do not allow irons in guest rooms.”

First, I don’t believe the hotel has such a rule. I’m sure the manager never had been asked for one. But now that a guest had brought up the question, he was certain there should be a rule against it.

I was flabbergasted and allowed my shock to be visible.

“Why in the world would you not allow a guest to use an iron?” I inquired.

“It might start a fire,” was his reply.

“Excuse me, but that’s ridiculous. There are hotels all over the world that have irons in guest rooms as standard accessories.”

“I am sorry, sir, but that is the rule.”

“Listen, I really need to borrow an iron and an ironing board. I promise I won’t burn down the hotel. I am professionally trained and licensed to use an iron. And tomorrow I am supposed to be the Keynote Speaker {I capitalized those words as I spoke them} at the big media fair. If I cannot wash these clothes tonight, I will not be able to speak there tomorrow. If I don’t speak there tomorrow, the media fair’s organizers are going to be very, very angry at this hotel for not helping to solve this problem.”

For the record, I was a guest speaker, not “the keynote speaker.” I exaggerated my importance (and fabricated my willingness to be a no-show the next day) in an effort to maximize the pressure on the manager to accede to my wishes.

Finally, he relented, saying he would have laundry detergent and an iron brought up to my room.

True to his word, a few minutes later the night manager appeared at my door with an ironing board, an iron, and a cup of laundry detergent.

He also offered — in all sincerity — to lend me his trousers.

“They probably would you fit you, sir. If you would like to borrow them for this evening, you will not be forced to stay in your room all night.”

It was a genuine, very gracious gesture on his part. Nonetheless, I politely declined his offer.

After he left, I stripped off my grimy clothes and set about washing them in the sink. Doing so, I felt very self-sufficient. I knew if I hung the wet clothing from various racks in the bathroom, they would dry overnight.

Next Week: The adventure continues. With blood. And the prospect of something even worse.