An open letter to anyone who has ever stayed or will ever stay at a hotel:

Please, for the love of god, do not wait until your checkout to inform the front desk of problems in your room.

Let's explore:

What exactly do you think will happen if you mention your gripes at checkout?

1. You could get some money back. But let's be real, you stayed the whole night so at best you might receive a 10-20% discount. Even at 20%, there's NO AMOUNT that can take back the bad associations you'll always have from your stay and the damage is done. Or,

2. Nothing happens. Front desk makes a note of the problem, apologizes, and you go on about your day. No refund, and you still have bad associations from your stay and the damage is done.

Sure, you've informed the establishment of the problem and from there they can either fix the problem or ignore it and perpetuate the situation. More often than not, it's in the business's best interest to take care of it and it does get tended to. But the reality is that only future patrons get to benefit and you, the complaining guest, still got shafted.

Now, let's rewind a bit and review a better way of handling this:

1. After check-in, IMMEDIATELY check your room. Make sure you're okay with the location of your room, look inside and check that it meets your standards. This could be in terms of cleanliness, furniture arrangement, scents, lighting, or whatever it is you require to make your stay as comfortable as possible.

2. If, heaven forbid, something doesn't look right, call (or walk to) the desk AS SOON as you notice. If something is dirty or broken, we will fix it. If you don't like your room, we have more. If you need pillows or towels or other amenities, we can hook you up. JUST ASK.

3. To elaborate on #2, JUST ASK. JUST ASK. JUST ASK. We would much rather deal with a slightly annoyed customer at the beginning of your stay rather than an irate customer at the end of your stay. If you give us the opportunity to take care of a problem as it arises, I promise it will make things better for the both of us.

Naturally, we aim to maintain rooms in such a manner that guests are not disappointed, but sometimes we miss things. We're human. And we don't live in the rooms so it's hard to be intimately familiar with smaller problems that get passed over at first glance.

If after all of this, we have still failed to address/correct/make arrangements to circumvent your problem without reasonable cause (emphasis on REASONABLE CAUSE), then it is appropriate to lose your shit, scream, pout, and demand a refund. But if you held your tongue for the sake of politeness (or because you're too much of a pussy to speak up) and don't allow us the opportunity to set things straight, you can only blame yourself for your misery.

Much love,
your friendly front desk associate.