[cdrookie]

I've been traveling for work going on 20 years. The company was pretty vague with the how this travel thing worked, so you just figured it out. I was hired with a couple other guys and we all were sent to this job in MI. We met up at a rest area along the way, and had to get rooms somewhere. It was a big job, plus near Notre Dame football territory, so finding rooms wasn't easy...Somehow we got 3 rooms at the Howard Johnson. We drove up there and drove all around looking for this Howard Johnson...Eventually, we discovered it USE to be a HJ but is now America's Best Value Inn. All the rooms faced outside and they were pretty much just as you'd imagine. I had a corner room, was dank, humid, and musty, but had a bed and shower so I was good with it. One guy was a few doors down and the other was the floor above. We got up the next morning and the other guys were like, we're checking out of here! And going where, I said! They didn't care, so we checked out. Eventually we begged our way into some handicapped rooms at a Baymont.

The last thing that happened was at the Hampton in Shreveport, LA. That's a big hotel for the area! The job was only a couple days long but I always pack a weeks worth of clothes in my bag. The first thing I do when I get to the room is hang the do not disturb sign on the door. I have a thing about people being in my room. So we finish the job in 2 days. I go back and book my flight home, I never really unpacked so it didn't take long to get my stuff ready. I showered and rooted through my bag for clean underwear and couldn't find any. There's always 7-8 socks and underwear in my bag at a minimum. When I got home I checked where my work bag stays and there wasn't any pile of underwear laying around. Someone went in my room and stole my underwear!!! For the most part, over the years, housekeeping has always been very friendly when passing them in the hall. I passed a couple women cleaning a room 2 doors down and they were real quick to turn their heads and shuffle back into the room as I passed.

I've run into all the usual stuff also:
Clogged bathtub and sink drains
People smoking in neighboring rooms
Bugs
Kids stomping above me all day when I'm on nightshift
Kids running up and down the halls
Dogs barking
People who need to talk on speaker phone all the time
A pimp or prostitute keeping a room booked beside me
No internet or TV doesn't work
Checking out early and them not wanting to refund me(ma and pop places are good for that)