I Will Never Use You

There's lots to say about this past weekend, which I spent in New York with the immediate family (including the rest of this blog's contributors). Let's talk about the Wyndham Garden hotel next to LaGuardia Airport, though. I found our room there to be clean and well-appointed, certainly in line with my expectations given the location and relatively modest rate. The room's previous resident was not so impressed, however, or so I gather from the comment card reproduced (with some redactions) at right.

The first problem with this comment card is that it is not in fact a comment card, but an application for Wyndham's frequent stayer program. (Since I'd signed up for the program beforehand they very pleasantly left some Heinekens and a small fruit plate next to the last guest's written compaints for me, plus a card saying "We have prepared cheese and crackers for you as you requested", which was true in spirit if not in fact.) Since the preprinted fields have more to do with preferred welcome snacks than with the quality of the stay, the comments are just kind of on there. From top to bottom they almost achieve haiku status:

Service Terrible
A heater that works
I will never use you!

Expressive enough, if not idiomatic. Also note the check mark in the Gender (M/F) space.

I was amused enough to find this angry little missive that, due to inattentive housekeeping, never made it into the hands of the hotel's management where it perhaps could have been acted upon rather than laughed at. Upon closer examination, though, I noticed that the "Company" field contained the name of my former employer. Based on that, I assume that the author is one of the legion of French Canadian employees of the company I quit about six months ago. I have half a mind to cajole one of my friends there into looking up his name in the corporate directory and giving me his email address, so I could send a spoofed response saying "If you ever badmouth one of our properties again, Monsieur ------, I will END YOU. I am not f---ing around here. Sincerely, Fredo Wyndham," or words to that effect. I'm thinking that wouldn't quite be ethical, though.

To M. ------'s credit, the heater in the room was disabled, no fun once it got cold at night. I asked the front desk about it and they said something about it technically still being summer for the purposes of booking the room. Not a satisfactory answer, but not one that makes it worth underlining "terrible" either.