Dear Naughty

So I have been having a very weird week.  Things are maybe on the cusp of happening and when they do, or don’t, I will inform you all about it.  But in the meantime, and sort of related to this whole thing, I have found myself on the website of the InterContinental Hotel on Marine Drive in Mumbai.  I decided to look at the guest reviews because, for whatever reason, I always find it really amusing to see reviews of really fancy places.  I like to see what people who can afford these places complain about.  I know this makes me sound a little bit like an ass because, I mean, just because you have money does not mean that you don’t have the right to complain.  Maybe you have more of a right because you pay so much for the places you stay or the things you do?  Of course, as a percentage of income maybe it really isn’t that much at all.  Maybe, relatively speaking, staying at the InterContinental Hotel on Marine Drive in Mumbai is equivalent, percentage of income-wise, to the time me and my then-boyfriend stayed at a Super 8 Motel off the highway in Dallas.  Let me tell you about that disaster.

Okay, so this was like, 2009 or 2010 or something like that.  We had flown down to Dallas for the wedding of an old friend of my boyfriend’s that was being held at the friend’s sister’s super awesome house.  We decided to stay at the Super 8 because I really liked saying “Supah 8!” and throwing my hands up in the air.  Seriously. That was the one and only reason we stayed there.  Anyway, so we get there late after our flight, after renting a car and after getting lost and the hotel had somehow lost our reservation.  We were tired.  We were maybe a little bit grouchy.  We were being helped by someone who, it seemed, had no idea what he was doing.  We also happened to have arrived on the weekend of some really super important college football game or something so all the rooms were booked up with bros toting cases of Miller Lite.  The only room that was available at the point was a smoking room.  Let me tell you this room reeked.  It was the smelliest room I think I have ever been in.  But whatever, we were tired and figured we could maybe move into a different, less stinky room the next day.  I got in my pajamas, I crawl into bed, pull the covers up to my face, breath in and holy hell.  The sheets smelled like fucking dead people.  Serisouly I am not kidding.  I shot up out of bed, covered my mouth and pointed at the sheet.  My boyfriend, not overly shocked by my behavior, smelled his portion of the sheet.  It didn’t smell.  I told him to smell my portion.  He smelled it.  Dead people.  I mean, to be honest, I don’t think either of us had ever really smelled a dead person up close and personal but if I had to tell you what a dead person smelled like, you know, if I had to imagine it, it would be that portion of that sheet in that Super 8 in Dallas.  No joke.

So the next morning we woke up, after switching to the other double bed in the room and not getting into the blankets obviously, and I saw a roach run across my pillow where I had literally just been sleeping.  Just then.  Like a second before.  With my head.  On what was in actuality maybe a roach highway!  It was horrible.  Obviously, we switched hotels.  I have never been the same.

Anyway, that was a complaint.  What sorts of complaints are on the review page for the InterContinental Hotel on Marine Drive in Mumbai?  This one:

Really not happy with the Room service.Had ask for curd and change of buttery in remote of Set top box.
No body has turned up for the same.Very Very disappointed with the room service.

I think I would be sad if I had to ask for curd with my food or a buttery remote.  (Don’t make fun of spelling errors, Rebekah, it is not nice.)  The thing about this that was SO amusing to me is that this person called himself “Naughty” on the complaint.  I think what he meant to do was imply that he found the room service to be “naughty,” which is kind of a weird and sort of dirty way to describe it.  I am assuming this is an English as a second language situation.  But what makes it funniEST is that the hotel then responded to the complaint and addressed their response to Naughty.  Like, as in, “Dear Naughty…”  I have a lot of respect for Dhan M, the Case Manager of the InterContinental Hotel on Marine Drive in Mumbai for taking Naughty so seriously and writing Naughty a letter.

I wonder what Naughty would have said if he(?) had been sleeping in death sheets on a roach highway.

Tags: customer reviews, Dallas, death sheets, India, InterContinental Hotel, Marine Drive, Mumbai, naughty, roach highway, Super 8