Wonderful Sunday Night Ambience Carries Over Into Monday

Many of you, dear readers, read about my fabulous Sunday night dinner with the most boring and worst-dressed man on the planet. At 4:30 AM on Monday, I woke up for my flight to Chicago with indigestion, most likely due to the company the night before.

I begrudgingly dragged myself into the shower, the limo, the airport terminal, the plane, and eventually, our Chicago office.

The day was packed with meetings, as days often are, and so I was very much looking forward to the good night's sleep that I would eventually get after attending another interminable team dinner. As the dinner hour rolled around, a few of us made a split-second decision: we would check in to our hotel pre-dinner so that afterwards we could simply come home and sleep in peace. Little did we know what surprise awaited us there.



The story of our hotel choice is as follows. First, we consultants are loyalty point whores, thus, I was naturally inclined to reserve at the swanky W Hotel on Lakeshore Drive. Unfortunately, poor planning on our project meant that we booked our Monday AM trip Friday PM. The W was up to $575, and so we reserved a less than desirable but still passable hotel, a Hyatt. I did not want to dash my hopes by looking at the Hyatt website, and so Monday evening I traveled over to the hotel with the best intentions. Little did I know that we had gone from swank to skank.

As we walked into the hotel lobby, we were swarmed by law enforcement convention attendees, and I don't mean the FBI, rather, sketchy defense attorneys and private detectives* accompanied by scantily clad women with bleached blonde hair and breast implants. I fit right in.

A strong wind of calypso music almost blew me down as I entered through the revolving door. Yes, who, would have guessed, but on a cool, rainy Monday in Chicago, our trashy hotel had been done up as though we were on a cheap Carribean cruise. Needless to say, the festive music suited my oh so festive mood.

There was a line of about thirty soon-to-be guests at registration, some of whom had already started drinking their twelve-packs of beer. And when the receptionist in the priority line finally stopped flirting with the previous client and let him leave, she kindly informed me that the hotel only had smoking rooms left. I protested, and was given an absolutely delightful alternative: a sofa bed in what had previously been half of a suite where some now-ancient rock band had inevitably once partied decades ago. The decor had not changed since.

I dumped my bags and headed directly for the restaurant, demanding hard liquor as soon as I arrived. One tequila flight later, I was feeling slightly more relaxed about my accomodations, that is, until I returned home to recline upon the lumpy 2" mattress with springs that had long since sprung.

On my way upstairs I insulted the lounge singer to two innocent middle-aged PI bystanders in the elevator. (Think Sausalito from Lost in Translation). "Do they pay her to sing like that or is that karaoke going on in there?" They snickered.

I woke up the next morning with a hangover inspired by bad springs, bad decor, and bad tequila.


* Fortunately, Date 1 was nowhere to be found. Perhaps he abandoned his idiotic plan