Vacation Nightmare

Imagine you’ve been traveling all day. You’ve spent hours on the side of a blisteringly hot highway waiting for roadside assistance. It’s eleven o’clock when you finally arrive at your motel, dead tired, but grateful you have a room reserved by credit card and waiting for you. Just a few more minutes and you can lie down in a cool room and sleep. You approach the service desk, ring the bell and…nothing.

It was the first time I had towed a camper. I was headed for a beach vacation when one of the elderly pop-up’s tires went flat. Luckily, I was able to pull over without incident, but it was hours before I was back on the road. I was grateful I had made reservations for the night at a motel along the way. I called the toll-free number and explained that I would be late and was assured my room would be waiting for me.

I was exhausted when I reached my lodgings, but I felt enormous relief when I finally pulled under the canopy. I entered the unlocked lobby. A small lamp appeared to be burning in the next room, but there was no one in sight. No one responded to the bell on the desk. Standing there, puzzled, I suddenly noticed the shadow of a woman’s head on the wall opposite the lamp lit doorway.

I called out to the shadow’s owner, but got no response. I told her I could see her and I wasn’t leaving, and she reluctantly emerged. “No rooms,” she said. I explained that I had reservations. She shook her head. “No rooms.” Eventually, she explained in broken English that she had rented my room to someone else. She acknowledged receiving my message, but the room was gone and she had no more.

Suddenly, I was suspicious. The clerk initially hid behind the language barrier when I asked if she had cancelled the charge on my credit card but eventually admitted she had not. I insisted she refund my card or give me a room. She refused. I asked for a manager. She roused an older man who made no attempt to be civil as he repeated that he had no open rooms and I would be charged because I had not cancelled. I took pictures of myself, the man and the woman, as well as the newspaper stand showing the current day’s newspaper and left.

At the next motel, the clerk told me he had heard my story from other guests in the past. I spent that night on the floor, wedged between the broken air conditioner and the room’s only bed which contained my two children. I was surprised the following Monday when the corporate office seemed willing to offer little help. They apologized but said they couldn’t help me because the manager insisted he had saved my room but I had never arrived. I sent the photographs I had taken as evidence, and my credit card was eventually refunded.

Traveling through the area the year after my nightmare encounter, I saw that the building’s sign no longer boasted the chain’s logo. Soon after, it closed. I never used that chain again, but whenever I pull into a motel I feel a touch of uneasiness that doesn’t fully go away until I have the room key in my hand, and I can never think of that chain without wondering how many people ended up paying for rooms they weren’t allowed to use.


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