My First Time on the Company Dime

When I was 25, just starting my career as a professional writer and editor for a publishing company, I was sent on assignment to cover a national conference being held at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville. This was exciting because not only was I being sent out on a company-paid trip with people from the corporate office, including our Publisher, but I was going to be staying at a 5-star hotel. Brilliant luxury adventure was in store ahead..

I arrived for check-in with my new luggage in tow. My dad had advised bringing a suitcase AND a suit carrier, and bringing the suit carrier with me as carry-on so I could hang it up during flight to prevent wrinkling of my suits. I did this, and had packed a different outfit for each day so I could mingle in style.

At the front desk I was advised that because of the conference the hotel was booked full (so what? I was booked in advance, confirmation number and everything) and unfortunately my room was in the basement. I didn't care. I wasn't paying for this. How much time would I be spending in my room anyway? So I took my key, and using the provided map, found the elevator and went down to my room.

The basement looked like pretty much every other floor of every other hotel, just no windows, no natural light. Housekeeping was vaccuuming out someone else's room and all seemed to be normal. I let myself into my room and it looked like every other hotel room. Carpet, 2 queen-size beds covered in bedspreads with some sort of garish pattern on them in vague combinations of orange, brown, white, and rust, a TV 2 night stands, a desk, and the bathroom. Whatever. I tossed my luggage on the bed I didn't plan on sleeping on, unpacked my things, then noticed there was a window.

Why would there be a window in a room that was in the basement? I drew the curtains and opened the window, surprised that I could open it, which gave me a very clear, close view of a ventilation duct on the other side. As a 5 star hotel, Opryland guaranteed that each room had a window, and sure enough I had one. I closed the window, drew the blinds, and headed up to explore the hotel.

The map I was given at check-out proved to be vital to my stay. Opryland is an enormous complex, composed of two giant beautiful atriums connected by skywalks. Various wings span out from the center, with central elevators taking you to various levels. The hotel has multiple restaurants, a nightly light show, and even a little cafe on the far outskirts of the hotel called the Oasis, aptly named because it can take so long to traverse the place that you need to stop for water, coffee, or a snack.

The first night I met up with one of the marketing people from the corporate office. She and I had never met in person before but had talked on the phone many times as we went over marketing plans for the publications I was in charge of. She had grown up in North Carolina and had the Southern way of being forma, flirty, and informal, all at the same time.

"Ah'm so excited! I have the greatest room ah have ever been in in MY LIFE!" she said, patting my arm. "It has a balcony and big bay windows and the best view! What kinda room are y'all in?"

"Uh, I'm in the basement."

She laughed. "Wait, are you serious? They put you in THE BASEMENT?"

"Yeah, they said the hotel is full and that's all they had available."

"Oh shug they tried to put me in a bad one too. All I had to do was flirt with the guy at the desk and he put me in a suite! It even has a Murphy bed ah can pull down from the wall! You should just grab your things and come on up and stay with me!"

I involuntarily raised an eyebrow. I had heard things about business trips. I was engaged and she was newly engaged, waiting for her divorce to go through.

She smiled and patted my arm the way Southern women do. "Don't get any ideas. Ah'm still engaged. But you can stay on the Murphy bed if you want."

I shrugged. "No thanks. I'm only in there to sleep anyway. If I can't stand it I'll come stay with you."

And that basically was the situation. Every day I had to attend seminars that could be turned into articles, then meet up with speakers who could be resources or contacts. Every night it was dinner with one of them, or with my colleagues from work, paid for by someone's expense account or per diem. The dinners were heavy on the alcohol, and around midnight I would navigate the hotel with my pocket map, pour my drunken self back into my room, and go to sleep.

By the end of the week I had enough material to do stories for the next six months, and I was reaching networking overload. Instead of having lunch at the conference, I was grabbing snacks or a box lunch from one of the bigger seminars and going back to my room, where I would often run into housekeeping.

Turning point

The last day of the conference I barely went out at all, and had dinner in my room as I packed. It was the longest time I spent in my room awake and sober since I arrived, and without trying, I started noticing details of my room I hadn't seen before. Things I couldn't unsee.

My suitcase was still on the other bed where it had been all week, but something on the bedspread was attracting my attention. Something in the largely chaotic non-partern of colored blotches didn't fit. What was it?

There. On the edge of the bed, toward the middle, where a person's knee would rest if they were sitting on the bed, a color on top of the other colors. A blotch of coppery rust on top of the gold, white, and brown. Dried blood. Eww.

I looked at the rest of the bedspread but didn't notice any more blood or other stains. I finished packing and tried to put it out of my mind. In 10 hours I would get up and leave to fly home.

I continued packing. On the other side of the room was a souvenir glass one of the restaurants had given me, wrapped in foil shaped like a swan. I was one of the coolest things I had ever seen, but it wouldn't fit in my luggage and was too big to hold or stow as a carry-on. I would have to remove the foil swan. But first a few photos.

I went to turn on the light in the corner of the room and noticed something new, in the corner. A french fry. I hadn't eaten fries in my room all week. Behind me, on the floor just beneath my bed, a Band-Aid wrapper and a crumpled tissue.

I shuddered and felt a wave of nausea. So someone cut their knee, sat on the bed, bled on the bedspread, blotted the wound, and put a bandage on it. How long ago? Days? Weeks? I went back to my mantra: 10 hours to go.

I finished packing my clothes, took out my contacts, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. To get my mind off of the filth around me I decided to read for a bit. All week long I had been too drunk or too tired to read either of the two books I'd brought with me. Might as well crack one on the last night just to say I did.

But once again, something caught my attention as I sat up in bed. A hair on the pillow next to me, the one I hadn't been sleeping on. A long blonde hair. My hair was short and dark brown. I had seen all of the housekeeping people over the course of the week. None of them had blonde hair. Someone else's hair was in my bed.

I thought back on the week. Even when I was sitting at the room's desk eating my lunch, I had never seen housekeeping change my sheets. I just assumed they had because the bed was made by the time I got back to my room. These were dirty sheets, never changed, in a largely dirty room. I wondered if I should check inside the bed for stains. I thought against it. It was midnight. Less than 8 hours to go.

Flying first class

The next morning I took the shuttle to the airport. On my way to the terminal, the zipper on my suit bag opened up and some of my clothing burst out the side. I hurriedly packed everything back in and rezipped the bag. The other travellers were nice enough to not laugh or comment about my misfortune, but there were some smiles and stares. I didn't bother bringing the suit bag as a carry-on to hang up. The conference was over, stuff could be wrinkled, I didn't care.

The flight out of Nashville was routine, just a few hours in a window seat sipping Canada Dry Ginger Ale. Instead of reading my book I was drafting a letter to the management of the Opryland Hotel about the disgusting nightmare that was my room. The letter was quite a bit like this article, really, minus the scene with my coworker. Incidentally I'd have two more trips with the same coworker, and on each of them she would make some sort of comment or invitation that would leave me once again wondering what she was up to. Each time I would just ponder and sip my drink.

Oddly, I had a connecting flight in Detroit. The flight to Nashville was only like 3 hours, and flying to Detroit took about that long, but for whatever reason, on the way back we'd be stopping in Detroit, changing planes, then doing a short hope over Lake Michigan and landing in Milwaukee.

By the time we got to Detroit I had finished my letter to Opryland. At the check-in to go to my connecting flight I was told that I could have an upgrade to first class for free. Outstanding! I had never ridden in first class before. Maybe things were turning around and this trip would end on a high note.

I boarded the plane and looked around in wonder. Such a small section. So much room. We would only be in the air for less than an hour, but I intended to enjoy that hour. I felt like finding a reason to raise my pinkie while drinking something to completely fulfill the air of sophistication and elegance of the moment.

Suprisingly, food and drinks were served once we reached cruising altitude, so I indulged in a beer, but something was wrong. There was a smell. There was almost no one around me, I had the section almost entirely to myself, and the smell wasn't me. I looked around, and noticed debris on the floor you don't normally see on a plane, even in Coach class. Wrappers and things. But that wouldn't explain the smell. Was it the bathroom? No, I had just been in there and it was fine.

My beer arrived, the flight attendant left, and I went to put my book in the pouch behind the seat in front of me. That's when the mystery was solved. Stowed in the pouch was a disposable diaper, clearly full of poop.

I let go of the elastic edge of the storage pouch and turned my head to get a whiff of clean air. I reviewed my options. If I told the flight attendant about the diaper she would remove it and apologize, but I'd have to smell it again, unfiltered. At the moment it was largely contained. I certainly wasn't going to remove it myself. And changing seats was pointless. We'd be touching down in a half hour.

So, I gulped down my beer and fumed about the situation for the remainder of the trip. Before I got off the plane I told the flight attendant about it. Her eyes opened wide and she went pale as she stammered out an apology. I told her it wasn't her fault, but she should be aware there was some special cargo in that pouch from the previous flight, and clearly the plane hadn't been cleaned before we got on.

The next morning I typed up my letter to Opryland, then wrote a second one to Delta.

Epilogue

I actually heard from both Opryland and Delta. The manager of Opryland apologized for my experience and gave me a free upgrade to their best available room the next time I was there. All I had to do was show the letter at check-in. I thought that was cool, and I still have the letter buried somewhere, but in the years since then, even though I've returned to Nashville several times, I've never stayed at that hotel again. It's cool and it was an amazing place to stay aside from my room, but I just tend to save money by staying outside of town when I'm in the area, or if I'm splurging, I stay at the Hermitage, which is the best hotel I've ever stayed in.

Delta's response was less apologetic and more routine. The plane was filthy and was sitting with a poop diaper two feet from my face for an hour, and in response they sent me a letter of about two sentences that didn't mention the specifics of the issue at all. Essentially it was a form letter in which my name was inserted in the greeting, an apology was given for my experience, and I was offered bonus miles and an upgrade to first class on a future flight. But, similar to the Opryland situation, I never used it. Midwest Express was still an airline at the time, and their entire business model was to provide more room, better seats, and better food on the entire plane at the price of a regular ticket. Also, unlike Opryland, Delta had an expiration date on my upgrade, so that by the time I did fly on Delta again, 5 or 6 years later, it was back to riding in Coach unless I paid for the upgrade myself.

That experience was also interesting, not due to Delta, but due to 9/11 and the new entity known as TSA agents. But that's a story for another time.