Room With A View

When you hear that a conference is going to be at somewhere called "Eynsham Hall" I think you automatically imagine a rather grand place. This is emphasised, when you get there, by the long drive leading to a rather grand house with more windows than I have had hot dinners. What you don't therefore expect is for the first two colleagues you meet to tell you that they had to request different rooms. One because he found frogs in his (both live and dead), and the other because brown gloop came out of the taps rather than water. Having heard this I wasn't expecting much from my room but finding that the shower didn't work (and no bath) did not make my day. I told reception that I would put up with it for one night but I wanted to be moved the next day. This should not be too difficult as a number of people weren't staying after we had booked rooms for them.

The next morning I went and reiterated my request. Their opening gambit was that the duty manager had fixed the shower the night before. Thi answered one question, I had been wondering where the dirty footprints in my room had come from, as I was certain my feet had not been that muddy the previous night. However, I felt that they had a different definition of "fixed" than I had. As far as I was concerned, the dribble that came from the shower head did not indicate "working". So their next gambit was to say that they didn't have any better rooms to move me to. At this point, and with others around, I did rather go down the mean route and said "well if that's the best room you ahve then I'd hate to see your worst". I followed with explaining why this was not good enough. When I came back in the afternoon I had been moved. And I was in the main building (so a bigger room) and on the first floor (so no frogs). At this point I accepted where I was. I am loathed to defend them too much though, so have to point out that there were holes in the side of the bath and the shower rail.

If the hotel inspector called I somehow don't think she would be impressed.