How much would you pay for a bottle of water? Because I am looking at my room service receipt and apparently, I just paid $2.95 for a twelve ounce bottle of Dasani.
OH, NO you did NOT! I can hear you shouting.
OH, YES I DID! I shout back in response.
And the sad thing is, the soda machine is right.outside.my.room. I could have gone there and bought a twenty ounce bottle of Dasani for $2.00. But I did not want to pay that much for a bottle of water, so I figured I’d just order a bottle along with my chicken sandwich. Shame on me. I paid more for eight ounces less. This, I am now convinced, is how they came up with that saying, “less is more”.
The sandwich was reasonably priced and sounded rather tasty: grilled chicken topped with melted pepper jack cheese and grilled pepper and onions on a roll, a side of fries, and a pickle all for less than $10.00. But when the room service girl knocked on my door with the tray in her hands, I was on my cell phone listening to my son go on about a ship he was building with his Star Wars LEGOs and I found myself quickly confused. There was a glass of orange juice on the tray that I hadn’t ordered. There was the little bottle of water, and there were two additional glasses of water. Did the juice and the glasses of water come with the sandwich? If so, why didn’t they tell me that on the phone? Why didn’t they ask, “Are you sure you want a bottle of water? Your meal comes with two glasses of water and a glass of juice. You know, in case you didn’t get any at breakfast. Juice is full of vitamin C…” Or was the girl taking the drinks to another room, perhaps?
To be sure, I told her that I hadn’t ordered any orange juice, but that fact only appeared to confuse her. She looked like she might take my whole tray away while she sorted out the problem. “That’s okay,” I finally told her. “Leave it here, I’ll drink the orange juice.”
“It’s really good,” she offered hopefully. “And it’s fresh squeezed,” she added, for extra assurance. But later, as I drank the juice I thought, yeah, fresh squeezed by Tropicana perhaps, but not by someone with a bag of oranges standing next to a juicer in your kitchen downstairs. Later still, when I got over the shock of the size of the water bottle and the fact that I paid almost $3.00 for it, I noticed the price of the single glass of juice. It was $4.25!
Yes, I know I could have had an entire gallon of Tropicana from the grocery store at that price. But I am out of town, ordering room service in a hotel, away on business. And tonight everyone I am here with claimed they weren’t hungry for dinner or they were going to eat somewhere I wasn’t particularly interested in. So I thought I’d take a shot at room service. Only, it seems room service took a shot at me. Or at my wallet, anyway. Maybe I’ll steal a towel to get back at them…
Running With Books 