The Ethics of Inn Keeping

Last night I went down to the second floor of the Residence Inn to do some wash, only to find that this would not be possible. One of my fellow guests had apparently forgotten that he or she was doing the wash, and had left his/her clothing in one of the washers for several hours. Another guest was in the middle of doing her wash using the other washer, and had at least three more loads to go, and one of the dryers was also out of action, because another of our fellow guests had decided to wash (and dry) his clothing without bothering to take the chewing tobacco out of his pocket first. Said dryer (and probably the corresponding washer, as well) were not exactly non-functional, just too disgusting to use…

The previous night, someone had decided to spray shaving cream on the walls on the third-floor hallway (leaving a puddle at one end of the hall). There has also been a steady stream of people walking from the pool area down the main hallway of the Inn with nothing on their feet, leaving a layer of athlete’s foot fungus that is so thick you can just about see it with the naked eye. Then there’s the breakfast room, which has been overrun with people who apparently see nothing wrong with letting their kids scream, run around, and play catch with food items during meals…

Now, I understand that a Residence Inn isn’t exactly the Ritz; I also realize that anywhere you have families on vacation with small children and most of a high school baseball team staying, there’s going to be a fair amount of mess, noise, and youthful misbehavior. And I’m not suggesting that the hotel or its owners have any obligation to provide any service beyond a clean, comfortable room at a reasonable price (although two pairs of laundry machines aren’t likely to be enough for a community of 100 or more people; it’s just asking for trouble). What I am asking is, at what point is someone being so completely awful that the management of the hotel should have the right to ask them to leave and go make a mess somewhere else?

As I noted in my post about airlines and where to draw the line, places of public accommodation have a legal responsibility to accommodate people with disabilities, families with small children, and other folks who might otherwise cause disruption and annoyance to their fellow guests. And, as noted in that post, people who actually vandalize the property (like the shaving-cream bandits, for example) are already breaking the law, and can be arrested and removed without further adaptation, assuming you can find them in the first place. But what about people who render public areas uninhabitable, shared facilities unusable, or dining facilities unbearable? How much of a pain do they need to be before the management should have the right to kick them out?

Of course, I’m sure that the people I’m writing about in this post would all insist that they paid their money to be here, and the hotel staff are being paid to take care of their needs and clean up after them, no matter how outrageous their conduct becomes. And I know that if there were no laws governing public accommodations, some people would refuse service to potential guests on the basis of age, race, religion, or disability; in the years before such laws were enacted that’s exactly what happened. Still, does the need to make reasonable accommodation really mean that selfish, careless or unclean people should be able to make pigs of themselves wherever and whenever they choose, regardless of the cost to the rest of us?

It’s worth thinking about…