My parents’ house had them backward in one bath/shower, hot on the right, cold on the left. Fine, no big deal. About 10 years ago, they had the bathroom renovated and they were put back in the proper order. When I was on a visit and went to take a shower, it took me embarrassingly long to figure out why the water never got hot. Doh!
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The effing light switches and climate control in the Amsterdam Schiphol Yotel. Are you kidding me? Special bonus for it being an in-terminal hotel which means virtually every single person stepping into a room is severely disoriented (or disorientated if you’re British) and sleep-deprived.
But that ruins the pareidolia!
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C stands for hot in French and Spanish (Chaud and Caliente,) the H could be… Hiver? A bit poetic for plumbing fixtures.
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Great. Now I’ll never again be able to listen to Hotel California without hearing Cory say, “But it would be such a lovelier place if…”
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Indeed. Especially clock radios. My peeves:
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The clock is set 12 hours off (10A instead of 10P), so my 7A alarm fails to go off.
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The maid unplugging the clock to plug in the vacuum, necessitating resetting it every night (or who changes the station after I’ve carefully tuned it to the local NPR affiliate).
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A clock radio that shifts frequency as I move towards and away from it.
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Having the antenna wire tied in a nice little bundle so the radio only receives two stations (or having the wire snipped off).
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Not having the back-up battery installed, so the clock resets if there’s a power blip.
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Thou shalt provide air freshener in the bathroom.
Me, I’d reply: “No, I’d like to make individual new reservations for every night of the week I’m staying here. I’d like to be booked into a different same-price room every night.”
Maybe even add: “I’ll be recommending to my employer that we stop coming here.”
I’ve stayed in hotels for up to two weeks at a time on business trips. They’ve NEVER given me a discount because they don’t have to change the bed sheets or towels every day. Call 'em on this bullcrap.
/ trying and failing to resist saying; "cleaning everyday’? No, i’d like to have it cleaned special. 
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Or “Hostie, que c’est frette!”
Nope, nope and nope. Thou shalt provide a clean, mildew-free bathroom with good ventilation that doesn’t need a strong sent to try to cover up odors.
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^This. This drives me crazy. Having to walk into the dark room to try to find where the individual light switches are drives me crazy. Sometimes they are on the floor for floor lamps. Grrr…
Also, pedestal sinks look neat, but I need counter space. Death to arty pedestal sinks. Same for fancy looking faucets that only have one control - hot/cold - and no control for flow rate. Death to form over function!
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Thermostatic mixing valves are often the simplest way of implementing safety regulations. Modern heating and hot water systems run around 55-60C (enabling condensing heaters to work), but old systems often have high temperature boilers, small pipes and radiators which are very expensive to retrofit completely. It’s often illegal to connect very hot water directly to a hot tap/faucet. In some countries and US states the delivered hot water must not exceed 50C. A mixer valve provides a one stop solution.
I was in the business for a few years (drifted in by accident) and it does amaze designers that people with kids will live in houses where water at 82C can cascade out of a hot tap.
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The major control problem I’ve found in hotel rooms here in the USA is setting the television so that SD programs are not stretched horizontally. If almost invariably involves calling the front desk who, unable to understand my desire not to watch programs where everyone is short and fat, will send up the facility engineer. The engineer will then proceed to show me how to disconnect the hotel video box from the television, use the native television remote to set the aspect ratio properly, and then reconnect the hotel video box so that its remote can be used for channel selection.
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We once frequented a hotel, until they had problems with leakage in the HVAC system. After that, the mold smell permeated the entire place. I can smell mold at 0.0000001 ppb (well, I may be exaggerating), and I’m allergic to boot. Haven’t been back.
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When I was working in the industry we supplied a very expensive German shower fitting to a new customer in London. These things run well over $1000. It came back as being defective. We looked at it and it was clear that it had been dropped from a great height right on the mixer mechanism.
After argument to and fro we eventually agreed to provide a replacement at a big discount because we wanted to keep the customer. My parting words to the customer were “please make sure you get a decent plumber next time.”
He said “This is South London. Where am I supposed to find a decent plumber?”
Hotels, of course, are plumbed by the lowest bidder. However, they do tend to have very strict on site construction supervisors who are up to a lot of plumber tricks. Thus hotels are plumbed by resentful plumbers who are being ground down by their bosses and the supervisors. This explains a lot. But for sheer unbelievable plumbing, and wiring you do not want to get too close to, nothing at all beats a hotel in the more rural parts of Italy, Spain or Greece. In the past I have taken a multimeter and basic tools in case I needed to make something safe before plugging in a laptop.
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Native Spanish-speaking ones. Aka, most contractors in the US.
Those are very popular in most New York apartments as well.
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What in God’s name are you doing that your room needs to be cleaned every day? Shooting snuff films?
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I hang them over the shower curtain rod, same as at home.
Just leave the key in your room and have the front desk let you back in your room when you get back. Do this several times a day until they decide to give you a second key.
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