ON THE NOT-SO-FRIENDLY ROAD

Travelling right along in the Pacific Northwest, I landed at a LaQuinta Inn in Oregon. Turns out that some bright accounting type guy decided that the Inn could cut expenses if all of the lights, the TV and the air conditioning in the room automatically shut off when the guest leaves the room. So, the deal is that you have to stick your magnetic room-entry card into the wall to turn those things on and when you leave, of course, you take your key with you so that everything turns off a few minutes after you close the door.

To me, this smacks of the narrow toilet paper that Northern Tissue now puts out. They don’t care what the customer thinks, they just do it. It’s a cost-saving mode and screw the customer, right? Well, the customers raised hell because they would come back to their rooms expecting them to be at the temperature they wanted before going to bed and the good folks at LaQuinta started to provide extra keys so that you could leave one in the wall while you went to have pizza.

Equally dumb was the Subway in Oregon that doesn’t have a tip jar out. The reason was that the employees were constantly complaining about the split of the tips, so the management took away the tip jar and said that every employee was on his own. Now, there were two people involved in making my sandwich. Who do I tip? If I have to decide, it’ll be no one. They surely shot themselves in the foot over that move.

So did the guy at Pilot in Oregon. By law, they have to fill your tank; no self service allowed. Okay, he didn’t clean the windshield. Every other time I’ve been in Oregon, they cleaned my windshield, too. One even checked my oil; he got a tip. This guy quite plainly told me that the law says they have to pump gas, not clean windshields, and if I wanted my windshield cleaned I could get my butt out of the car and do it myself. Guess I won’t go there again.

Heard on the news that numnuts and his EPA are shutting down refineries in Texas. Nothing like putting another 10 or 20,000 employees out of work. Why? He’s probably ticked off about the court decision that says he can’t shut down off-shore production “pending a safety review.” If you shut down the refineries, what are they going to do with the crude, anyway? What an ass! I changed radio stations, I was so angry.

Then, he gave a speech on what he’s going to do about the immigration problem. That was another peachy-keen bit of Presidential wisdom; make a lot of thunder, fart in the wind and then pronounce that everything is going to be better as soon as Jan Brewer kisses his ring and worships the hallowed ground that the walks on.

How about the Office Depot place where the gal goes through the printing order drill… how many copies, color of paper, double-side or single sided… you know the myriad of questions. Followed by, “When do you need this? Saturday? There’s no way we can have it ready by Saturday at noon. If you really need it that fast, you’ll have to take it someplace else.” Last I heard, they were getting ready to close their doors. Don’t you wonder why?

Numnuts saved 143 million jobs last week. Yeah, I know that unemployment went up again, but he saved 143 million jobs last week. Yes, I do know that new and used housing sales have tanked and that several prominent economists are warning that we are about to enter another Great Depression. But, he saved 143 million jobs…. Oh? There are not that many jobs in the country? Well, what the hell, the math doesn’t matter anyway.

I just love traveling.

That’s MY AMERICAN OPINION, on the road.