I'm sure none of you will be surprised to hear that I got a refund for my stinky hotel room. It wasn't easy, but as you know, persistence is my forte.
I want to revise what I said about the nice staff at Buffalo Bill's Antlers Inn; the woman who checked my in last night was very nice. After waking up at 4:38 this morning, I first updated my blog, but then I went to the woman at the front desk and talked to her about the situation and she was very nice; She just had absolutely no authority. She said I was going to have to wait until 7:00, when the manager arrived, so I packed up my things and waited on the bench outside to escape my nasty room.
While I was waiting on the bench, there was a woman sitting on the other bench smoking a cigarette (so much for escaping the nastiness) and filling out paperwork, and I asked her if she was the manager. She told me that she was not the manager, but the Head Housekeeper, Carla. I asked her if Rhonda, the woman whose name appeared on the little card on the table identifying the person who cleaned my room, mentioned anything to her about the smell in my room and she said no. I asked her to come smell the room, but she told me she wasn't on the clock yet. I hate when people say that.
A few minutes later, we went together to smell my room and she said she couldn't smell anything, but she's a smoker and as everyone in the world knows, smoking dulls your sense of smell and smokers are more accustomed to the smell of smoke, so they are less sensitive to the odor.
At 7:00, Ms. Front Desk came out and said that the manager was running late and wasn't going to be there until 8:00, so I asked if I could speak to her on the phone. Font Desk called the manager and the manager was completely rude. She was like, "it's a non-smoking room, how could it smell like smoke?" I told her to come smell the room, or better yet, have someone who doesn't smoke smell the room. It was evident from her voice that she had been smoking since she was ten, and Front Desk, the only other employee who was at the hotel, also smoked. The manager tried to tell me that smoking doesn't affect a person's sense of smell. What?! Was she kidding? I reminded her (politely, of course) that it was a scientific fact that smoking cigarettes affects your sense of smell. Ok, I tried my best to be polite, but really, there's no way to say that without sounding incredibly condescending. Whatever, she was being an idiot. She was obviously being insincere. As I said earlier, EVERYONE knows that smoking dulls one's sense of smell.
Anyway, I asked her for a refund. I said that even a partial refund was okay. She said she was not going to give me a refund. I asked for the contact information for the Wyoming Lodging and Restaurant Association so I could contact them about the incident. When I was writing down the information from the Inn's license, I saw that there was a man's name on the certificate. Front Desk told me that was the owner, and I told her I wanted to speak to him. He would obviously have enough sense to know that a $60 refund is not worth being reported to the WLRA and getting scathing reviews on every hotel site on the internet. She just looked at me. Then she said he was at his other hotel, which was down the road.
I went to the other hotel, Buffalo Bill's Irma Hotel, which was a much nicer establishment. The owner actually wasn't there, but his father was there. I calmly explained the situation to him and he was very nice and immediately offered to refund my money. When I told him how much it was he said, "Oh, that's all?" The look on his face said, "Why was this even an issue?" He went to the guy at the register and told him to give me the money and put in a note to take it out of the Antlers Inn.
Right now I'm at an adorable little coffee shop across the street from Buffalo Bill's Irma Hotel called Rawhide Coffee Co., drinking tea and using their free Wi-fi. It's remarkably easy to find Wi-fi connections in the most remote areas, although it's nearly impossible to get cell phone reception.
I'm gonna go start my day now. I'm off to Yellowstone.
Later.
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