Conventional Confession #11: Room Service

Well, we didn’t make it home as we’d hoped; instead, we had to spend another night in Chicago waiting for the weather to clear. We had waited all day to get word on the last uncanceled flight out of Midway, and after about nine hours of waiting in the terminal, it was announced that the flight was indeed cancelled. So, we dragged our weary selves and all of our bags back down through the terminal. After finding a hotel room, which way incredibly pricey because all the hotels in the area were almost full, we requested a shuttle from the hotel desk. We were told that the shuttle was on its way and it would be there within minutes.

A full hour later, there was no shuttle to be seen, so we checked out the line for a cab: it was about fifty people deep. So, we eventually rented a car (also pricey) and headed to the hotel. Once we arrived, it became apparent that the shuttle had picked somebody else up instead, and the driver had never called the hotel as promised. It was upsetting, but whatever, we were just steps away from a warm bed. The woman at the desk gave us the key to our reserved room, and we headed to the elevator.

When we reached our room, we opened the door, only to find that there were two full beds in the room. Ted had specifically requested a king bed, because when he was booking the room he did a price comparison with a different hotel just a few blocks away, and chose this hotel based on the availability of a king. (That might not seem like a big deal, but after a long day of waiting in a cramped airport, a king bed sounded like the best heaven we could have imagined.) So, we turned around and walked back to the elevator, and once we reached the lobby Ted asked for a king room as he’d requested. He has great status at this particular chain of hotels, so he never has a problem getting what he wants. The woman handed us a new key, we hopped back on the elevator, and opened the door to our new room… Which was a smoking room.

Being from California, it’s been a long time since I’ve had to request a non-smoking room. But Ted travels a lot, so he’d made sure to request a non-smoking king room when making the reservation. So, we headed back down to the lobby again, a little more miffed than the last time. But there was nothing that could be done, because at that point the hotel was fully booked. We exchanged the smoking room for the previously assigned room with two full beds, and headed upstairs.

I don’t think this would have been nearly such a big deal had we not already had such a crappy day. But after a really bad day in the airport, and the shuttle that never showed, and the room fiasco, we were done. Shot. And, we were also starving. We just couldn’t bring ourselves to go back out into the snowy cold to get a meal, not after the kind of soul-crushing travel (or should I say non-travel) day we’d experienced. So, we decided to order room service.

Some hotels, especially in California, will offer better options on their room service menus. In Los Angeles, for example, Ted and I once stayed at a hotel that offered organic greens and cage-free eggs, which is much better than standard room service fare. But we were in the outskirts of Chicago, staying in a hotel that was built directly next to the freight train tracks (did I forget to mention that part?), and there were no good options in sight. Every single item on the menu contained meat, which we knew would have been raised with hormones and antibiotics. The healthiest item they offered was an iceberg lettuce salad, with a dressing containing more trans fats than I’d care to even think about. But we were really, really hungry. And here’s where I make my confession: I ordered a cheeseburger.

Ted did a little bit better than that, ordering a pasta salad with chicken, but it looked soggy and sad. My burger wasn’t fantastic by any means, but at least it wasn’t awful. I knew that a basic burger was my best bet for ordering a meal from crap-hotel room service in the middle of the country, but that didn’t make me feel any better about eating it. I knew exactly where that meat came from. I couldn’t practice the same kind of purposeful ignorance that so many Americans do, disconnecting themselves from the source of the fast-food and CostCo burgers they know and love. No, I was fully aware of what I was eating. That meat had come from an unknown number of cows from a confined animal feeding operation (CAFO), where the animals would have been fed a diet of mostly corn. This diet would have caused illness and pain for the cows I was eating, since cows are grazing animals by nature, and a corn-based diet makes cows sick. This is why the antibiotics are necessary. Then, these cows would have been shipped to a slaughter facility, where God knows what kind of hell they endured…

But, even knowing all this, my burger was still pretty good.

I didn’t feel so bad about it then, although I can’t say that the idea sat well at the time. Even with my wits dulled by hunger and fatigue, I was aware of the reality of what I was doing. But it wasn’t until the next day, when we had finally (finally!) boarded a plane that would take us home, that I began to feel the pangs of guilt. After all, I’m the one who just wrote a post about how to eat better while traveling on this site. Yeah, we hadn’t expected to stay an extra day, and our food stores were completely gone, so it’s not like we had any backup snacks at that point. And anything we would have eaten outside of the hotel would have been the exact same thing; there’s not a whole lot going on in food five miles south of Midway, let me tell you. So we didn’t have any alternatives, and I’m just not the kind of person that can fast for very long. But the reality of our situation didn’t negate the nagging feeling that I was being completely hypocritical in what I was doing.

Looking back, I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing had I been able to choose over again. The burger tasted okay, and as a result of my eating it I had enough energy to go through security, again, without having a meltdown. Being able to eat in our room gave us the respite from the outside world that we’d needed so desperately, which made the next day much more bearable. That burger may have made me a hypocrite, but it did serve a higher purpose in terms of our travel disaster. At the end of the day, food is fuel, and if you’re really desperate you just have to review your options and make the best choice that you can.

So, I ate room service. I wouldn’t do it again if I had the choice, though I can’t promise that I’ll never eat it again. But here’s to hoping.