We all know that it happens. It might even have happened to you – you check in to your hotel, you get to your room and all looks good. Later on, you’re getting ready for bed, you pull the covers back, and WHOA! There is NO WAY this is a freshly made bed!
They didn’t change the sheets!?!?!?! Son of a….!!!
So you go downstairs and complain to the front desk and either someone comes up and gives you fresh sheets (and/or towels), or they give you a new room. Either way, here’s what you can do to help stop that from happening.
For whatever reasons – poor communication regarding check out/check in, not enough time to get everything done, laziness, passive aggressiveness, etc. – sometimes hotel housekeepers wind up not changing the sheets in between guests. It’s easy enough to tell…the sheets could be wrinkled, there could be hairs on the pillow, or (ew) stains somewhere. In fact, I found this on Reddit – apparently, someone left this note under the blanket:
Of course, that led to over 700 replies (because Reddit) about how they should have dated the note and the paper was yellow and maybe it was yellow from age, or it was fax paper that yellows faster, or maybe it was a stain from something else that was yellow, and whose responsibility was it to change the sheets, and this happened in all levels of hotels, and then the conversation switched to bed bugs and how they never wash the comforters and the hotel that had the squatter than moved from room to room, and then if you copy the note you could get a free stay and no you shouldn’t do that and one person who had feces on his shower curtain and OMG, welcome to Reddit….
ANYWAY…
There’s a very simple way to make sure they change the sheets.
Before you check out of the room, pull the sheets off, take the pillows out of the pillowcases, and ball them all up in the middle of the bed. If you want to be extra nice, add all the towels to the pile, too.
Regency Inn & Suites via Trip Advisor
Granted, it won’t help you. But it only takes a minute or two and it’ll help guarantee that the next person in the room will get fresh linens and towels. And there’s never anything wrong with doing something good for a total stranger, right?
Besides, you never know…maybe the person who was in your room just before you read this article and balled up his/her sheets and towels before leaving the room, to ensure that YOU got fresh everything.
So you do it, too, OK? Be a good human.
Want to comment on this post? Great! Read this first to help ensure it gets approved.
Want to sponsor a post, write something for Your Mileage May Vary or put ads on our site? Click here for more info.
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and sign up to get emailed notifications of when we post.
Whether you’ve read our articles before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
7 comments
I had a housekeeper tell me if you want to help out the housekeepers, pull the sheets off the bed before you leave. Some guests (foreigners) occasionally make the bed before they leave. How is a housekeeper supposed to know the bed’s been used?
Even worse, I once had a waiter in a Four Points hotel restaurant tell me that they had to stop putting silverware on the tables because they had repeatedly caught (foreign) tourists cleaning off the used silverware and putting it back on the table before they left.
This totally happened to me…so gross!
Ewwwwww!
I remember my first disappointing experience at hotel. We stayed in a hotel for a seminar and I was so tired afterwards. I plopped myself on the bed and the smell of old sheets immediately penetrated my nose. Not only that, there were also visible stains when I checked. We never got to change hotels because it was too late and stayed there anyway.
Wet towels make for a heavier housekeeping trolley. They should be hung in the bathroom instead.
I stayed at the Fiesta Americana in Cancun. I was up very late and and when I slid between the sheets, the bed was full of sand- at least one side! Gross! I was too exhausted to have housekeeping change sheets (or change rooms) at 12:30 am so ended up sleeping on the other side of the king sized bed which was ok. I did report first thing the next morning but they only shrugged it off since I did not report the previous evening. Next time I will.
They could always simply remake the bed with the pile you leave.