Several of the hotels that we stayed in over the last few days on the road to and from St. Louis had renovated or 'updated'. They all looked great, but looks can be very deceiving. In the first one I got off the elevator to turn towards the room and sank into porridge soft carpet. I'll bet it felt good to walk on if you were fully able to balance. But the wheelchair protested every inch. My shoulders were screaming by that time I got to the hotel room. The first time, Joe stood at the door holding it open but I asked him not to because it was disturbing to see him slowly age in front of my eyes.
That was hard! I said using a lot more adjectives.
The same was true of every updated hotel we stayed at, the carpet rose in opposition to my presence, my wheelchair sometimes groaned under my effort. I didn't let Joe push because if this is the new norm I need to be at a new norm. Fun, wow.
It was good to get home and back to being able to push easily. But on our first day back we went to buy patio furniture and I asked a clerk a question. I could tell immediately that he didn't want to deal with me, he looked for and found Joe and headed to him to answer my question. I am assertive in these situations and pointed out that he would deal with me, I asked the question. Getting the information out of him was like rolling across the soft grey matter of his brain.
Give me bad carpet any time.
You, sir, are a poet. What a metaphor for a brain!
ReplyDeleteThe upgrades are stupid - that kind of carpet does NOT hold up to the heavy traffic of a public place (think of shag carpet, new, and the shag carpet in a rec room that is used). They will realize their mistake one of these days, too late for you, of course, but by then the designers will have taken credit for how nice it looked new, and have moved on.
There is a reason for the low tweedy industrial carpet they use in offices.