I don’t care to complain, but it seems as if I am finding things to complain about without actively seeking things to complain about.

Take a recent stay at a hotel in San Antonio.

Please.

The better half and I made preparations to go see her mother a couple of weeks ago. We bypassed our usual overnight hotel for another motel closer to the in-law’s place, in part because her brother would be staying there. It seemed like a safe bet. The hotel where we would be staying is in the same family as the hotel we usually frequented. I’ve stayed at other properties in the same chain and found them to be amicable places to stay.

I should have turned around at the first hint of trouble… booted the reservation (which had been pre-paid) and headed over to our usual digs.

The problems started at the front door which refused to open until the better half worked a trick she had picked up from her days as being a hotel maid. Never mind the seats on the “porch” which had outlived their usefulness about three years ago, and never mind the collection of cigarette butts and beer bottle caps found on the ground surrounding the porch.

We did a quick inspection of the room fearing the presence of bedbugs. No bedbugs apparent on either queen bed. We had reserved a room with a single king bed. No biggie, as it turned out.

Then we started noting little things: There was a towel stuffed into the cabinet above the toilet. The towel had apparently been used to wipe away the mold we noted around the bathtub. There were light bulbs apparently missing from their sockets – an electrical outlet without an outlet cover in the bedroom between the beds – it appeared that someone had “liberated” the battery from the smoke detector – blades on the ceiling fan in the front room had not been cleaned in recent memory.

Now, I’m not the world’s best housekeeper by a long shot. At the same time, though, I am not in the business of providing rooms for paying guests. The room where we were staying was not acceptable even by my own lax standards. There was no excuse. None. Especially considering what we paid for the room.

A complaint was forwarded to the “Home Office”. To date, all I’ve gotten is a message saying “We’ll look into it.”