This is clearly what we in the industry call a "five-star" hotel shower, whose guests like their showers as complicated as their mutual funds. "Hah", they say, "operating this shower is just as fun as the time we shorted that stock that left hundreds in poverty but made us millions."
Of course the plumbers, who lost their pants during that short, know this, so they install the hot water controls on a variable time delay. This means when you turn the shower to a good temperature and you are comfortable, a gush of hot water will suddenly scald you and you will, with soap in your eyes, grab one of the five or six shower controls and turn it wildly to the left, which will do absolutely nothing. You will still be scalded and keep adjusting the knob. Around four minutes later, when you have conditioner in, the knob twist will take effect and leave you freezing. This is intentional.
Next time, you need to go to a "cockroach" level hotel, where the shower is not as clean, but only has one control: off and on. And the water is a comfortable 30 degrees fahrenheit or 200 degrees fahrenheit - but unlike the five star hotel, YOU HAVE NO WAY TO ADJUST IT! It happens in its own. This alone saves a lot of frustration, which you will remember as you hear the squish of cockroaches under your feet as you step outside the shower in the dimly lit room. Maybe the submarine shower was better.
Oh wow, not to brag or anything, but we recently rented a Florida beach cottage that was built in 1959 and there was only ONE hot water knob and ONE cold water knob which your turned to the right or left to make the water come out of the shower head. You could even let the hot and cold mix together to just right temps and THEN turn on the shower without getting boiled or frozen.
We actually had that same control in our house —- until our mean spirited maple karate chopped our house with two big branches during a storm. Five months later, when the bathroom was being rebuilt, we learned that those wonderful valves you talked about can’t be installed. They are not “code”. You can guess who bribed who to get that “code” on the books.
You don’t have to have a hangover to be flummoxed by shower controls. As a fairly intelligent female, I’ve gazed at cruise ship shower controls for 10 minutes trying to figure them out. My solution? Letting my husband shower first!
The entire Hotel Bathroom Design establishment is out of control with an all out assault on privacy. I was in Toronto the first time I saw a shower on the "we only have enough glass to cover half this thing" plan. Water goes where it wants. And that was before they decided barn doors on rollers were optimal even though leave an approximately 3 foot gap of space for everyone to share in your lavatory excursions. They're more conducive to drug screenings than romantic getaways. Next they can just remove doors altogether so we can call for help to anyone in the hallway who might pop in to help us figure out how to operate the damn shower.
In a hotel in Philadelphia which was awful and cold and had peeling everything.paint, wallpaper, receptionis's pacake makeup, the ONE good thing was actually instructions in the shower. not that I could read them cause I left my glasses off.
You know, I wasn't sure about signing up for the paid subscription, just because I figure you must be wealthy beyond the point where more money could even be any good for you. I don't want to turn a beloved columnist into Elon Musk, or enable some ill-advised hobnobbing with Epstein or anything. Not that you would, just that so many have when they get too much money.
But then when I saw you had posted a shower photo without realizing the middle control seems to be reflecting a swirly-but-recognizable view of your kibbles and bits I thought, it's the least I can do. So I'm in for an annual. Also, FYI: your dong might be showing.
Vodka? I wish. Fred and I travel a lot. This last trip to my bf's daughter's baby shower found us in a really old Reno, NV *resort* hotel. So, we were able to wash without too much confusion, but good luck putting out any of light fixture in the room. Really? Boomer friends, have you tried to buy *light bulbs* lately? The follow up bed and breakfast in Point Reyes, CA had updated their shower arrangement. This one large room had a toilet, sink and shower combo with, I kid you not, FIVE knobs/levers and only a shower curtain between the toilet and shower. All this change makes me not so upset about my eventual death.
Remember the old movie, With Six You Get Eggroll? With inexpensive (cheap) hotels you get one control. Problem solved. Of course, with that you do incurr other issues, but tyou have to pick your battles.
My fancy shower at home only has 3 controls. One for temperature, which works as expected. One on the valve where the shower head and the hand sprayer are connected, to select which one (or both! It's really fancy!) gets water. It also works as expected. The third control is on the shower head to select which shower pattern you get. Also works as expected.
Trying to think what a fourth control would do, and drawing a blank.
Several years ago, I stayed in a hotel in Honduras with shower pipes featuring electrical connectors & cables like a battery charger for the hot water (I think). I bathed in cold water at the sink. When entertaining friends with this, one of them mentioned Fr. Thomas Merton had been electrocuted taking a shower in Bangkok in 1968.
Dave, Dave... You poor innocent. Would have thought with your usually unerring nose (or is it eye, the nose being for news?) for the inexplicable in modern life, you would have sussed it out by now. It's all part of giant, no, a humongous, gleeful denial of service conspiracy in the service industry. Think two-step, or two-factor authorization, perpetual loop-like Interactive Voice Response phone tree menus, and those diabolical CAPTCHAs where you have to identify all blurry images with fruit flies --- yep, all part of it. If a company or organization can piss you off while denying service, all the better. Simple pleasures in an increasingly complicated world. You obviously missed the footnote on that little white card informing you that because of the hotel company's nearly firm commitment to the environment, the sheets in your room haven't been changed in a month and if you would prefer clean sheets to please leave a message on the housekeeping voice mail (language, please!) and hope for the best. In keeping with that commitment, the footnote also suggests using your complimentary loofah to sponge bathe in the toilet."An exciting, likely new experience! Soap up, flush, rinse." Save water and assuage your conscience at the same time. At your service!
I’ve had to call the front desk to get shower control instructions.
What happened to the single dial? Turn it clockwise to turn on the water. Further clockwise for more heat, all the way counter clockwise to turn it off.
I had a similar problem at a hotel on the campus of Peking University in Beijing. First morning up, I could not figure out how the shower worked, so I just took a bath. Second morning, I decided I couldn't keep doing this (I would be there for 6 weeks), so I flagged down a fuwuyuan (maid) I heard in the hallway and proceeded to pantomine my problem, since at that time I knew very little Chinese. Me in the bathroom, illustrating by waving my hands around and down the shower head: "See, no water, no water coming out, how do I make water come out?" Luckily, the fuwuyuan was a bright woman, and she quickly understood my problem, walked up to the shower and pulled out the correct pipe part, which I had not even known was there.
Several years later, I had another problem in that same hotel when my toilet got stopped up. I did not want to go to the front desk and PANTOMINE that my toilet was stuck (ick!), so instead I stole (borrowed) a plunger from the main hotel bathroom and snuck it under my coat back up to my room and fixed it myself.
I think this over-zealous tendency in appliance designers also applies to modern coffee makers. It took a PhD and a lot of tears to figure out how to descale ours. 🥴🤪😅
I stayed in an apartment in Madrid recently, where I could not for the life of me figure out how to use the coffee maker. I finally had to post a photo of it on my Facebook page and my readers told me how to use it. I also could never figure out how to use the tiny washing machine that was supposedly also a dryer so eventually, I just washed my clothes in the sink and hung them out on the balcony.
This is clearly what we in the industry call a "five-star" hotel shower, whose guests like their showers as complicated as their mutual funds. "Hah", they say, "operating this shower is just as fun as the time we shorted that stock that left hundreds in poverty but made us millions."
Of course the plumbers, who lost their pants during that short, know this, so they install the hot water controls on a variable time delay. This means when you turn the shower to a good temperature and you are comfortable, a gush of hot water will suddenly scald you and you will, with soap in your eyes, grab one of the five or six shower controls and turn it wildly to the left, which will do absolutely nothing. You will still be scalded and keep adjusting the knob. Around four minutes later, when you have conditioner in, the knob twist will take effect and leave you freezing. This is intentional.
Next time, you need to go to a "cockroach" level hotel, where the shower is not as clean, but only has one control: off and on. And the water is a comfortable 30 degrees fahrenheit or 200 degrees fahrenheit - but unlike the five star hotel, YOU HAVE NO WAY TO ADJUST IT! It happens in its own. This alone saves a lot of frustration, which you will remember as you hear the squish of cockroaches under your feet as you step outside the shower in the dimly lit room. Maybe the submarine shower was better.
Oh wow, not to brag or anything, but we recently rented a Florida beach cottage that was built in 1959 and there was only ONE hot water knob and ONE cold water knob which your turned to the right or left to make the water come out of the shower head. You could even let the hot and cold mix together to just right temps and THEN turn on the shower without getting boiled or frozen.
We actually had that same control in our house —- until our mean spirited maple karate chopped our house with two big branches during a storm. Five months later, when the bathroom was being rebuilt, we learned that those wonderful valves you talked about can’t be installed. They are not “code”. You can guess who bribed who to get that “code” on the books.
You don’t have to have a hangover to be flummoxed by shower controls. As a fairly intelligent female, I’ve gazed at cruise ship shower controls for 10 minutes trying to figure them out. My solution? Letting my husband shower first!
Christy, You're a fairly intelligent WOMAN. Not a fairly intelligent female. Please don't be upset with me for pointing this out.
The entire Hotel Bathroom Design establishment is out of control with an all out assault on privacy. I was in Toronto the first time I saw a shower on the "we only have enough glass to cover half this thing" plan. Water goes where it wants. And that was before they decided barn doors on rollers were optimal even though leave an approximately 3 foot gap of space for everyone to share in your lavatory excursions. They're more conducive to drug screenings than romantic getaways. Next they can just remove doors altogether so we can call for help to anyone in the hallway who might pop in to help us figure out how to operate the damn shower.
Hilarious!
In a hotel in Philadelphia which was awful and cold and had peeling everything.paint, wallpaper, receptionis's pacake makeup, the ONE good thing was actually instructions in the shower. not that I could read them cause I left my glasses off.
Nowadays it’s never too early for vodka. That’s why we have an OJ version!
You know, I wasn't sure about signing up for the paid subscription, just because I figure you must be wealthy beyond the point where more money could even be any good for you. I don't want to turn a beloved columnist into Elon Musk, or enable some ill-advised hobnobbing with Epstein or anything. Not that you would, just that so many have when they get too much money.
But then when I saw you had posted a shower photo without realizing the middle control seems to be reflecting a swirly-but-recognizable view of your kibbles and bits I thought, it's the least I can do. So I'm in for an annual. Also, FYI: your dong might be showing.
Apparently you have either a good imagination or X-ray vision, because I was wearing clothes when I took the photo. But I appreciate the thought.
Glad to hear it! 😅
can't decide if this makes me want to look more carefully or not. I think, not
Vodka? I wish. Fred and I travel a lot. This last trip to my bf's daughter's baby shower found us in a really old Reno, NV *resort* hotel. So, we were able to wash without too much confusion, but good luck putting out any of light fixture in the room. Really? Boomer friends, have you tried to buy *light bulbs* lately? The follow up bed and breakfast in Point Reyes, CA had updated their shower arrangement. This one large room had a toilet, sink and shower combo with, I kid you not, FIVE knobs/levers and only a shower curtain between the toilet and shower. All this change makes me not so upset about my eventual death.
Remember the old movie, With Six You Get Eggroll? With inexpensive (cheap) hotels you get one control. Problem solved. Of course, with that you do incurr other issues, but tyou have to pick your battles.
My fancy shower at home only has 3 controls. One for temperature, which works as expected. One on the valve where the shower head and the hand sprayer are connected, to select which one (or both! It's really fancy!) gets water. It also works as expected. The third control is on the shower head to select which shower pattern you get. Also works as expected.
Trying to think what a fourth control would do, and drawing a blank.
Several years ago, I stayed in a hotel in Honduras with shower pipes featuring electrical connectors & cables like a battery charger for the hot water (I think). I bathed in cold water at the sink. When entertaining friends with this, one of them mentioned Fr. Thomas Merton had been electrocuted taking a shower in Bangkok in 1968.
Dave, Dave... You poor innocent. Would have thought with your usually unerring nose (or is it eye, the nose being for news?) for the inexplicable in modern life, you would have sussed it out by now. It's all part of giant, no, a humongous, gleeful denial of service conspiracy in the service industry. Think two-step, or two-factor authorization, perpetual loop-like Interactive Voice Response phone tree menus, and those diabolical CAPTCHAs where you have to identify all blurry images with fruit flies --- yep, all part of it. If a company or organization can piss you off while denying service, all the better. Simple pleasures in an increasingly complicated world. You obviously missed the footnote on that little white card informing you that because of the hotel company's nearly firm commitment to the environment, the sheets in your room haven't been changed in a month and if you would prefer clean sheets to please leave a message on the housekeeping voice mail (language, please!) and hope for the best. In keeping with that commitment, the footnote also suggests using your complimentary loofah to sponge bathe in the toilet."An exciting, likely new experience! Soap up, flush, rinse." Save water and assuage your conscience at the same time. At your service!
Clever!!!
Dave, it’s almost as much fun reading the comments as it is reading your work😜😜😜
I agree! This is the benefit of being a paid subscriber. My paid subscribers are BRILLIANT.
I’ve had to call the front desk to get shower control instructions.
What happened to the single dial? Turn it clockwise to turn on the water. Further clockwise for more heat, all the way counter clockwise to turn it off.
I had a similar problem at a hotel on the campus of Peking University in Beijing. First morning up, I could not figure out how the shower worked, so I just took a bath. Second morning, I decided I couldn't keep doing this (I would be there for 6 weeks), so I flagged down a fuwuyuan (maid) I heard in the hallway and proceeded to pantomine my problem, since at that time I knew very little Chinese. Me in the bathroom, illustrating by waving my hands around and down the shower head: "See, no water, no water coming out, how do I make water come out?" Luckily, the fuwuyuan was a bright woman, and she quickly understood my problem, walked up to the shower and pulled out the correct pipe part, which I had not even known was there.
Several years later, I had another problem in that same hotel when my toilet got stopped up. I did not want to go to the front desk and PANTOMINE that my toilet was stuck (ick!), so instead I stole (borrowed) a plunger from the main hotel bathroom and snuck it under my coat back up to my room and fixed it myself.
I think this over-zealous tendency in appliance designers also applies to modern coffee makers. It took a PhD and a lot of tears to figure out how to descale ours. 🥴🤪😅
I stayed in an apartment in Madrid recently, where I could not for the life of me figure out how to use the coffee maker. I finally had to post a photo of it on my Facebook page and my readers told me how to use it. I also could never figure out how to use the tiny washing machine that was supposedly also a dryer so eventually, I just washed my clothes in the sink and hung them out on the balcony.