Hotel bathroom wars

My pal and fellow writer John Lambshead observed in a comment to a recent post that I "and hotels have a very close relationship like an old married couple."  I suspect he is right, but I blame the sheer volume of my travel and the desire of hotels to have guests do things their way. 

I like to customize my space.  I want things the way I want them, and I figure if I'm paying for the space, as I am in a hotel room, I should be free to customize it within reason.  (I do not think I should tear down pictures or make other destructive changes to spaces I do not own.)

So, when I check into a hotel room where I will be staying for more than a night, as I walk through the room and set up my stuff, I make a lot of small adjustments.  Turn the the TV to face the bed.  Arrange the work desk to accommodate my laptop, tablet, phone, charging gear, and so on.  Put my current book on the bedside table.  Put my toiletries to the left of the sink (the right-side sink if there are two) and arrange the daily items in order of use (toothbrush, toothpaste, Q-tip, deodorant, brush, comb).  And so on.

Yes, as I said, I want things the way I want them.  More to the point, though, I do these things for two very good reasons:  to maximize efficiency in the morning, when I am always both rushing and likely to be muzzy-headed from lack of sleep, and to minimize the likelihood of me forgetting or screwing up anything important. 

Hotel staffs clearly do not like people like me, particularly in the bathroom.  When I return to my room after a day of work or, as this past week, TED sessions, my carefully constructed bathroom order is always different.  The trash can is back where they want it, not where it was.  All my toiletries are rearranged, as if the toiletries good fairy had come in the day.  And so on.  They remake my world. 

If by this point you feel you have waded long enough in a pool of potentially contagious OCD weirdness, I don't blame you, but I do disagree.  I don't consider it OCD; I consider it efficient. 

Of course, I would. 

Anyway, I hate that hotel staffs do this.  It costs them time, and then it costs me time.  I know it's a small thing, but with as little as I've been able to sleep for these past several years, I begrudge every senseless waste of even a few minutes, because I could be sleeping during those minutes.


I could, of course, just give in, accept their ordering, and move on.

Yeah, right.  That's not going to happen.  I feel I am in the right, and my setups are more efficient for me, so I continue to restore things to their proper places.

And my friends continue to laugh at me.