The Upstory

Hi, y’all! We’re back from our trip to New Orleans, the city you’ve all heard stories about. But we’re not going to talk about the fun or the food or the 11 prisoners who broke out of jail and were running loose the day we arrived.

No, no. We, like Lemony Snicket, are going to talk about a series of unfortunate events. About how our plane was going to be late leaving and even later landing which meant the car rental place would be closed when our night flight arrived at O-Dark-Thirty.

While we cooled our heels in the Phoenix airport waiting for our tardy flight to show up, my troubleshooting mate was all over the problem. Calling the Avis rep here then the Avis rep there, trying to get Avis to leave us a car key (under the mat?) or give us a cot if we ended up stuck there overnight.

Everyone was kind and sympathetic but, ultimately, unable to fix our problem.

Thus, we boarded and flew off into the wild, dark yonder and somewhere along the way, like an episode of The Twilight Zone, there was a fold in time and weirdly we gained 15 minutes, then another 15 minutes and by the time we landed we’d gained enough time to almost be back on schedule. Huzzah!

But wait, this is only the beginning. We scurried off the plane and arrived in good time at the Avis check-out. Where we found ourselves at the end of a line of about 30 people. Apparently, Avis cares about the well-being of its employees and doesn’t want them losing sleep working a night shift, so only one person was checking out cars. Slowly.

For the next hour Glenn amused himself by amusing the ever-growing line with jokes and stories and it’s too bad he didn’t have a hat, like any good street act he could have used it to collect tips from his appreciative audience. Mind you, by now it’s 2 a.m., and in case you’re wondering what I was doing during all this spontaneous frivolity, well my brain had, like Batman’s Batmobile, activated its armored shield (thwup-thwup-thwup), blocked out activity and ambient sound, and switched into Reading Mode thus allowing me to stand in line with my nose in a book.  

Meanwhile, we were inching closer to the check-out window and in fact were only three customers away from getting the keys to our car when suddenly without warning (cue the theme music from Jaws) Avis ran out of cars.

How do you run out of cars that have been reserved, and in some cases pre-paid? Was there a Zombie Rental Car Apocalypse? Did the self-driving cars drive away? Please explain this to us. We haven’t had dinner, we’re sleep-deprived, dehydrated, and need a bathroom break. We’re hanging by a thread.

The poor Avis rep knew even less than we did. All she could do was hand out vouchers with a prepared apology (a clue that we are experiencing Avis’s standard customer service and not a one-off mistake) and the promise of a reimbursement for the Uber ride we’d need. Then, weirdly, Avis thinks we’ll still be loyal to the brand and says to come back tomorrow when there will be cars.

We formed another line and hauled our luggage to the distant curb where we could spot the headlights of a line of Ubers coming to rescue us. Plus, with the prison escape fresh in our minds, we could keep an eye out for running figures in orange jumpsuits.

By now we are really looking forward to the comforts of our room. We’re staying at a Marriott where Glenn has Gold Elite status. Our last Marriott was in Buenos Aires. During ski season, we are regulars at Flagstaff’s Marriott. Google says that “Marriott is known as an innovative leader in luxury hospitality” and Google is right.

With that in mind, we arrive at our Marriott. We’ve been hitting brick walls for hours. We’re strung out. We have reservations. Just give us our room key.

But wait, not so fast. The front-desk clerk tells us he has just finished canceling our reservation and billing us a no-show fee. He is apologetic. He got the messages telling him about our delays but by 3 a.m. he just gave up on us.

For some reason, it takes him awhile to fix us up with a new room reservation and to remove the no-show fee. It’s not a few, simple clicks and re-running our card. Time passes. He upgrades us to a suite with a kitchen and living room, not as a make-good like I thought, but because Glenn’s a Gold Elite. But he forgets to do one little thing that will come back to bite us. He forgets that we booked a five-night stay. He only books us for what’s left of this one night.

Unaware that a problem is brewing, we head for our room (cue the theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) and that’s where the wheels really begin to fall off the clown car. But we won’t notice until we wake up that morning.

Because we’ve been sleep-deprived, we crash long and hard, missing Marriott’s breakfast and, more importantly, a few carafes of coffee. No problem, we have a well-stocked kitchen, we can make our own coffee.

Well, we could if we had water. The taps for the kitchen sink swivel back and forth. No water comes out. (Yes, yes I know not to drink unfiltered, unpurified tap water but our bottled water isn’t going to be nearly enough for all the caffeine we’re going to need to jump start our day.)

That’s Strike One. Strike Two happens when we discover that whoever installed the tub-shower tilted it the wrong way and the shower water collects to form a kiddie-pool at the end opposite of the drain. Strike Three occurs when we realize Housekeeping has left us only one bath towel. Uno. There are two hand towels, so all is not lost.

Strike Four, Five and Six have to do with a shredded couch cushion, a desk chair with a missing armrest, and the overall scuffed, beaten, and worn appearance of just about every surface in the room.

We have so many questions: Where on earth did they get this Marriott? Is it really a Marriott or did someone just slap Marriott signage on the building? Does Mr. Capuano know he’s got a problem? Anthony is, after all, President and CEO of Marriott International Inc. and Google says he “presides over the world’s largest hospitality company with nearly 9,500 properties across 144 countries.”  Obviously, this Marriott has slipped through the cracks.

By now we’re doing triage on our vacation experience. First, we need to get a car before Avis runs out again. Second, we’ve had nothing but airline snacks in the last 18 hours so we’re starving. We’ll deal with the room problems later.

At the car rental we’re told they have what they call a Mystery Car, I kid you not. If you didn’t book a specific car, you don’t know what you’re getting until you sign up and pay up. It’s like a car rental version of a blind date. Never mind that we had booked a specific car that had disappeared before we could drive it away.

But we get lucky and score a 2024 Toyota Tacoma TRD, dual cab. I love the TRDs and if I’m happy, Glenn’s happy. Right?

So, we drive off to one of our favorite eateries, listening to the radio report on the escapees who were gone eight hours before anyone noticed and could be anywhere by now and oh, by the way, they are baddies – murders, violent assaults and so forth – so stay alert and stay safe.

We stay alert while feasting on seafood gumbo and charbroiled oysters. Thus fortified and with good cheer we return to our room at the pretend Marriott.

Our room key doesn’t work. Can you guess why? We couldn’t. We didn’t know that the front-desk guy shortened our stay and now we’re locked out. At this point we’re wearing out the carpet between our room and the front desk. We’ve apprised them of the broken chair arm (we don’t have a replacement, sorry) and the shredded couch cushion (they’re all like that, sorry) and the no-kitchen-sink-water issue (our plumber will fix that right away).

We don’t know what to tell them about the kiddie-pool shower situation. Glenn, on further analysis, has come to the realization that it isn’t because the tub was installed incorrectly, nor is it because the floor is slanted. No indeed. The entire building is probably tilted. Google confirms that foundation sinkage is often apparent in multi-story buildings, moreover New Orleans has a soft-ground dilemma because of the complex mix of clay, silt, and organic matter, which has been deposited over thousands of years by the Mississippi River. This soft and compressible soil is prone to settling and shifting, especially when subjected to the weight of a building. 

How did we ever live without Google ‘splaining stuff to us?

We also have another problem. We didn’t know that this hotel doesn’t have daily housekeeping. It’s a Marriott for heaven’s sake.  

Although the front desk extends our room reservation, our every-other-day scheduled housekeeping is now out-of-whack. Day Two and Three roll around and I’m bagging our trash, Glenn is in charge of intercepting housekeeping to ask for more towels and specifying we want two towels otherwise we just get the one, and we’re making our own bed.

And the hits just keep on coming at this Marriot Funhouse. Would you believe there’s a trick to the door lock? If you turn the deadbolt lock too far to the left, it no longer recognizes your room key. Or the hotel’s master key. And the front-desk clerk has to come with a coat hanger and get down on her knees and run the coat hanger under the door to catch the door handle and release the lock.

At which point, after I thanked her, I said these words: I cannot believe this is a Marriott.

To her credit, she winced, and her thought bubble was probably: Neither can I but here we are.

Fast forward to the last day of our stay. Housekeeping finally arrives, the front-desk gives us a free stay, and we say goodbye to Not-Really-Marriott. Well, all that happened except for the free stay. Glenn did get points added to his rewards for our next stay at a Marriott and we’ll double-check that it’s the real-deal before we book a reservation.

Oh, and two of the escapees have been rounded up. The other nine are still at large. Stay safe!