Amenity anxiety

I was surprised to see the phone light blinking when I got back to my room. Thinking I had a message, I pushed the button for the front desk and wondered who would’ve tried to reach me at the Hilton in San Jose instead of on my cell.

Finding the answer required what seemed like an inordinate amount of keyboard clicking on the other end of the line – like maybe employees have to type out the text of Hamlet before accessing guest information.

“Ah. You have an amenity. Would you like us to send it up to you?”

It was my turn for a long pause.

To me, “amenities” are offerings, like wifi or a fitness room. No one was sending me the fitness room. And the wifi was already there.

“I didn’t, um, order anything. What is it?”

“I’m not sure. It just says ‘amenity.’ We can send it up to your room if you’d like.” he reiterated.

Since I had no idea what would be showing up at my door, I decided it would be safer to stop by the front desk later on and sort it out there.

He politely said, “Of course,” but I got the feeling he was thinking, “you’re making this harder than it needs to be.”

When I stopped by the front desk later, the clerk still acted like the fact I hadn’t requested anything was irrelevant to the fact that something was waiting for me. He retyped Hamlet to find my information again.

Staring into the glowing monitor, he could see there was a DND on my room, which means I had unintentionally set something on my door to “Do Not Disturb.” He also could see that the DND was the reason the amenity wasn’t delivered to my room earlier. But he still couldn’t see what the mysterious amenity was. He wrote something down on a sheet of paper and sent a younger guy off to retrieve it, while I waited in suspense.

My amenity came in 2 perfect little red boxes. Each contained a neatly packed cupcake that said “Lentils” on top with a little maple leaf symbol. So someone sent me cupcakes? Possibly made out of lentils? And maple leaves? There was no note and not even an ingredient list. I mulled this over as I rode the elevator back up to my room.

I also contemplated the fact that if someone wanted me dead, they could probably just send me poisoned cupcakes, and it’d be all over.

Finally, I remembered that BlogHer Conference sponsors sometimes send swag to attendees’ rooms. I checked the sponsor list and found Canadian Lentils. Bingo.

No one poisons sponsored cupcakes. Especially not Canadian ones.

Back in my room, I enjoyed an Amenity Cupcake. I still don’t know what was in it. But it was delicious and definitely not poisoned.

I found the DND switch on my door and turned it off. If any other amenities were sent my way, I was ready.