Story time! Read if you'd like, don't if you don't.
Anyone ready to hear a joke with no punchline? What do you get when you put me in a hotel with $400 cash, two forms of picture ID, and a pre-made reservation? If you said nothing you are absolutely correct!
Allow me to elaborate. My original plan was to make the 22 hour drive home from Sarah's area in two legs. I complete the 14 hour drive which makes up the first leg and pull into the Hampton Inn in Knoxville Tennessee. I reserved this room three days before I left Florida on August 19th. I was told when I made the reservation I needed my picture ID and the card the room was reserved with. No problem. I arrive with both of those things, yet I wasn't given a room. Since I don't own a credit card I had reserved the room with my grandma's card (naturally with her approval). So at 8 PM they want me to turn up a photo ID or a faxed copy of my grandmother's ID. Now I don't know how many of you have functional fax machines your grandmother knows how to use but my family is not in that group.
I offered to pay the entire price of the room up front in cash and even give them extra as a deposit. That's not good enough. I offered my school debit card but ask they don't charge it because it has a 0 balance. Well they tell me they have to put a $50 two day hold on it for "security purposes" which I can't have happen. I offer to give them my grandmother's phone number to talk to her, after I have shown them other cards I carry with her name on it (but no photo ID). No, none of that is good enough for them. In the name of security HAMPTON INN AND SUITES KNOXVILLE turned away a paying customer.
Fed up and lacking on options I decided to power through and that's just what I did. I stopped to get a real dinner (and by real I mean I sat down in a McDonalds instead of my car to eat) and then I drove through the night. It took me 8 more hours to finish clearing Tennessee, part of Georgia, all of Alabama, and part of Florida. Suffice to say I did it, but my body does not deserve the sort of abuse it was put under for me to do that. Moral of the story? American citizenship, two forms of picture ID, and a pocket full of cash are no longer sufficient to get a hotel in this country. Good to know.
On the bright side I saved $130. Now I just need my kidneys to recover.
