If You Really Loved Me You'd Let Me Eat Your Brain

You want to know what pisses me off? The fact that USA Today, the nation's coloring book, has some kind of deal with the hospitality industry to foist copies of their publication, with its color-coded sections and bite-sized story-ettes, on unsuspecting travelers and charge them for it!

Whenever I stay at a hotel I make it a point to carefully read whatever paperwork they've given me during check-in. Some hotels give the papers away for free, some charge you and let you decline receipt of the paper, and others give you a paper, charge you for it, and never tell you. When I see the box telling me I can decline to receive Newspapers for Dummies, I check it, and with gusto. If I don't see any wording about newspapers I tell them I don't want any, even if they're free, but if they aren't free, I'm not paying for them, so don't bother giving me any. I think my intentions are crystal clear. No goddamn newspapers.

And yet every morning, like clockwork, I step out of my room for the continental breakfast and risk breaking my neck by stepping onto a slippery copy of the very newspaper I hate with every fiber of my being! Despite my stated preference for no paper I still get one. It lays there outside my door, bark-shouting its monosyllabic headline in the trademark 36 point Moronique font like a lobotomized idiot man-child with a grape juice moustache.

I let them pile up. I never touch them. I ignore them. I'm very good at ignoring. Sometimes when I come back from my work or leisure for the day the paper will be gone; I can only assume someone stole "my" copy that day, though I can't fathom why. Not my problem. I didn't ask for it, and I'm not paying for it so it isn't my property to miss.

Time marches on and eventually my check out date arrives, and with it the bill. I like the trend towards no-human-contact checkout. I love it when it works and there are no discrepancies on my bill. This is usually not the case when I'm dealing with a USA Today-aligned hotelier. No matter how many gallons of pigs blood I use to write "All work and no USA Today makes Tom a happy boy" all over the lobby they just don't seem to get it, the way I'll never get it about feminism because I was born sans Mysterious Cave of Yaga, From Which All Knowledge Flows.

Marching down to the desk for a service industry deathmatch is not my idea of a good start to the day, but principle is principle. As a tautological rapper once observed, "A (person)'s gotta do what a (person)'s gotta do," and I do, so I do.

Sometimes the desk clerk is aware that guests can refuse paying for newspapers they thought were free, and this makes the bill adjustment quick and pleasant. I once had a clerk look up my check-in paperwork and tell me she'd never heard of someone refusing the USA Today. I felt like Kramer trying to opt out of the postal system. Then I get the clerks who haven't had the proper training or experience to know that 75 cents isn't just 75 cents, it's 75 cents and freedom, democracy, the right to own property, and the pursuit of happiness. They're the ones who have to summon a manager for me to have a bossfight with.

In the end they all relent and give me back my 75 cents per day. Well, not my 75 cents, but the 75 cents of whatever client I'm working for.

What I'd really like to see is an admission from the hospitality industry that they've been forcing unsuspecting customers to pay for crappy newspapers for decades. I'd like a thorough accounting of how much money they’ve made off this little racket. If the sums are big enough, maybe I can charter a class action lawsuit! Tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of dollars are at stake here. I'm sure some bottom-feeding class action lawyer could be persuaded to fight the good fight for a few million.

And when the dust settles, we'll all get coupons for $23.72 off our next stay. And a complimentary copy of USA Today.