Asking citizens to check and report suspicious activity is nothing new, but I have no idea how a hotel cleaning staff, already exposed to the most disgusting and bizarre facets of human existence, could possibly see anything particularly odd or suspicious.

Besides, I am sure all the undocumented cleaning ladies working in hotels around the country really want to speak with a DHS agent.

a negative aspect of govt that a lot of liberals forget is that most govt agencies have to stay busy to justify their funding. they also attract a lot of 'do-gooders' to their ranks by the very nature of noble goals of working for the 'public service'. add in a system of little accountability and voila'...policies and agencies run amok.

i'm liberal and not a 'small govt' type, but have to admit this is a by-product of the system and human nature and something to be watched and kept in check.

I understand that there are a number of anti-homeland types in Oregon who have an excessive amount of sexual paraphernalia.

What @4 said, and they have been ordering lots of lube and dildos, sounds like terrorists to me!

These Nanny Laws and Spy on Your Neighbor rules that we face are appalling. Everything from regulating our private lives to searching our trash bins. The real solution is to educate. Educate us about beneficial behaviors. Don't regulate us. Educate us on the problems we face, let us decide how we handle what we see, think, and do. Gee wiz folks.

@5, no... those are to used on the terrorists. Lucky them.

@1 - Brilliant. Hat's off.

@6 - Educate us/Don't regulate us... I think there's a reggae song in there somewhere.

So if I'm reading this correctly, Dan is being trafficked by Terry, yes? Or is it the other way around?

If you're not letting housekeeping into a room, that's already a huge red flag to the hotel that something could be amiss. I remember once we had a guest at the Olympic who was keeping a woman tied up in a room at the Renaissance, and repeatedly raping her. It was only discovered because housekeeping finally ignored the do not disturb and went into the room to see what was going on. The woman told the cops, who nabbed the scumbag at the Olympic.

The same is true of wake up calls - if you don't answer a wake up call, the hotel will send someone to check on you to make sure you aren't dead or restrained or something.

But Our Dear Theodore really nailed it - most hotel maids, even the ones here legally, are not going to want anything to do with a federal agency. And they've got way too much work to do to spend time snooping around.

So wait — sex work and sex trafficking are identically the same? Is that it?

Stained hoodies Dan? Grounds for divorce there. I understand Terry.. the ripped tshirts and jeans, sexy as.
Stained hoodies, yuk.

Crap, we may already be on that list. I knew we shouldn't have packed that extra tube of lube.....

Speaking of extra, if you find you have too many dildos or extra tubes of lube please think of those poor souls holed (ha ha!) up in Oregon!?

(I'm told) their mailing address is:
Malheur Nat'l. Wildlife Refuge
Attn Oregon Militia
36391 Sodhouse Ln
Princeton, OR 97721

Can you imagine the volumes of paperwork hotel employees at IML will have to fill out? O_O

"The idea was to protect the "homeland" from terrorist attacks..."

That was never the idea, Dan. Be honest. From The Patriot Act to the NSA, not a single piece of post-9/11 security theatre was ever designed, devised, or intended to protect the US citizen from a terrorist attack.

Catalina @10: "If you're not letting housekeeping into a room, that's already a huge red flag to the hotel that something could be amiss."

Yikes. I recall Dan posting once that he always puts up the "Do Not Disturb" notice when he checks into a hotel and leaves it there until checkout.

And I often do that as well. I will leave a note asking housekeeping NOT to change my linens or towels (I sometimes have bad skin reactions to strong soaps and/or bleach). If they follow my request, I let them back in, but if not, up goes the "Do Not Disturb" sign.

@4: ZING!

@15: Exactly so.

gnossos, I worked at a Howard Johnson's in college where I let two really hot guys check in with a fake credit card (it was the pre-internet days, and we were supposed to check credit cards against a horrid little book of stolen card numbers, and I wasn't about to do that to these hotties). They didn't let housekeeping in, and it was finally resolved when the Military Police came and arrested them for being AWOL. What's more, they were making porn in their room!

And, on a side note, when it got really busy at the Olympic, they would sometimes pull some of us out of the office to deliver room service breakfasts. I would always team up with a very attractive female co-worker, and we had the perfect bait-and-switch: She would knock on the door, and when the guy opened up, I would barge in with the tray. That's because a lot of guys get their kicks off of letting their robe fall open when a woman delivered their food, on the mistaken impression that life imitates porn. Boy, did they cover up when I traipsed in there. Mostly.

After having something stolen from my hotel room, I always put up the do not disturb sign as soon as I arrive. I also have a lot of medication I don't want people trying out. I've never been a big red flag before!

Catalina Vel-DuRay,

Perhaps you can help me with a moral issue. A few months ago I had an assignation with a gentleman in his hotel room. During a pause in the action I asked him if I could order supper for room service. He said sure, as long as I kept my breasts exposed. So I sat in the bed, covers up to my navel, while a young man wheeled in the supper I requested and set it up next to me.

I hadn’t expected him to be so embarrassed. I felt bad. He got an excellent tip though.

How bad should I be feeling?

@22 That sounds hot and fun, but the unfortunate reality is that you made that poor chap delivering your food into an unwilling participant in your sexytimes. I think that falls squarely under "not cool".

Agreed, ditch pickle.

My initial assumption was that this was in some way part of the job, in that staff are used to guests being idiots, expect it will happen from time to time and have ways of dealing with it. Kind of like how housekeeping will have to deal with vomit from time to time. (And like for housekeeping, the unpleasantness is appropriately acknowledged with a tip.) But the poor guy was clearly not happy and I realized my assumption was unwarranted.

I would never pull this on someone who I thought had a reasonable expectation of not being subjected to shenanigans, but hotels are kind of shenanigans central so I thought it was different.

Still, I’d like the perspective of someone with experience in the hospitality industry.

Alison dear, I haven't been in the business since 1999, but in my day no one would have thought anything of it. At most, it would have been something to gossip about in the cafeteria. Although I remember when the Bulls stayed at the Olympic during the Scotty Pippin/Dennis Rodman era. The whole place was rife with gossip about their sexual antics, and security was having an awful time dealing with the women that were coming and going - knowing the difference between which ones had been invited and which ones were hoping to get invited.

That indifference came to a screeching halt if you touched or threatened an employee, of course. There were strict rules against fraternization. It was grounds for immediate dismissal if you were an employee, and perhaps expulsion if you were a guest. (Let me tell you, if you want to get busy with a guest, you had to be damn discrete. Not that I would know - friends of my mother told me that). There were cases where guys had raped maids, so there was a lot of training on what to do if you got cornered (lock yourself in the bathroom and call security, if you can. Or if you just knock the phone off the hook, they will send someone up to see what is going on). It's given as much attention as fire training.

So I wouldn't worry too much about what the room service waiter thought - particularly if you tipped him well. Sensitive types don't last long as hotel employees.

Thank you, Catalina Vel-DuRay. That’s reassuring.

Though maybe he wasn’t embarrassed, just worried he was about to be sexually assaulted?

What, a bereaved widower can't take his twelve-year-old stepdaughter out of school, embark on a road trip, and stay at hotels to escape their shared grief without being thought a criminal? What is the world coming to? ---- Humbert

But seriously, someone at DHS -- make that everyone in the American domestic security and intelligence apparatus -- needs to watch The Lives of Others each morning before coming into work.

Alison, as I said, there's lot of training on what to do if you are cornered. Remember, he had the upper hand - easy access to a bunch of stuff he could have thrown at you ;-)

Fun fact: Nice hotels used to not let women deliver room service orders. And women couldn't serve dinner in the dining and banquet rooms, just lunch and breakfast. Men only in the evening. And there used to be gender separate dining rooms - Frederick & Nelson had a "men's grill" that was segregated up until the 60's, and the Rainier Club had a special entrance for non-escorted female guests.