In Which People Amaze and Disturb me

I am wondering something about hotels, or I was; as I stumbled in early this morning I asked the night desk clerk about it. He was a young person, with a mop of dark hair and a slovenly air appropriate to his age and his night shift.

When I approached, he was standing on the porch smoking a cigarette. After I sat down in one of the wing-backed chairs to find the card that opens my room, he poked his hair in and asked if there was anything I needed "from the desk." I did, actually. I needed a wake-up call, and I needed some information.

When did hotel rooms stop having clocks? There wasn't one in my room in Philadelphia, and there isn't one here. Sullen Desk Clerk guessed that it was because people had been stealing them.

Huh? Why would anybody steal a cheap digital alarm clock? Don't have one at home? Think it would make a neat souvenir? Everything else in the room is nailed down?

Americans... I could say "humans" but I think I prefer to delude myself that people from Other Countries are better behaved.

before - after