Leaving Las Vegas…For Good

Friday, August 5. 2005

Page 15

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Leaving Las Vegas…For Good

By J’AMY PACHECO

Like many people, I have hobbies. One of mine is relatively unusual — I make jeweled shoes for fashion dolls.

I don’t make the three-hour trip to Las Vegas very often, so when I was asked to teach a shoemaking workshop at a doll convention being held there last week, I agreed. My husband, daughter and mother and I piled into a big rented vehicle and headed for higher temperatures.

I should have known what our stay would be like when we arrived at the hotel and opened the back of the car. A bellman took one look at our two rooms, five days worth of baggage and remarked, “You people didn’t leave anything at home, did you?”

We shrugged it off, and headed for the registration desk. I couldn’t believe my ears when, at 11:30 a.m., the desk clerk said our rooms weren’t ready and that we should “check back” around 3 p.m.

Standing before the clerk in sweat pants, an oversized t-shirt and no makeup, holding an enormous plastic tote filled with paints and other class materials, I explained that my class was at 4 p.m. and I needed a room in which to get ready.

“Check in is at 3,” he sniffed.

As I considered squirting the obnoxious little man with pink paint, my husband suggested we retreat to a hotel coffee shop and have lunch. We took possession of a booth where we enjoyed lunch, stuffed tiny doll shoes into plastic bags for my students, and stewed over the desk clerk’s utter disregard for our predicament.

My husband checked the status of our rooms every half hour, trying new clerks and hoping for one who would take pity on us. The closest we came was a woman who suggested we take the dirty room and spread clean towels on the floors while we got ready.

Ewwww.

At 2:50 p.m., a clerk told us she’d “put a rush on the room.” I explained that a “rush” is what they would have put on it at 11:30 a.m. At 3, I expected to have a room key in hand to go along with the never-gonna-make-it knots in my stomach.

We finally took possession of our unclean room at 3:10. My husband recruited a maid who hurriedly did a half-hearted cleaning job, while I stood on towels in the bathroom to apply makeup. My good and patient husband personally went to the bell desk, refusing to leave until a bellman accompanied him to our room with our luggage. I barely made it to my workshop.

After a few days, we got used to crummy service. Some days, for example, our rooms didn’t get cleaned until 8 or 9 at night; once, my mother’s room didn’t get cleaned at all.

Even gambling was annoying. I played slot machines with my mother, and was surprised to see that the machines now pay out with paper tickets that have to be cashed in elsewhere. I was even more surprised to find out, when I changed machines, that the casino’s own machines wouldn’t accept the paper they spit out, and that most of the old-fashioned slot arms don’t even work anymore.

We considered changing hotels, but realized it would make convention access too cumbersome. We reluctantly decided to stick it out. We had so much fun at the convention, we took it in stride — until a straw broke this camel’s back in the casino’s buffet.

We were very hungry when we decided to go to the buffet for lunch. After waiting for our table to be “set up,” we were seated, only to find we had no silverware. When we returned from the buffet, we still had no silverware. With our plates growing cold and no waiter in sight, my husband retrieved place settings from another table.

A waitress came out of nowhere, yelling at him to “put it back.” He declined, and we said good-bye to any hope of getting table service. Used plates stacked up on our table until we sought out a hostess to remove them.

At this point, I’d been pushed to the limit, and had what I can only describe as a terrible butter accident. My daughter was too embarrassed to even walk out of the restaurant with me, but I laughed so hard I cried. It was positively therapeutic.

It nearly killed me at checkout to pay for the crummy “service” we received. The only thing that saved me was hearing that the hotel, something of a Las Vegas landmark, will be torn down in 2007. Good thing, too, because if I didn’t know it was going to be destroyed, I might have been tempted to do it myself.

The convention is already booked in the same hotel next year, and I can’t decide if the fun of getting together with friends is worth the aggravation.

Just in case, I think I’ll stock up on Lysol. And butter — lots and lots of butter.