Read an Excerpt

Hotel Honor Bar

I am a traveling salesman. A pretty good one. I think. I work my route going from town to town setting up franchises. I drive a Buick Ravioli. This is Buick’s sporty little go anywhere car. I like it very much. Sometimes I bring a heavy woman with me for company. Her name is Cheryl Glimpsey and she goes with me on the road. Cheryl helped me fix a flat tire recently on my car. Well, let me tell you what happened. We were driving and my tire blew out. Luckily she had a product called “PATCH A FLAT”. This is a goo that you spray from a can into your flat tire and it inflates the tire. Well, while fixing that flat, the tire blew up in her face and her eyeball flew out. Luckily she also had a can of “PATCH AN EYE.” That’s what life on the road is like for a traveling salesman like myself. I am Ed Broth.

I work for the “SOCK ’N SHOE RESTAURANTS”. This is a theme restaurant where your meal is brought to the table in a shoe and your bread is wrapped in a sock. They are very popular in Tuscasquelga, Mississippi where there are 47 of them in a 5 block radius. Chain restaurants have exploded in the new millennium and this millennium was no exception. The full name of this very fine chain is “FRED MAROON’S ORIGINAL SOCK ’N SHOE RESTAURANT”. Fred made his fortune from a shoe store and he figured the natural transition would be to open a restaurant with the leftover stock. At our last corporate function Fred sat there with unwashed slacks and a back full of rooster bites and said he got them from an unclean theme park pirate ride. I didn’t believe him. I always thought it was from all that damn taffy he ate. Fred once stood up in a motel lobby and yelled out MY SANDWICH HAS NO TASTE!! He stood there for 45 minutes in the lobby and just yelled out MY SANDWICH HAS NO TASTE!! He just yelled that over and over again. Finally it got very quiet. Like in the movie The Hound of the Baskervilles. It was an eerie stillness. Then finally someone else from across the lobby yelled out: THEN GET A NEW SANDWICH!!!

On this sales trip I checked into the HYAT QUAN DUC THUONG HOTEL in Tweetie, Arizona. I must say here that the Hyat Hotel Chain is the finest out there. They cater to your every need. This is a 4 star, Triple A-, Chevco Award Winner, prestigious, luxury hotel with shuttle service every 35 seconds to a ditch. I once rode their courtesy bus for an hour before I had to get off and use the Dairy Knave restroom. It was so filthy I saw a cockroach with a mop in its hand.

Upon checking into my room at the Hyat Quan Duc Thoung Hotel I immediately noticed they had an HONOR BAR in the hotel room. Some hotels call it a MINI BAR. This is a little bar filled with candy and soda, and pretzels, and drinks all for sale. It is locked and comes with a key. I am at a continuing loss as to why they still have to lock up soda and candy for an adult. Is there that much abuse here?

I must say that the Honor Bar prices are very steep. $7.00 for a soda, $5.00 for a candy bar, $10.00 for a jar of Spanish nuts. I am a reasonable traveler, expecting to pay for the service of having a fully loaded assortment of goodies in my room at the ready after a night of partying with heavy people but these prices are way high.

To continue my story: I added up everything in the Honor Bar and realized I had $3,000.00 worth of candy and soda in my room. I did not feel comfortable with this many valuables in the room. So I called the front desk and asked if they could put my candy and soda in the hotel safe. They said they would accommodate me. “It’s the smart thing to do, Mr. Broth,” they said, as I hung up the phone and burned my comforter. (For sanitary reasons). I once saw a cockroach commit suicide on a hotel comforter because of the filth. He hung himself with some dental floss.

The front desk sent a Security Guard up to my room and we emptied the Honor Bar contents into a Wells Fargo security bag. (Large bag of Funions, Ludens cough drops, Mesquite fudgeslops, Nutrageous candy bar, crabapple Snapple, small Captain Morgans Bay Rum). We then left the room together, he with a loaded gun at his hip, and he walked me and my candy down to the lobby and to the hotel safe where I deposited my mini bar items.

He gave me a professional nod and I gave him a courtesy half smile as I exited the lobby. I looked back and I noticed that he was adjusting his trousers. They must have scrunched up on him during our walk. I make it a habit of noticing many security guards trousers scrunch up on them as they walk. Take a look yourself and see if it’s not true.

I felt better. All I had in my room now was my platinum watch, diamond ring, a few thousand dollars, and a cell phone with 19,000 unused minutes on it. Far less valuable then the soda and Spanish nuts that were now secured safely in the hotel safe.

I will continue this story later.

STORIES FROM A MORON Copyright © 2004 by Ed Broth. Foreword © 2004 by Jerry Seinfeld.