The Blog's colleagues Peter and Julia have returned from this week's ICIS 5th World Phenol/Acetone Conference in Budapest with a shocking tale about a midnight encounter at the 5-star luxury Kempinski Hotel.
Blonde, petite Julia, famed throughout the industry for her daring exploits on petrochemical cooling towers (click here for link), obligingly informed the reception desk at the conference hotel that her colleague Peter would be arriving on a late flight from London.
Hours later, Peter arrived at the hotel, weary from the journey and looking forward to a good night's sleep in advance of his conference debut, where he would be presenting a paper on the benzene market. With his limited Hungarian language skills, he told the hotel receptionist that Julia had informed them of his late arrival and eventually he managed to check in.
Finally crashing in to his room in the dead of night, Peter found to his amazement that he had been given the key to Julia's room and that she was fast asleep in the bed. She says that she was quite surprised too when he burst in to the room.
This reminds me of what happened to me last week in California. The receptionist gave me my room key when I checked in late at night and when I opened the door, the guard lock was attached (the room was pitch black from what I can see from the outside). Being the resourceful person that I was, I tried to disengage the guard lock from the outside when a booming voice yelled and said "what the hell is going on!!"
I apologized profusely and told the voice the receptionist gave me the key, scampered away and blasted the receptionist downstairs. Turn out it was the receptionist's first day at work...