Smoking

A couple and their two young children just came in here looking to get a room for the night. When I told them we were out of smoking rooms, the dad got pretty red in the face. He shrieked, "No, then! There's no way I'm staying in a non-smoking room! I gotta smoke!" But then the kids started in about how they wanted to stay, and the following ensued...

Kids: We want to go swimming!
Dad: They don't have any smoking rooms, and I gotta smoke. We have to go somewhere else.
Kids: Can't you just go outside and smoke?
Dad: It's snowing outside! Oh, you'd like it if I had to go out in the cold and snow just so you could go swimming, wouldn't you?
Me: (spoken) I can call the Howard Johnson's for you and see if they have any smoking rooms available.
Me: (unspoken) GET OUT
Kids: But they have a pool here! We want to go in the pool!
Dad: That's all you do, isn't it? All you do is think about yourself! I GOTTA SMOKE!

Don't you wish that I was making this up? I'm not though, so get out the tissues if you need 'em...damn crybaby hippie weirdos. Now if I had been one of those kids, I would have quietly set out for the open road long ago in search of a more suitable parent or guardian (Tucker Max? Sea World? The Donner Party?). But these kids did not possess my innate desire for self-preservation, so they just stood their ground. Finally, after much wheedling and complaining, Father of the Year 2005-present agreed to book a non-smoking room because "if I don't, I'll never hear the end of it. You'll just bitch and bitch if we don't get the damn pool, won't you." However, this momentary "truce" was shattered once Dad heard about the whole paying-with-cash-requires-a-deposit thing (definitely something too complicated for his tiny, smoke-strangled mind to process). He marched everyone back out to the car to "discuss things further." And after some time passed they did come back and book a room, much to my disappointment, as I was hoping they'd either found lodging elsewhere or ran into my boss in the parking lot at feedin' time. (Hey, either way, they would have been out of my life for good.)
I personally have always maintained that the best place to have any type of family disagreement is in public (and in front of strangers, if you can swing it). My customers are constantly striving to prove this point for me. Thank you, you nutty a**holes. You unknowingly feed the ever-hungry monster that is this blog, and I appreciate it. Now f**k off, seriously.