I learned later that it's a common London thing, but upon checking in to this banana-eponymous hotel, I was confronted with a blank room key. It was just a white rectangle that had clearly seen better days. Worse, when I got to my room it didn't work. So I risked leaving my little suitcase in the hallway and ran back down the uneven stairs.
Before I could open my mouth, the front desk man said, "We gave you the wrong one!" (I believe this is The Royal We, or The Majestic Plural.) "Oh! that's odd that you accidentally gave me this staff key that clearly looks nothing like--" and he handed me another blank card. How did he know he gave me the wrong one? When I was a kid, I could have sworn checking into a hotel was a thirty minute ordeal. Maybe that's the impatience of youth, or maybe modern technology has improved the efficiency of hotel check-innery. Regardless, in all the times I watched my dad talking to a front desk clerk, whether it be to see some relative I didn't want to see, go to some funeral I didn't want to go to, or stay in a Disney hotel even though we live twenty minutes away because it's a mandatory biennial pilgrimage for privileged middle-class Floridians to show deference to The Mouse, Lord Protector of Industrialized Swamp Land and King of crying children who will never ask for anything EVER again if you just buy this ONE toy, I'd never seen a blank room key. Could it be that my Disney-adjacent upbringing deluged my life with bright colors, flashy sales, and NEW EPISODES AT EIGHT/SEVEN CENTRAL, to the point a blank room key card shatters my entire perception of reality? What does existence look like if you remove all the doodads and nugatory ornamentation? It looks like the Cavendish Hotel, the bleakest of lodging establishments complete with other people's hair in the bedsheets and a general air of mediocrity. Am I suggesting the apex predators of capitalism are inherently better at running hotels no thanks to their horrifying abundance of resources? Of course not. But maybe unleash a little creativity every once in a while and draw me a little picture on my hotel key with a Sharpie. Jesus Christ.
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