Shall We Bring It Up?

As many of you probably know by now, we travel endlessly back and forth across the globe and stay in more hotel rooms than I care to recall. Because most of our travel is done in a haze of exhaustion, it's not hard to imagine how, after so many years, one room can blur easily into another. So today, when I saw this enormous yellow palm fruit with its endless identical rows of yellow "rooms," it instantly reminded of a story about a business trip Chris took down to Shenzhen a few years ago.

Arriving in Shenzhen late one evening, Chris checked into the hotel, dropped his luggage at the room, hung up his suit for the next day, stuffed the room key in his pocket, and went upstairs to meet his team for a review of the day. After they finished up and everyone dispersed, Chris had a quick beer with Shaq, a long time colleague, and went downstairs to crawl into bed.

When he arrived at his room, he was surprised to find the door was open, but being exhausted, he shrugged it off and walked in. Tossing his notebook on the table and kicking off his shoes, he slumped down in the chair and flipped on the TV. Ah, the chair felt good after a long day! But his relaxation was short-lived. Suddenly looking around the room, he drew in his breath and stared in disbelief: all of his things were missing! No suitcase, no suit, no computer, no briefcase - it was all gone! Panicked, he raced to the phone and called the front desk.

"Yes, how may we help you?"
"My things are gone! Everything's gone!! I've been robbed!!"
"You've been robbed?"
"Yes, yes!! I just checked-in tonight, and now all of my things are missing! How could this happen?!"
"I'm very sorry for the inconvenience, sir. We'll send somebody up immediately to check."
"Check? Check?? What do you have to check?? Everything's gone, I tell you!"

At which point, Chris in abject frustration, hung up the phone and immediately called Shaq who speaks Chinese and is always good at sorting out these kinds of things. When Shaq assured him he would be right down and asked what room he was in, Chris reached into his jacket pocket, found his room key and read him the number. Then, like the fog lifting on a warm winter morning, it slowly dawned on him what had happened. "Hold on, Shaq," he said. "I'll call you back."

Holding his key, Chris walked to the door and compared the numbers - he was, indeed, in the wrong room! Oh no, now what? Grabbing his shoes, he quickly ducked out the door and raced toward the elevators. If he was fast enough, maybe they would never figure out who had called, and he would be in the clear! Arriving upstairs at the right room, he put his key in the lock, turned the knob and was relieved to find all of his belongings exactly where he had left them - phew! He called Shaq, and they had a long laugh over what had happened, but before he hung up, he swore Shaq to secrecy - nobody could ever know who that crazy man was who had called from the other room downstairs!

Happily relieved that everything had turned out ok and nobody was the wiser, Chris was dozing off to sleep an hour later when the phone beside his bed rang.

"Mr. Lee?"
"Yes?"
"This is the front desk calling. I think you left your notebook in the room downstairs. Shall we bring it up?"