In Hot Water With The Reviewers

My husband and I are making a long drive to visit family and decide to stay overnight at a halfway point. We find a bed and breakfast online and make reservations. The place was clearly nice once but is in a general state of mild and dusty disrepair, and we have a couple of issues. My husband decides to bring this up at checkout.

Clerk: “And how was your stay?”

Husband: “We slept well, but breakfast wasn’t what we expected.”

Clerk: “The full continental breakfast in the lounge?”

Me: “There was a bowl of apples, a plastic bag of cornflakes, a Keurig coffeemaker, and a stack of room-temperature cartons of milk.”

Clerk: “Fruit and cereal and milk and coffee! A full and balanced breakfast!”

Husband: “Also, we have no hot water in our room.”

Clerk: “The sign mentioned that the water takes time to warm up.”

Me: “There was no sign anywhere in our room. We ran the shower for twenty minutes and it never got hot, or even warm.”

Clerk: “Well, this is an old building. You should really just learn to be patient.”

Me: “I would rather be able to take a hot shower than learn patience, ma’am.”

Clerk: “This is an old building! It’s too expensive to fix the water heater!”

Husband: “You have our permission to apply the cost of our stay to fixing the water heater.”

Clerk: “Other guests have found it charming!”

My husband left a polite but pointed online review, and we have not been back. Judging from some other online reviews, the water heater has yet to be fixed.