Q: I am supposed to chaperone my son’s hockey team at a big tournament this winter. We’ll be staying overnight at a hotel with all the kids, and I’m dreading it. Can you give me some advice? A: My best advice would be not to assume that your players know anything about how to behave in a hotel. Maybe they’ve never stayed in one before, or maybe they just never paid attention because their parents were always there to keep them in line.
Basically, give them a crash course in Hotel Etiquette 101.
Some particular points to cover:
» You’re not the only guests at your hotel.
» Keep your voice down, don’t slam doors and don’t stomp around — especially from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m.
» No pajamas in the breakfast room or the lobby.
» Unless you’re actually at the pool, don’t walk around in your bathing suit without a cover-up.
» Don’t take up every single seat in the breakfast room — particularly if other guests are waiting for tables. (Chaperones, you should send the kids to eat in small groups rather than saying, “Everybody meet in the breakfast room at 7:45 a.m.”)
» Don’t use the lobby as a practice/warm-up area.
» Also, the hallway is not your locker room. Keep your equipment on the bus or inside your room, especially if it’s stinky. (Hockey players, this means you.)
» Yes, there are housekeepers who vacuum, make your bed, clean your bathroom, etc. No, this does not mean you’re allowed to make a giant mess.
» You can take the bathroom toiletries … but that’s it. No swiping towels or taking a pillow with you on the bus.
» After (insert curfew), everybody must be in his assigned room. (If you have a particularly unruly group, there’s always the old masking-tape-on-top-of-the-doors-after-curfew trick.)
And it goes without saying that you should tell the hotel to disable pay-per-view movies, not to accept room-service orders and empty the minibars in your group’s rooms.
Q: Should you brush your hair at your seat on a plane? Someone sitting near me did that, and I thought it was pretty gross.
A: No. You should step into the lavatory and groom yourself in private. But at least the person sitting near you didn’t proceed to clean out her brush and throw the hair on the floor of the plane. And I’m not just making that up — one of our readers had the pleasure of witnessing someone do exactly that on a recent flight. Pass the barf bags.
