Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek.
You’ve always been suspicious, haven’t you?
You check into your hotel and wonder whether everything is as clean as you’d like it to be.
After all, who knows what sort of uncouth type might have slept in the room before you?
And who knows what sort of cleaning the room enjoyed afterwards?
Last year, I mentioned how one guest at the Courtyard by Marriott wondered whether his sheets had even been changed.
Also last year, Inside Edition went into a few New York hotels and found untold grime.
But now video has emerged of fancy hotel rooms being cleaned in a manner that is so unhygienic as to be utterly frightening.
As the South China Morning Post reports, three hotels in Harbin, Heilongjiang province enjoyed cleaning practices that defy the spirit.
Here’s undercover footage spotting cleaners at a Sheraton, a Kempinski and a Shangri-La hotel — all five-star establishments — doing things that really shouldn’t be done.
Cleaning mugs with a toilet brush, for example.
And then there was washing towels in the toilets and then using them to clean the bathroom floor.
Oh.
I’m not sure folding clean towels on the bathroom floor is all that advisable either.
And how about “cleaning” a garbage can, the toilet bowl and, oh, glassware with the same piece of cloth?
The above video offers just a few highlights. The full footage is here, posted by China’s Pear TV.
The South China Morning Post reports that these cleaners believed their workload was too great and this was the best they could do.
The hotels have expressed sorrow and concern and say they’ve begun investigations.
Local health inspectors have reportedly confirmed the allegations as factual and fined the hotels.
Some might worry, though, that as hotels sink inexorably toward cost-cutting and nickel-and-diming, their cleaning practices endure an unhealthy level of corner-cutting.
Of course, one problem is that you may never really know just how clean your hotel room is.
You arrive tired, you just want to sleep and you take a quick look around at best.
Perhaps next time, look more carefully.
That smudge on the water glass could be from, oh, I can’t bear to imagine.