a five star foul up
Sometimes a man has to travel to Qld on a private mission, something out of the ordinary that requires a couple of night’s stay in what was once a favourite hotel – Chris Skase’s Gold Coast Mirage – that’s what a lottery win can earn you.
Like most hotels the Mirage is equipped with a state-of-the-art in room telephone, one that has multiple buttons that can connect you to the front desk or the restaurant, the lobby, the pool guy and anyone out in the cold opening car doors and handling luggage. In fact everyone but the manager, but his turn is imminent.
Problem 1 was that the phone didn’t come with a user’s manual, which gave premature birth to problem 2: how does a man get onto room service for dinner if he can’t figure out the phone? This was heavily complicated by not having an in-room menu available and if that’s not quite enough the TV remote had no batteries installed so if the in-room dining menu was available on the hotel’s channel ….. hard luck.
So, what else to do but ring the hotel’s listed number on the iPhone and ask the lovely who answered if she could connect to in-room dining. This took some time as most folks with bed and board organised in this place use the internal phone. They must have a manual.
Food got ordered. Twenty minutes she said, then, ‘have a nice evening sir.’
Forty five minutes passed. Then another ten.
Enough. Nice evening be buggered.
There’s a small McDonalds across the road from the hotel just a couple of hundred metres from the Versace palace and with only two minutes to spare until they close our man gets over there and orders a fish burger to go, meaning it went back to the front desk of the Gold Coast Mirage Resort and was placed with undisguised emphasis on the reception desk, slowly congealing, as our man explained to the hurriedly summonsed manager that in his customer’s opinion the hotel was failing in every respect and just to emphasise his point he asked the slightly perspiring personage to (1) cease his corporate jabber (2) dispose of the unwanted burger and (3) not to even think about charging a penalty for the cancelled second night in his wretched establishment.
All that done our hero stalked back to his overpriced room and attacked the half bottle of Bacardi rum the owner of the bottle shop equidistant from the hotel was more than happy to sell him at the NSW price plus 10%.
All of which proves if shit hasn’t happened to you yet it most surely will, only patience is required.
petebowes.com 
Then, to prove the Qld aura is able to cross borders, it wasn’t until the Lennox Head turn-off I realised housekeeping would have scored the half half-bottle I didn’t finish.
I have acquired it. A pissed of Patience. I am not proud of it. But it has been developing all my life. It is an Eligtenment of sorts. God help the next dude that tests it.