The Hotel Funk

You know what I'm talking about. Well, perhaps maybe you don't. Let me elaborate.

For those of us who travel across this country with any sort of frequency, hotel life is a very familiar experience. Room quality can vary as can the going rate for that room. The housekeeping staff rarely speaks any English. The remote control is probably the dirtiest thing in the room. The internet access can be hit or miss. Quite often, the shower heads are low-flow. The coffee pots don't always work either. You never really know what to expect.

One thing remains fairly consistent however. I'm talking about the cheap hotel soap. Unless you are accustomed to staying at an up scale ritzy hotel, you are familiar with this particular product.

Hotel branded lotion is usually nice. The shampoo can be good at times. The soap, on the other hand, is horrid. I call the smell the "hotel funk." It doesn't quite smell like body odor, but it's damn close. If you did not pack your own soap, this stuff is what you're left with. As a soap, it probably does affect the adherence of dirt particles and other nasties, so you can probably wash yourself clean with a certain level of confidence. The smell of the soap stays with you.

Take flight attendents for example. As they walk by you in the aisle on the plane, take a quick breath in and tell me if you smell "hotel funk." I have. Other passengers that have been forced to use hotel soap smell like it too. I have even smelled it walking through an airport terminal. On this most recent trip, even the hotel towels still reeked of "hotel funk." It apparently does not wash out when they do laundry. Maybe this particular hotel did not use detergent. Isn't that troubling? With the TSA liquid guidelines in place, I suspect more people are being forced to use cheap hotel soap instead of their own quality bar.

Like the bad B.O. in a Seinfeld episode, "hotel funk" is an entity.