Your Fall Hotel Shopping Guide
Amalah | Oct 08, 2007 12:15 AM
Please. For the love of God, someone explain the telephone-by-the-toilet thing, or at least provide one example of one telephone call that was that freaking bloody important.
(Greetings from New York City! They have complimentary copies of OK! Magazine here! And a bathtub the size of my kitchen! Going for swimokthanksbai.)
October 8th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Maybe in case of a medical emergency?
October 8th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Maybe just in case you were channeling Danny Glover and found a bomb under your toilet.
October 8th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
but which way is the toilet paper hanging?
October 9th, 2007 at 9:36 am
The phone is for drip-dry emergencies if you find you are out of paper. Those buttons? One says, “Help! I’ve tinkled and I can’t get up!” While the other says, “don’t make me wipe my butt with this phone, buddy.”
October 9th, 2007 at 9:46 am
I’m pretty sure those phones were put in place by people like my sister, who always feels she has something pertinent to tell me while she is going poo….
October 9th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Once upon a time I thought that bathroom phones were only in hotel bathrooms until my sister built her house…with a phone by the potty! And the funny thing is her husband hates to talk on the phone (yet can carry on the longest telephone conversations) and I seriously believe it was his idea to put one in there.
October 9th, 2007 at 10:01 am
I always figured they were there so that when your wakeup call was late (in the era before automation; I am old) and you were already in the bathroom when it came, you wouldn’t (a) wake up the whole floor and (b) kill yourself falling over the weird huge potted plant they put next to the armoire as you lunged for the phone on the bedside table.
October 9th, 2007 at 10:11 am
That has never made sense to me either.
Or perhaps it for when you are 90 years old and slip on the tile and can’t get up.
October 9th, 2007 at 10:21 am
When my parents bought their house a million years ago, it came with a phone jack next to the toilet in the master bathroom. Dude, I will never understand it.
(For the record, they have never actually hooked a phone to the jack. The phone jack just sits there looking tacky!)
October 9th, 2007 at 11:31 am
So that’s why whenever my brother calls there’s an echo.
October 9th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
The only reason to call someone from the hotel bathroom is to say you’re calling from the hotel bathroom. And you have to be incredibly careful who you choose for THOSE honors.
I’d know. I did it in Vegas and it turned awkward rather quickly.
October 9th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Well, my grandpa was a doctor and he had a toilet next to the phone because he took calls from patients and pharmacies no matter how indisposed he might have been. It was more for incoming than outgoing calls.
But I also had a coworker who constantly phoned my from his cell phone, especially when he was at the airport and I could hear constant flushing from the nearby stalls. It was very disturbing.
October 9th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Maybe it’s there as a stunt-double for your iPhone. I can honestly say I’ve never seen a land-line phone installed in a bathroom before.
October 9th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
For emergencies sort of makes sense
October 9th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
because the hotel ran out of other ways to make you feel loved and special?
October 9th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
I heard that one of the requirements for a hotel to be considered “five star” by the Michelin Guide is having a phone in every bathroom. Not like fancy rich people need to talk on the phone while on the toilet any more than other people do, or then again maybe that’s why they’re rich in the first place… no shame to call and make the deal when it needs making, no matter where you are… Just saying…
October 9th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
“I’d know. I did it in Vegas and it turned awkward rather quickly.”
So much for whatever happens in Vegas….
Anyways, who needs the fancy landline in the marble bathroom? I get blessed by my dh every day at work, when he calls from our cellphone to tell me. Ah, the joys of marriage.
October 10th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
We don’t have a phone jack next to the toilet in our bathroom, however, we do have one IN THE LINEN CLOSET. I have yet to figure that one out. When I nannied, there was a phone in the bathroom which was very handy for taking calls while supervising children in the bathtub. Other than that, I don’t know why you’d want a phone next to the toilet.