THE CALIFORNIA HOTEL THAT STEALS TIME: Travel advisory. A true story of love, jackasses, cons, danger and heroes.
In November, 2019, my tall, bearded son was about to marry a magnificent woman, in Los Angeles. Although it was a small boutique wedding, friends of the bride were coming from as far away as New Zealand and South Africa. Two of my farflung grown children and a grandson my husband and I had help raise would be there, and the bride was already a respected friend. Of course, I was going.
My husband Paul was strongly opposed, for a long while white-hot angry about it, storming around, making thundering predictions, which was not like him at all. He loves my son. The laugh crinkles beside his blue eyes moreover are the sign of a man who experiences the outdoors as joy and lets go of anger easily.
He wasn't quailing at the idea of my being gone. Paul disappears into his shop or up into the hills for days. I disappear into my writing for weeks. That's how we live. I had however just fought a long illness. Nursing me through it, he'd almost lost me twice. He thought that I was trying far too much far too soon. I reassured him that it would be just three days, surrounded by loved ones. What could harm me?
This was would be a time beyond price, I told him. And it was.
However, about that hotel....
The Garland Hotel in Burbank, California, where a block of rooms for the wedding party was reserved, was seemingly perfect: The five-acre Garland, in operation since the 1970s, has brick patios, green terraces, restaurants, bars, super-efficient housekeeping and big comfy beds. It's near the big studios; the Pacific Ocean only a few miles away. The invisible people who actually make any hotel run are impeccably professional there. It's a lovely place.
True, the Garland management seemed to me from the first ditzy. It took the hotel reservations staff three tries and 20 days to send me an accurate e-mail confirmation of "a single room for three nights".
When I arrived three days later, a woman at the front desk still insisted that my reservation was for one night. Then she insisted that I couldn't have wedding block rates because the bride and groom weren't there yet, which was nonsense. The management's behavior throughout was irrational, in the end dangerous. Because I want to protect others' privacy, I'm not using any names except the Garland's, Paul's and mine, but this is a true story. Heads up....
2. walking into it
At check-in, my card whizzed through. My redheaded teenage grandson was there in the lobby, walking around wearing a blanket-like a cloak, wanting to kick back. His parents had been delayed, so I guaranteed a second room for one night. Again, my card whizzed through.
Without my knowledge, however, the hotel's preauthorizations had just wildly overcharged me, cleaning out that bank account, locking my card.
Soon after my grandson and I went up to our respective rooms, the bride and groom arrived and gave the front desk their card, asking that my card be taken off that second room, and the money refunded to me. It wasn't exactly refunded. It was put into a "refund process that might take five days". The next thing we knew, the Garland was charging the bride's sister for my room. That was just for starters.
Blissfully unaware of even that initial situation, however, that first night I was focused simply on getting some sleep.....
2. "sleep, sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleave of care", if only I could get some...
The room was a delight, large and airy, spotlessly clean with a balcony , the room air in November cool instead of stuffy and overheated, with a big bed, lushly piled with pristine pillows and blankets. A closet held not only hangers but a safe big enough for my laptop, giving me the appreciated freedom to walk off and leave it. Ample drawers.
Granted, inches outside the sliding glass doors, there was a big halogen globe on the overhang, flooding my room with honky-tonk glare.
Halogen or fluorescent light affects me the way a blizzard affects most people. I can handle it for just so long. Given a few hours of genuine dark, however, I can recover. Before I arrived, the hotel's general manager had assured me through a desk clerk that the hotel had black-out curtains. i swiftly unpacked and showered. Needing nothing so much as warm covers in cool darkness for 6 to 8 hours, I happily nosed into bed and turned out the lamp....
Ack!!!!!! Blast!
The black-out curtains hadn't been installed correctly. They had no bottom channel to slide in, so they couldn't seal out the glaring light of the outdoor globe. With the main room lights off, light was still everywhere, not just coming from that big window and streaming out of the back of the flatscreen, but from a glaring automatic light in a small closet which wouldn't stay closed.
Burrowing completely under the covers, into an airless hole, I fell asleep, but asleep, my body reached for air, only to toss and turn in the glare and burrow again, then reach for air. The next morning, I viscerally needed the sight, sound, feel and scent of ocean; long story but it had been 25 years since I had lived beside it, even seen it, and had planned to sneak out to the beach before the wedding festivities started. I was too ragged to move.
Trying to wake up, I brewed some packaged hotel coffee, which tasted as stale as the stuff from a vending machine. Considering going down for breakfast or calling room service, I picked up a menu, winced and lauged. Loose in a good grocery store, I could buy a week of healthy food for what one over-described omelette cost. Therefore instead I ate some rice, quinoa and a power bar that I'd brought on the plane. That was fortunate. I didn't know it yet, but since the hotel "mistake" had just wiped out the bank account that my debit card drew on, any new charges would be rejected by my card.
3. I missed the sea. Can I get to the wedding rehearsal??
Because my grandson had my cell phone (to give it "better aps" of course), I called my husband on the room phone. The front desk then noted that my charge had bounced. Instead of notifying me privately, the clerks humiliated me publicly [for something, remember, that they had done.]
We wedding-goers were laughing in the lobby, ready to Uber to the rehearsal dinner, when I was called to the front desk, told that my card was no good, and hammered on to fix it, holding the whole group up. Since I didn't realize what the Garland had done, it made no sense. My card had whizzed through twice; and there was plenty of money behind it. What were they talking about?
My daughter, for her part unaware of the past 20 days of my trying to get the Garland to simply get the reservation straight, or the front desk nonsense the night before, smoothly stepped up to fix it. The front desk agreed to "allow" me to go to the rehearsal dinner.
Letting that go, I had a flaming glorious time at the rehearsal dinner. Steeped in family tradition, it featured wonderful food and intelligent, laughing conversation with new relatives whom I felt that I had known for millennia. The rehearsal itself was hilarious and moving.
When we got back to the hotel, my daughter talked to the front desk again, and came up to tell me that it was just a hotel screw-up, they'd overcharged me, but it was all fixed, no worries. So I upended my small suitcase to make a tent pole on top of the bed for the covers, creating a cavity with lots of air and no glare. Feeling clever, I snuggled down into it and fell fast asleep.
However, at 4:30 am (!!), there was a knock on my door and a letter slid under it. It said that I had no credit, to contact the front desk immediately. My second relaxing night at the Garland....
By the next day, the wedding day, "little things" were happening, like the hotel's changing the digital lock so that I couldn't get into my room....
4. Wedding Day
The bride's sister, busy organizing much of the wedding, had heard only a tiny fraction of this, but was furious -- and professional about it. Even combined though, she and I couldn't crack the nutcase that was the Garland management.
To her, the Garland Hotel acknowledged the overcharge on my card and said that it would make a full restitution, immediately. A person named Angel would call me and fix it. To me, the front desk said the opposite, and Angel never called, indicating if nothing else an amazing lack of communication among the managerial staff. An assistant manager, not named Angel but a great guy, acknowledged the hotel's overcharge of my account and set out to fix it. I was very grateful. He however was trying to straighten it out by calling my hometown branch (of a major bank), surprised that the people there soon began hanging up on him.
Small wonder. He should have called the credit card company, not bugged the bank. Yet he was smart and personable; just not sufficiently experienced to know that. Was everyone there new to what they were doing, was turnover that great? If not, why the extremely high level of newbie mistakes?
Obviously I needed to speak to the general manager. Yet in spite of my requests all day to speak to him -- and the front desk's constant promise that he was about to call me -- the general manager never returned my call.
5. say cheese
Therefore, when the moment arrived for the formal wedding pictures in the garden, I was in my room, on hold with my credit card company, putting on pale pink wedding clothes with one hand. As I tried to one-handedly close an ankle strap buckle on one of my silver high-heeled sandals, the slender strap broke. Slapping on some black ballet slippers, all that I had with me, I dashed across several acres to the garden, imagining how I looked. "Oddly sweating and oddly dressed, here comes the poised and lovely mother of the groom...."
By late afternoon, I was aching to be with the bride's family in the kitchen cooking up batches of my recipe for rum cake, which is my son's favorite dessert.
Directly because of the hotel, I was missing that too. I had at least managed to get back into my account $650 of what the Garland had stolen from me, just in time to make my card valid to cover needs on the flight home the following day. My incorrect assumption was that this signalled the end of trouble from the Garland. Actually, Garland management was just revving up.
Luckily the wedding and reception were meanwhile held somewhere else....
6. bliss that nothing could mar
Although the air was cool, the top of my head was now constantly perspiring. Just before the wedding, the bride's mother worked professionally and swiftly to carve my permanently wet hair into something elegant. Then I walked into the wonder of the night wedding.
It belongs to the family. I won't describe it except to say that, like a strong and soaring building without a splinter of extra material, the ceremony was authentic and right. Every moment in preserved in crystal in my memory.
A scrumptious dinner and deliriously happy party followed. I love to dance, but by this point could barely stand. Mostly I sat on sofas, talking to scads of interesting people. At one point I sat on a brick step by the dancers, losing myself in the joy and grace around me...as for example when the bride danced an impromptu flamenco around her father, as her cousins did a 1920s shimmy around them both. Brilliant, laughing, sacred night.
6. let me go!
Saturday was the morning that I was supposed to fly home. It took me two hours to pack my two carry-ons, which I had unpacked in minutes when I got there three days before -- the constant hassle with the hotel management was telling on me. For all that, I was really happy.
I'd made it to the wedding. I had a plane to catch, but could stop for a few minutes at the farewell brunch -- my last chance to personally thank my hosts, hug my newly extended family, drink in images of my children and grandson and retrieve my cell phone. Surely the hotel couldn't get in the way of that! I'd be home, back in Paul's arms, by midnight EST. Right?
When I went down to the Garland Hotel front desk to check out, my wheeled luggage bouncing behind me, I had a big smile.
That faded fast.
The front desk clerk refused to let me check out. According to her, a flag on my account said that in order to leave, I'd have to talk to the general manager first. I had not been notified of that, of course. I had moreover spent the previous day trying to get hold of the general manager, who never replied. Although I urgently needed to say goodbye to my family and catch a plane, I was instead being waylaid as I tried to leave!
I calmly explained. Wordlessly, she turned her back on me and went to get the manager. Sheesh.
Maybe though he was coming to apologize? As he walked up, I smiled and extended my hand. He never apologized for any of it. Instead, with more priceless minutes ticking away, he started insisting that I had to go back to his office and "be seated to discuss everything in detail, personally, face to face". I refused, asking to check out. He kept droning "seated in my office" "personally, face to face" "go over every detail".
I gave him a two sentence summary of the "details" He said "Oh I know all that. If you'll just be seated in my office office we can discuss it..." He knew all that? This was completely unnecessary?
I shouted, "NO, no, no, no and NO! What part of 'No' don't you understand? I need to check out. I'll miss saying goodbye to my family! I'll miss my plane!" When he opened his mouth to argue again, I left, without checking out, but as my feet hit pavement I glanced at the time.
I was already too late.
The general manager's grandstanding had made me miss the narrow window that I had to get to the bunch. I backed up against an outside wall and sagged, looking up at the sky, my eyes brimming. The hotel had taken even this from me, my last chance to to say goodbye to my grandson, my children, my hosts, my new relatives? I thought my heart would break.
I struggled not to feel. If I didn't move fast, I'd miss even my flight home.
7. the Garland's obsession with The Box
My cell phone was with my grandson at the bunch, unobtainable now, so I walked back into the Garland and politely asked the front desk to call me an Uber. They called me a cab.
The front desk crew had been standing there during my run-in with the manager. They knew that I was desperate to leave in time. Yet as I turned to go, one of the front desk men snagged me. A package had arrived from Amazon. "Don't you want to take it with you?"
I'd already told them that I didn't want the box.
It was a quart of mold spray, for pete's sake, a wise thing to have in hotels these days. However, it wasn't necessary at the spotless Garland and certainly a quart of liquid in my carry-on luggage would not make it through TSA. So I replied, "No thank you. As I've explained before, I know what's in it and don't need or want it anymore. Use it if you wish."
The tall front desk guy stood in the center of the lobby, his long arms against his thighs, big hands holding The Box, his face at once forlorn and accusatory -- as if I were callously leaving my puppy -- insisting that I ought to take it.
Simultaneously feeling like a tiger being chased by beaters and wondering what kind of punks treat grandmothers this way, I was backing away from him, "I don't want anything from your hands! Do you know what irretrievable moments your hotel's relentless mis--management has taken from me??? Now I'm about to miss my plane. Let me GO!" He smirked.
I reeled out the front door. Literally reeled -- first into a wooden sandwich board, which went flying, then into the side of the building. My heart was pounding; I had to catch my breath. I had to catch my plane. An image flitted into my mind though of Florida highway signs that read, "Arrive Alive". Well, yeah. The Garland had taken so much. I wasn't going to include my life in that bundle. I collapsed into a chair, bathed in perspiration deliberately slowing my breathing, plunging down inside myself. The front desk was only feet away but of course nobody offered aid.
8. Yet there be angels.
A few minutes later, a hand gently touched my arm. I opened my eyes to see a round, naturally brown face with worried, reassuring eyes. Simply dressed, and kind, he said softly, "Your cab is here. Can you walk? I've got your luggage and I'll steady you. C'mon." The gentleman was not someone with a title but he was staff, and everything that management was not.
Once in the cab, I lost sight of him in a haze. The cab driver meanwhile swiveled in his seat to ask where I was going. Eyes widening, he instead said softly, "Are you okay?"
Forcing words to the surface, hoping they made sense, I said, "Came so far. Missed so much. Nightmare in there. General manager...."
The cab driver, a square, tanned face with long vertical dimples, nodded and said, "That general manager took over a few months ago. We used to pick up only happy people here. We get lots of angry ones now, and some are", he looked at me, "pale and trembling."
He turned off his meter. "Take your time. Where do you need to go?" Instead of sensibly giving him an address, I said, "My husband." Gently, the cab driver asked, "Where is he?" I smiled, and said, "I need to get to the airport please, soon, or I'll miss my flight home."
He asked, "Which airport, Burbank or LAX?"
In the pea soup in which my brain was still swimming, it didn't occur to me to check my tickets, so suddenly I didn't know which airport. Choosing the wrong one would have serious consequences, given the fact that I had only $630, no cell, and without it no record of family cell numbers -- and was in no condition to cope. I chose Burbank, the airport where I'd landed, and off we went. At the airport, I asked the cabbie to wait while I checked.
At the kiosk, I showed the attendant my driver's license. He checked his list and gave me a boarding pass. If the kiosk had been a slot machine, it would have been pouring silver dollars....
I waved and grinned at the cab driver then sagged slightly against the kiosk. A moment later, I was in an airport wheelchair, and the cab driver was leaning over me as he put my backpack in my lap saying, "You take care. Safe flight." He handed my small suitcase to the wheelchair pusher, saying "Take care of her, understand?" From behind me came a woman's voice, "I will." It was like that for hours, people handing me off to each other, all the way across the US. I kept getting stronger.
When we reached my hometown, a wheelchair was waiting, but I struck out on my own, on foot, pulling my luggage behind me. Within sight of the TSA station, my energy abruptly gave out. I stood stock still, in a daze again.
An airport runabout with big black tires whizzed up. The driver said, "I can take you as far as TSA. Wanna ride?" I grinned, said yes, and climbed in the back with the luggage, as he put pedal to the metal and lurched off at what was for the airport a breakneck, careening speed. Hanging onto the bar in back so I wouldn't slide off, I loved it, was laughing when I got off at TSA and set off again to find my husband.
Without a cell phone, all I could do was look.
He was nowhere in the upper concourse, nowhere in the lower concourse. I was trudging along the sidewalk pulling my luggage, looking for our car, when I felt him near, then spotted him, at a distance. He walks like a happy, athletic teenager, ambling, almost bouncing along, until something makes him stride. He strode, and caught me up, whispering into my hair. Home.
As to those jerks at the Garland, the latest is that they not only charged the bride's sister for my room, they told her that I'd asked them to.
That's a lie.
At the Garland Hotel, moreover, there is a degree of arrogance, incompetence and callous disregard for other people that has the effect of malice.
It isn't management that makes a hotel that beautiful, that spotless; that's the work of groundskeepers and housekeepers, the real professionals. Making life hell for some of the guests, the people who come there to rest, those in management who are doing this are risking the jobs of all the good working people there.The ultimate responsibility lies with the owners, who arguably haven't been staying on top of it. I hope they spot the problems and react. If I hear that they have, I'll dart back here and say so.
Meanwhile, this is a definite travelers' alert. Unless you're seeking to be cheated and crave extra relentless tension, don't go near the Garland....