Actual conversation with hotel front desk
 

I'm planning to drive a vehicle x-country. I couldn't find information if a certain hotel in Albuquerque, NM had free high speed internet or not. So I called them. Here is the actual conversation:

Me: Hello, do you have high speed internet in the rooms?
Front Desk Clerk: Yes, but you have to dial out.
Me: <stunned silence>

After clarifying that she meant you can connect your computer to the telephone and use a dial-up modem, I said "thank you" and hung up.

Sometimes true life is better than fiction.

-David

I was once standing in line at the post office in MSN. An older woman (at least 75) was in front of me at the counter. I had to stop myself from busting a gut laughing, when she asked..."What kind of stamps do I need for e-mail?"

:D^

Did I miss something in this story?

No offense but I find your post is a little arrogant. There are still a great number of people out there who are not fimiliar with the internet and it is as if you expect everyone to understand all the lingo. I am not making excuses for this hotel clerk not to know what you meant when you said "high speed internet" but there are lot's of places where DSL, etc. are not available and to those users in such areas" high speed internet " is dial-up.....

People also sometimes only hear key words out of your question, so it's likely that she just heard you say "Blah Blah Blah Internet blah blah blah."

All the same, it goes to show that you have to ask the right questions, sometimes more than once.

I find hotel front desks to be normally uninformed and wrong on this issue.

Most rooms I stay in have broadband. Often they also have wifi in the lobby. Occasionally the front desk will give the right info on this but more often it is wrong. I just check the room and take what I can get and normally it works out fine. I haven't dialed out in the US in at least a year and probably longer.

and speaking of entertaining conversations
 

I recently flew to Amsterdam from Seattle. As I was checking in the eticket kiosk for Northwest, I overheard this gem from a confused teenager talking to a NWA employee 'so, what's an eticket look like?.

I was merciful, I let it slide........

Not everyone's a massively parallel technophile. In fact, hardly anybody is. It's wrong to assume that those who aren't, are idiots.

No one here is assuming anyone's an idiot. Just un-informed. I don't expect everyone to know these things. It's not like the postal clerk actually tried to SELL her e-mail stamps! He just explained that she didn't need any stamps, just a computer.

It's not just hi-tech stuff that confuses some people.

My mother-in-law - age 94 - received a mail solicitation from a charity. In the solicitation letter it said that "even putting a stamp on the return envelope will help us out." She did not want to contribute money to this charity, so she just put a stamp on the envelope and mailed it to "help them out."

I'm still confused. When a hotel says "free insert-whichever-sort internet in room", what do they mean? Do you just plug your computer in & go? Being from Australia, I have no internet provider in the US so will this still work for me? Thanks guys!

Some hotels are offering broadband or high speed internet in the rooms. They provide a cable, you plug it in, accept the terms and go (that's what I'm using right now).

Others offer wi-fi (wireless) internet access. In those cases, you detect the network, accept the terms and go.

If your machine doesn't have a wi-fi card or an ethernet (is that right term?) network connection, then these options won't help you.

Hope this is useful.

That's great info...thanks! I think my laptop has an ethernet doodad in it. :p However, if I'm buying a HP Ipaq which has wireless ability, does this mean that I can use this too?

Incredible.

I didn't comment that I thought the clerk was stupid or uninformed, I merely relayed the conversation. I just posted it because I thought it was funnny. Lighten up, will ya? :) I didn't expect that everybody would think it was humorous. And I really don't care either. So there. Is that arrogant enough? :)

To me it was like the old Monty Python "cheese shop" skit.

-David

No offense but in my humble opinion people who say "no offense" almost always offend! ;)