In Rome there is a grand hotel. I’ve been there myself and can attest first-hand to its grandeur: the well-appointed lobby and the urbane concierge, the bellhops in their scarlet uniforms, the majestic ballroom that has entertained dignitaries from around the world, the five-star restaurant which caters sumptuous banquets, the luxurious rooms with their beds and draperies and gold-plated faucets. For years, this grand hotel set the standard for hospitality through all the world, and whenever people journeyed, and whatever their accommodations, always they measured their treatment by the yardstick that had been laid out in that grand hotel in Rome.
It seems inevitable, of course, that the grand hotel’s influence within the hospitality industry should wane. While it is likely that its reduced stature had multiple causes, nevertheless, because of a propensity to engage simple explanations, people chose to blame a humble housekeeper named Martine. Legend has it that one morning a young Martine trundled her cleaning cart to the door of a room where the guests had posted their “Please clean up our mess” sign on the exterior knob. Entering the room, the young Martine set about her duties which included changing the linen and vacuuming the carpet. When she had completed these tasks, she turned her attention to the bathroom. She noted that the toilet paper roll was dangerously low and so replaced it with a fresh roll, but in a marked departure from hotel protocol, she placed the roll on its spindle so that fresh squares of toilet paper were dispensed from below. Until that day, it had been understood that toilet paper ought rightfully to be dispensed from above.
An uproar ensued. Now, so many years after the fact, it is difficult to know how the hotel Manager first learned of Martine’s unorthodox decision. Some said it was a jealous rival who worked on the floor below and hoped that by betraying Martine she could rise to a loftier position. Others said the hotel placed spies on every floor who ensured that workers conform both to the stringent standards set down in the hotel’s Manual and to the traditions transmitted from one Manager to the next through the generations. Still others whispered that perhaps the crafty Martine had orchestrated the controversy, taking care to commit her grievous error when she was certain to be observed and bringing the whole matter to a head so that it could be debated in the full light of public opinion.
We may never know by what path word leaked to the hotel Manager, but leak it did. The Manager was an aged and feeble man, as were they all in those days, and he would brook no deviation from tradition which clearly prescribed that toilet paper should be placed upon a spindle so that it might roll down easily from above. Enraged, the Manager summoned all his employees to the grand hotel’s ballroom. There they gathered, all the housekeepers and bellhops, waiters and busboys, concierge and chef. He brought them all together to witness the humiliation of one of their own. Surely a proper shaming would be sufficient to secure order within the industry for generations to come.
Things did not work out as the Manager had hoped. It turns out that the humble Martine was well-versed in the traditions of the hospitality industry and, when given an opportunity to speak, swayed the crowds with her stories of contradiction, incoherence, and downright hypocrisy. Martine was unafraid to recount what everyone had heard but few were willing to acknowledge. There were tales of hotel Managers who had been appointed to their post without proper training. There were salacious stories of clandestine couplings in the broom closets and unholy unions between the bellhops. Some housekeepers even refused to leave mints on pillows if they deemed the guests unworthy. And all of this with the Manager’s knowledge. A gasp rose from the crowd and some drifted to Martine’s side of the ballroom in protest of the corruption they saw all around them.
By way of rebuttal, the Manager acknowledged that while a few of his predecessors had failed to adhere to the demands of their office, nevertheless it was not the particular misconduct of individual cases that should be considered, but the ideals embodied in the office itself. Martine laughed and said they were made-up ideals designed to serve the interests of a select group of old men. She would only defer to statements written in the Manual, whereupon the Manager mopped his brow and produced the great black Manual of hoteliers and hospitality professionals. Yet whenever the Manager sought to justify his position by reference to the Manual, Martine would answer him with yet another reference. So, for example, when he cited the prohibition against short-sheeting a guest’s bed and the penalty of suspension without pay, she answered by citing the wider principle which undergirds the entire industry: loving hospitality. “Surely the day is long gone when we need to answer such benign misdeeds so harshly. We recognize today that such a deed is intended in jest and should be answered in kind, perhaps by panting the guilty housekeeper as he walks through the lobby, thereby exposing his knickers to the delight and jollity of everyone.” But the Manager greeted the suggestion with a stony face and said that such hotel relativism was a slippery slope that could only lead to one place: the infernal boiler room.
Each blamed the other for getting them both off topic.
Martine decried the use of the Manual, stating that nowhere did it refer directly to the use of toilet paper. The best they could do was operate by analogy to linen, but that was woefully inadequate since most people do not use linen for their post-defecation wipe.
The Manager leapt in with a reference to the great Old Manual hotelier named Saul who, on finding no hospitality facilities in the wilderness, relieved himself in a cave.
“But what does that prove? There’s no reference to toilet paper in that tale.”
“Ah, but it demonstrates the importance of toilet paper. Couple that with the great edict that ”all good things come from above” and you have an irrefutable case for dispensing toilet paper over rather than under.”
“But you’ve taken the quote out of context. The ”all good things” quote was in reference to dumb waiters. By decontextualizing the Manual, you have tried to deceive ordinary hospitality professionals everywhere.”
It is well known of course that following the great debate, the Manager summarily dismissed Martine, hoping to set an example. Undaunted, Martine took with her many of the grand hotel’s employees and established a new hotel. It was a great enterprise as well, but sprang from simpler intentions. There were spare walls and bellhops dressed in plain uniforms, and rather than a boiler, they heated the building with a high-efficiency furnace. Because it was a new business, it did not rely upon tradition, but took guidance only from the Manual. And, most important of all, the new hotel placed its toilet paper on the spindles so that it dispensed from below rather than from above.
However, like any other human enterprise that aspires to do things on a grand scale, the new hotel developed many of the very foibles it had tried to protest. For example, even though it had pledged itself to the idea that only the Manual would be authoritative in guiding it through the secrets and challenges of the hospitality industry, nevertheless, as time passed, it developed its own tradition and, although no one would admit as much, its brand new traditions became as authoritative as the Manual. And even as the old hotel in Rome had been insistent that toilet paper dispense only from above, so the new hotel was equally insistent that toilet paper dispense only from below. But perhaps most striking of all was the dogmatic zeal with which the new concierge enforced the rules and sacked any housekeeper who, even through simple carelessness, left a toilet roll shoddily installed.
With so many housekeepers and bellhops and night managers cast out onto the street in front of the new hotel, it isn’t surprising that many of these grew sufficiently resentful that they banded into groups that established smaller hotels. While these also claimed to follow the Manual and to reject tradition, they established interpretations and traditions that would distinguish them one from another regardless of what the Manual said.
At the Hotel Calvin, the Manager said it didn’t matter how you wipe, it’s all been predetermined anyways.
At the Hotel Puritan, management insisted that guests not remove their clothes when using the facilities – which explains why they always wore dark suits and refused to dance.
There were, of course, the Shakers who chose not to use toilet paper at all and preferred, instead, to wiggle their rumps until any dangling bits had fallen off.
Let’s not forget the Holy Rollers who concerned themselves less with the position of the toilet paper than with the charismatic manner in which the sheets were torn from the roll.
Because the Southern Baptist Hotel believed in full immersion, it recommended that guests draw a bath instead and do their business in the tub. So if there was anything to wipe off, it ended up on the towels.
The United Church of Canada Hotel was indifferent to the issue because any orientation was fine by them.
As time passed, a great variety of other offshoots sprang up that, although not directly related to the hospitality industry, nevertheless provided facilities where the over/under issue might arise:
Karl’s Kommunity Centre was a co-op where everybody had a stake in the toilet paper, whether they were a janitor, a program leader or a participant. They were scornful of the hotels and said that these decadent institutions were the opiate of the asses.
The Beagle Cruise Line took a wait-and-see attitude, reasoning that the over/under issue would work itself out in the end based on whether one mode or another gave wipers a selective advantage. In the alternative, human buttocks might adapt to whatever method was present in a given locale.
The Secular Humanist Roller Rink went further than all the rest and simply refused to acknowledge the existence of toilet paper. The consequences of that stance I leave to your imagination.
You might think that such a debate is unique to the grand hotel of Rome and its progeny, but the truth is otherwise: in hotels all around the world, debates like this rage on without end. In Jerusalem, hoteliers don’t concern themselves so much with toilet paper as they do with the question whether the seat should be left up or down after a flush. Similarly, in Mecca, the pressing question is whether to clean with a liquid antiseptic or a solid brick in the tank. In Varanasi, the hoteliers are most concerned with the question whether to unplug with a snake or a plunger.
And you may have guessed it by now: while all these distinctions are designed to ensure that guests enter their exclusive accommodations in a state of purity, none leaves with clean hands.