Let me start by telling you that on this particular trip I had other grown up successes. I hung up all my clothes from my suitcase in my hotel closet and I never do that ever. Who has time for this kind of thing on vacation anyways? And I am always so paranoid about forgetting anything at the hotel. But I was on this trip alone without the hubby and kids and I had my whole hotel room to myself. I was at the Five-star Langham hotel in Pasadena California for the Mom 2.0 conference where it felt like maybe I should be picking up my own clothes and hanging them on actual hangers like the grown up that I am. And I did not forget any of my outfits in that closet at all so maybe by doing this one responsible thing I allowed myself the mishap of leaving my laptop behind in the safe when I checked out. Perhaps this is the reason I should never purposely try to be responsible again. Maybe it’s better to leave everything in a disaster and frantically pack in minutes like I usually do when I never forget anything-maybe this should be the takeaway of this whole crazy experience.
I also had a ton of swag that I did not plan on bringing home when I arrived. If you are planning on going to the Mom 2.0 conference ever and are worried about the “value” of the conference, as a conference newbie, I almost felt like I didn’t pay enough after I attended all the powerhouse workshops and keynotes, ate all the yummy foods and went to the over the top parties. But then they gave us stuff too. There were room drops of surprises at night in our hotel room with yummy snacks and fun products. Hair styling stuff from Dove. (I love the scent of the dry shampoo too much!) and there were bagfuls and bagfuls of so many things. I even had my hair blown out (do you know how expensive this is in Seattle?) and I got my picture taken by professionals a zillion times.
So maybe this is how when I surveyed my room with my giant carry on of extra stuff (I also went to a dinner with Amazon Prime where they gave us some fun surprises…) I didn’t realize I was missing something very important when I left my hotel room. I was triumphantly packed and ready to go way earlier than I usually am. I had giant heavy bags of things and I was even too full to take any of the fancy leftover shampoo in my room.
I was also taking Uber for the very first time all by myself-one of my best friends was meeting me at another Orange County hotel after the conference for a few nights as a fun Mother’s Day present to ourselves. I got in the car and texted my husband the car license plate number, make and estimated time I would arrive. (It’s easy to take a screen shot of your Uber screen when you get picked up) And then I sat back and relaxed and started to think about the past few days. As I zoned out, I noticed the driver had made a mistake and missed a turnoff and was veering off of his original planned route. The paranoid part of me began to wonder if I was being kidnapped, but the rational part of me started to tell myself a story about everyone making mistakes sometimes. This made me start to think about my own mistakes like forgetting my toothbrush when I packed and suddenly in the back of my mind, I could not remember opening the safe in my hotel room to take out my laptop and bring it with me as I left. I immediately forgot about being kidnapped and called the hotel about my mistake. I told them my room number and they told me they would call me back in twenty minutes and that this happens quite frequently at hotels.
Do you work in the hotel industry? Do people forget things in the safe a lot?
Part of me started telling myself a story that I had packed my laptop in the suitcase that was in the trunk where I could not get to it because we were on the highway so I should not worry. It was really helpful that I had just heard Brene Brown speak at the conference about how our brain tells us stories to make us feel better and organize the chaos of our lives and I realized that it felt so much better to make up stories to fix this problem in my head. Maybe I had also picked up some chocolates too and put them with my laptop and they would be waiting magically when we arrived at my destination. Maybe there would be a lottery ticket tucked in there somewhere too and I would win millions. But no. The Langham hotel called me back and told me they had found my laptop and it was not in the trunk of my Uber with me but they had located it in the safe and it would be waiting for me at the hotel.
What are your options when you forget your laptop in the hotel safe?
“What are my options?” I asked the Langham. My Uber ride was already over 50 dollars and I was now very far away. The hotel could hold my laptop for 180 days, or they could ship it to me or I could get someone to pick it up. I thought about asking friends from the conference to get it and bring it back to Seattle but I didn’t want to put anyone out and electronics are something I don’t think you want to bring for other people on a plane. I also wondered if I really needed my laptop right away or could I come back to Pasadena in a few weeks and would this be a good excuse for making another trip (maybe if it was rainy and winter in Seattle this spendy option might have been even more enticing) but I did not think the hubby would really go for this option. So when my friend and I got back to our new hotel, we created a Fed Ex account and we coordinated with the hotel and a driver to bring the laptop from Pasadena to Orange County and it cost about $70 to fix this mistake (I opted for the insurance coverage btw too.). One thing that made this a little dicey was that I was leaving on a Sunday and there are no deliveries on Sundays and we had to get the order made by around 4:30pm on Friday in order to get the delivery scheduled for overnight which gave us about a quick 30 minutes to fix this whole thing.
Ultimately this was an interesting learning experience and I was absolutely thankful when my laptop arrived in a bubble wrapped package. The Langham hotel provided amazing service in helping with this problem and I really appreciated what they did. I’m not sure how things work in all hotel safe situations but I know I was googling frantically about what to do, so I thought I’d share my experience once we got it solved. For the future, I’ve decided that anytime I put something in the safe, I’m going to set a reminder on my phone to take it out. Something as simple as a reminder at a certain time with Siri: “Are you checking out soon? Did you get your laptop from the safe?”
(PS. if you have forgotten to renew your passport and you are traveling internationally and are worried about remedying that emergency, we recently survived that too. And if you a traveler who is wondering how to make sure you can keep an eye on your house from afar because you are worried about break-ins we have recently dealt with someone trying to break in our house and we have a fix that might help there as well. Let’s just call the past month, “almost a travel disaster” in our household. So If you have a travel tale where you’ve had a bad experience and overcome it, I’d love to hear it too so that I know this happens to other people as well.)
(PPS. Thank you Langham hotel and Fedex and Mom 2.0 for helping me to learn how to grownup.)
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)
Holy cow! I’d be so stressed out! I’m glad it all worked out and boy does Mom 2.0 sound amazing!