One Ply

One ply. Cheap, nasty, arse-shredding one ply. $300 per night and they expect me to wipe my most delicate parts with this? One ply is for truck stops, correctional facilities and those really nasty public toilets, fitted out with blue lights so the junkies can’t shoot up. It really has no place in posh hotels with marble foyers and a 4.3 rating on Tripadvisor. It’s not right.

Who came up with this idea? Who was the miserable tight-arse with no consideration for anyone else’s arse? Do they buy one ply for their own family? Of course they don’t – their family would walk out on them, because no one deserves to be treated that way. Hotel guests don’t deserve it. Truckies don’t deserve it… I guess a few people in correctional facilities may deserve it, but only the really fucking evil ones.

I want multiple plies. I want air-weave, pillow cushion, silk caress comfort. I don’t want to feel the current texture of what was formerly my buffet breakfast. Toilet paper technology has come a very long way since those terrible dark days when one ply was standard issue. These advances have benefited humanity far more than putting a man on the moon. Whoever it was that invented Sorbent Cotonelle should be far more widely celebrated than Neil Armstrong whose sole contribution was stepping out of a spaceship while fluffing his big line.

When I visit a posh hotel I can avoid the overpriced peanuts and the tiny $10 bottles of spirits in the mini bar. I can go without the rip off Wi-Fi. But a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. Normally time on the thrown is a mildly pleasant, satisfying experience, however when I take hold of that cheap, scratchy piece of one ply I can’t help but get extremely angry at the greedy corporate bastards who wouldn’t fork out the extra few cents for the sake of my posterior comfort.

I start to get really wound up. To bring myself back to a state of calm I then force myself to think “this is such a first wold problem…  there are billions of people who don’t even have proper sanitation. There are children who don’t even have the food to start this whole digestive process, let alone end it. There is a war in Syria where thousands of people are literally getting their arses blown off.”

Then I feel sad.

Then I feel like a monster for getting so angry about a first world problem.

Then I see that little survey card that says “Did you enjoy your stay?”

Then I realise there is just not enough space to have a proper rant on one of those hotel survey cards.