Don’t Drink From Hotel Glasses

The next time you stay in a hotel, you’ll think twice about drinking out of the glasses and coffee cups if you watch the 4½-minute video at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a7f_1194813218

It’s an I-team investigation from a TV station, presumably in Atlanta, Georgia. The team took hidden cameras into guest rooms at three major hotels–Embassy Suites, Holiday Inn and Sheraton Suites. In all three instances, housekeepers never used soap and water to clean dirty drinking glasses and coffee cups.

The Holiday Inn simply rinsed the glasses under running water in a dirty sink and left them to dry.

At the Embassy Suites, a housekeeper put a used glass inside the dirty sink, sprayed a blue liquid on it, and then dried it with a cloth. She held it up to the light to make sure it looked squeaky clean.

At the Sheraton Suites, a housekeeper also used spray from a bottle to clean a glass, then picked up the guest’s used washcloth from the sink, smelled it, and wiped the glass with the washcloth. As for the rubber gloves on her hands, well, you’ll have to watch the video to learn where those gloves had been just before they touched the drinking glasses.

I don’t know when this report was first aired. But what’s so remarkable about it is that in all three cases, when asked to comment, the hotel management never fessed up to any wrongdoing, even though they were caught on camera and admonished by the local health officials. A spokesperson from the Sheraton refused to comment, saying “It’s too controversial an issue.”

Clarence Jones, a former TV and newspaper investigative reporter, says that in cases like the one above, attorneys will almost always advise clients not to comment. And that, he says, is bad advice.

– Joan