The Hotel Wake-Up Call I Never Requested
A wake-up call arrives before sunrise for a flight, a meeting, and apparently a guest from a different decade.
Photo: Unsplash.
The telephone rang at 4:30 in the morning.
“This is your requested wake-up call,” a recorded voice said. “Have a wonderful day.”
I had requested neither the call nor the day at that hour. I unplugged the phone and went back to sleep.
At 4:37, someone knocked. A hotel employee stood outside holding a clipboard. “Backup wake-up call,” he explained. “For the airport shuttle.”
I showed him my booking. No shuttle. No early flight. He checked the clipboard and discovered that Room 508 had requested the call. I was in 805.
He apologized and hurried toward the lift. Two minutes later, I heard him knocking on the room across the hall, which was 806.
By then I was awake. I made tea and watched the city lights switch off one building at a time. At 5:10, the phone—still unplugged—rang from inside the bedside cabinet. There was a second handset connected through a different socket.
“This is your requested wake-up call,” it said.
At breakfast, I met the guest from 508. He had missed the shuttle. His room telephone had not rung, nobody had knocked, and his alarm clock displayed the year 2009.
We shared a taxi to the airport. I was not flying anywhere, but by then I felt responsible for seeing the wake-up call complete its work.