File under: Life, Rants, Travel

The Pillow Problem

08.15.06 | 13 Comments

I travel fairly frequently on business. I stay in a lot of hotels, in various European and North American locations. Most of them are pretty nice. They have:

huge bathrooms
and double kingsize beds in the room (why do they do that? I will never understand)
and shoeshine services
and concierges who call you ma’am
and airconditioning which you can adjust yourself
and whisper-quiet sound insulation
and fluffy robes
and powerful multi-nozzle showers (in case, presumably, your bum needs a shower all of its own) in wetrooms
and decent shower gel
and TV with 900 channels
and spa pools
and proper tea
and doors which don’t clunk shut
and giant bathtubs
and superfast in-room broadband.

So, mostly pretty good, actually.

But in every single one I have the same problem: I tend to sleep really badly, at least the first night I’m there. Considering that the first night in a hotel is also frequently my last night on a particular trip, that’s not good.

And why don’t I sleep well? The poxy pillows.

Examine, if you will, figure #1:

Hotel pillow: figure 1

This is a normal hotel pillow. It is large and white and fluffy. It looks inviting on the bed. See how it towers above the surface of the bed? There are usually several of these.

Now consider figure #2:
Hotel pillow: figure 2

With even the slightest weight applied to it, the standard hotel pillow collapses like a marshmallow. When you put your head on it, the bit under your head retracts to the level of the mattress, and the sides puff up around your ears like balloons.

Pillow problem - proof

You try to remedy this by using TWO pillows, the theory being that the supportive bit behind your head will be that much higher up with multiple units. And yet, as soon as you put your head down, BOTH pillows collapse to nothing in the middle and rise like yeasty dough around your temples. You become a cabbage patch doll as your face is scrunched in by white cottony pouffs.

So you take the pillows roughly and try to mould them by folding them in under themselves, in the hope that this will prevent height failure, but no. Nothing will.

Irate and with a sore neck, you toss and turn for hours in unfamiliar surroundings, despite high thread-count cotton bedding and maudlin with the prospect of a long day of meetings in front of you. Great.

I cannot count the number of times I’ve improvised using folded up bathtowel covered in a T-shirt, and I’m starting to think I should travel with my own pillow. I can’t be the only one who can’t sleep with stupid pouffy useless unsupportive fluffy pillows, though, can I?

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