I had thought/ hoped that I´d never have a story of my own to share here, but while this is maybe minor stuff compared to many other stories, it does qualify, I´d say.
My co-worker and I were supposed to fly to Amsterdam and continue from there on our connecting flight to Germany. Due to technical problems, the Amsterdam flight was delayed and we got new tickets for a flight via Paris. “Why not, I´ve never been to Paris, maybe I can get a glance at the Eiffel tower,” I thought.
After that, a software problem affecting many other flights as well prevented us from boarding even though the plane itself was ready. Eventually we got to Paris but we had missed our connecting flight and were forced to stay there for the night.
It was the booking of a new flight and the reservation of a hotel room at the transfer desk where things got weird. While the process leading to our new flight was somewhat questionable (something that supposedly wasn’t allowed suddenly did work – after everything had already been settled), booking a hotel room to our convenience was almost impossible.
My co-worker (female) and I (male) aren’t that different in age and the customer service guy obviously assumed we were a couple. No problem, he misjudged the situation, could have happened to me as well. When we understood he had booked us one single room we told him we needed to have separate ones. But he just laughed at us for being, I don´t know – old-fashioned, inflexible, half-wits??, and told us there were no other rooms available. We would just have to sleep in the same room. Obviously Paris was completely booked out on that particular Monday in February…
After a lot of back and forth with us explaining we just won´t do it and he telling us we have to do it, he suddenly did find a second room. No apologies of course (not that we were after that, but it would have been a nice gesture), but instead some smart ass remarks about our stubbornness even afterwords.
By the way, at some point he for some reason even talked about an incident where he had put some business man with his secretary in the same room, after which the secretary had privately and in tears begged him for a room of her own (she didn’t dare to say no in front of her boss). Yet he didn’t come to the conclusion that making a man and a woman, who are not in a relationship, share a room or even a bed might be inappropriate…
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I think that the guy at the desk got his jollies booking unattached men and women into the same room. Probably some fetish thing.