Stayed on a very slow Sunday night for a Monday morning interview. The entire experience was, on balance, so blah.

Took a taxi from the airport and on the ride in realized I had forgotten my portfolio to carry papers to the interview. When I arrived at the front desk to check in, I explained this to the clerk, and asked for his suggestion on where to get one before my morning interview. He handed me a business card for a taxi company, and told me the hotel had a flat rate to the mall. I asked him if there was a store in the mall that would have what I needed. He said he didn't know.

That was the extent of the conversation. And that's exactly the sort of thing that makes me say "Eh..." and give three bubbles to this hotel.

A five bubble answer would have been to bring up the mall's website and see if we could guess on a few stores and call over to see how late they'd be open on Sunday. Then call me the cab.

I could understand the attitude if things were really busy but there was no one else in the lobby and no phones were ringing.

There are other examples of how the service was lacking. I had called a few days in advance to verify room type and give preferences, since I had not made the reservation. I was confirmed for two beds, non-smoking, with a notation to put me in a quiet part of the hotel. When I checked in, I was offered a king -- which was fine, but why the change? -- but was put one door down from the ice machine, at the near end of the hall by the elevator. In fairness, it wasn't noisy, probably because there were so few people in the hotel. But why did the clerk think this was a quiet room?

Asked the clerk about Internet access...
Me: "Is there Internet access in the room?"
Clerk: "Yes."
A better answer would have been, "wired Internet access is available for $9.95 per night, or the wireless is free. Will you need a cable?"

The room was clean, but not overly so. Notably there were a few stray hairs in the bathroom and the balcony had clearly not been washed down in a while. Overall, things weren't dirty, but also not phenomenal.

I had dinner in the hotel restaurant. It was almost completely empty. Service from the bartender was excellent, but the food wasn't very good. Extremely salty. My rate included the breakfast buffet in the morning. Again, food wasn't very good -- quite bland. Service was solid though.

Woke up early on Monday because my wake up call was an hour early. There had been a time change overnight and no one had reset the hotel clocks. When I mentioned this to the desk and explained how I really wished I'd had the extra hour of sleep, they seemed surprised. Then a clerk fixed the time on the hotel phone system. It took him five seconds. Why had no one thought to do this in the 8 hours between the time change and when I told them about it? If the time change had been in the other direction, I would have been an hour late.

I finally received what I considered very good service at check out. I had used the hotel's free wireless access to find a store at which to buy the portfolio. I went to the desk and explained where I needed to go and asked the clerk to call me a cab. She found me an excellent driver (Tariq at Anam-All-Star Taxi of Schaumburg) who took me to the store, then the interview, then came back to take me to the airport. The clerk also properly added my goldpoints number so I'd get credit for the stay and correctly processed my check out very quickly.

You probably get the point by now. The stay was ok but generally unremarkable. Your limbs won't fall off if you stay here, but you'll probably quickly forget the entire experience. Which I suppose is good, because I didn’t end up getting the job anyway.