#51 Finally figuring out how your hotel shower faucet works

Neil Pasricha

The hotel shower faucet is a 7:00am Brain Teaser.

You strip down and peel back the flimsy white curtain to size up the challenger and you find it staring back at you — a clump of shiny dials and spouts with made-up marketing names like Temprol, Relaxashower, or Aquasomething.

Sometimes that shower faucet goes clockwise, sometimes it goes counterclockwise, sometimes you have to turn it past cold to get hot, sometimes you pull it toward you to get it going.

And once you eventually get it flowing, you face another challenge: getting it to stop coming out of the bathtub tap and start shooting out of the shower faucet. Your reward for solving this mystery a few minutes later is an ice-cold spray down your naked, shivering body.

Finally figuring out how your hotel shower works is like jumping into the cockpit during an emergency and landing the plane with no lessons. You were just woken up and thrown into a tough situation with no instructions, but you managed to figure it out and save the day.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here and here

20 thoughts to “#51 Finally figuring out how your hotel shower faucet works”

  1. A triumphantly awesome moment, indeed! Hotel shower faucets have the ability to make smart people feel momentarily-incompetent. How can they all be so different? This can also happen if you use a friend’s shower for the first time, but they at least have the opportunity to give you a couple pointers before you blaze a trail into Confusing Faucet Land!

  2. Haha that reminds me of this thing I recently read it said something like “you think you are smart person, until you try to figure out someone elses shower” it is so true. I have been burned and frozen one to many times in a shower I was not used to.

  3. My image: You pull back the big white sheet, “Size up the ’59 Challenger” *NICE* Hop in to find a stick and a flashy dash board. It’s your first drive EVER…body starts to shiver and shake…Oh NO, that’s the rocking roar of the engine & it sounds about to blow! I feel like a Modest Mouse. That’s when I fill ‘er up, smile and say, “A tub today will do.”
    Ahhh, here we go, oh, oh, oh, oh…
    http://youtu.be/-GJPOZBvGTU

  5. think how awkward it would be if it broke while you were struggling to get the water to come. that happened to me once, even though i paid i could litreally feel the hotel staff shotting daggers at me when i left:)

  6. OK, first of all, *tick.

    Second of all, are you guys all new? Who gets in the shower before getting the water j-u-s-t right? That’s crazy talk, that’s what that is.
    I guess I’ll have to lay it out for you:
    Step 1: get the water flowing at the right temperature
    Step 2: switch flow over to shower head
    Step 3: wait a few seconds for temperature to normalize*
    Step 4: enter the shower area

    *this would be a good time to get undressed

    1. You are officially doubley, (or is it tripley), crowned the bathroom expert!
      *Tick, tick, tick…but not tick like bugs or “Lethal Weapon 2”, though:)

    2. I was thinking the same thing, jdurley! I make sure the water’s just right even in my own shower before stepping into the tub. I have, however, made the mistake of getting undressed and standing next to the tub freezing while I struggle to manipulate the faucet.

      1. On the far-side…I was drinking, eating, sleeping college; working and raising children, when this one time I climbed in and thought, something’s not quite right here…Iooked down to my test study book-let & what to my wondering eyes did appear, but 2 socks, underware AND my brassiere!

    3. I’m always baffled by people who talk about being shocked by a stream of freezing water when they step into the shower. I don’t let anything other than my hand get wet before I climb in.

      I may be somewhat masochistic, but I’m not completely nuts.

  11. This was so timely – as I took off Thursday evening for a weekend of trying to figure out hotel showerheads! Glad to be home finally, where I can wait until after my shower to “wake up”!!

  12. I was just visiting and this is exactly what happened and it was nearly the same day and same time in the morning. REALLY CRAAAZY MAN!

  13. How about already being IN the shower & THEN realizing that you don’t know how hot, but more than likely, COLD AS ANTI-HELL the water is going to come out as… Then you let out a scream like someone is coming at you with a drawn out sword!! Me, personally? I ALWAYS check the water 1st. It’s a MUST!

    <3 always lovers,
    Jenni4

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