Is this how you live your life, Robert?

What a little cyst. I'd probably be able to work up a rant, but it's bedtime and I can't even get my e-mail address right.

The only things you should take from hotels are the soaps and shampoos you actually use. If you didn't touch them, leave them. I personally don't use the hotel hygiene products. I prefer my own stuff.

Everyone who has stayed at a hotel has, at some point, walked out with a few soaps or miniature bottles of shampoo stuffed into their luggage.

I haven't. And just because this is something he does, he has no right to assume that everyone does. As I said, I prefer my own stuff, and I have no use for the cheap stuff (that I know nothing about) that the hotel provides.

And if you get bad service or a cold meal, you write up an unfavorable review and post it to the internet. Or you complain to the hotel. Perhaps they'll give you a discount on your next stay.

But, no, you have no justification to take anything from the hotel. It is a good thing that he didn't actually post the names/locations of the hotels he owns. I'd be tempted to book a night or two, just for the sake of ripping him off.

If I use like 1/3 of the little bottle of shampoo, and take the rest home with me, in no way do I even remotely consider that "stealing". Am I way off base here?

Well, I'm just posting MY standards. But I did say, leave behind the stuff that you DIDN'T use. Since you used the shampoo, you actually probably SHOULD take it. Only the most low-class hotels would actually leave the hotel room with 2/3 of a bottle of shampoo and expect the next guest to use it.

I wouldn't take the shampoo, because I wouldn't use it. Not even at home, since I prefer my own products.

So, for me, it would just be taking junk that I don't even want. But, as he correctly points out, it's an amenity, so it's not stealing to take it.

I prefer my own shampoo to the hotel's, and so I bring it. I don't use soap, I use body wash, so I bring that too. My aunt takes the little shampoos and soaps but she doesn't use them, she gives them to guests who stay over at her house! But I've never seen her take more than what was in the room she stayed in.

I take the shampoo and soaps with me. Then I give them to a charity that dispenses them to homeless people.
Does that make me a modern-day Robin Hood?

I take the unused shampoo's with me to keep in both my overnight bag I have in my car and in my Bug-Out-Bag. You don't know how and when you might a chance to clean off, but it is good to be prepared.

I also have my own towels in them as well. The HHGTTG describes that clearly:

Just about the most massively useful thing any interstellar Hitchhiker can carry. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the beady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward of noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you — daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course you can dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. 42 towelOne of the fancier utility towels that some hitchhikers choose to have. Lord Pietrzyk-Świątecki von BrandstätterSubmitted by Lord Pietrzyk-Świątecki von Brandstätter 300px-Towelday TowelA proud salute to the all-mighty Douglas Adams. Lord Pietrzyk-Świątecki von BrandstätterSubmitted by Lord Pietrzyk-Świątecki von Brandstätter

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have "lost." What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Word, Jim P. I always know where my towel is. (I have several in the back of my car, just in case.)

Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, anyone? (Yes, I do have the recipe!)

I detest the carnivore who is one minute ahead of me to the breakfast bar who loads up a container with every speck of the bacon and/or sausage while I'm getting coffee.
I saw a family of 5 making sandwiches and packing lunches. They had their own baggies and condiments and seemed quite comfortable with it. They were nicely dressed - I'm sure they could afford lunch. The rest of us sleepy, hungry, polite people rolled our eyes but said not a word.

I took a robe from a hotel once.

In my defence it was a really nice robe.
I had also sat down wrong and ripped a hole in the stitching between the sleeve and the body.

I also called the front desk and they said they were just going to throw it away and said I could keep it when I asked

Hubby brings his little bottles home from business trips. We use them to make up little care bags for the homeless. The hotel literally has to throw them away if the seal is broken or (if they aren't the kind with a paper seal) has to (or is supposed to at least) toss them no matter what. That is not stealing. And most hotels would be happy for you to ask for more soaps if you really like it, to take home.

Towels? No. I have taken breakfast food to go from hotels, when we were leaving and wanted to eat it on the road.

Towels? No. I have taken breakfast food to go from hotels, when we were leaving and wanted to eat it on the road. -- momof4 at July 16, 2013 3:55 PM

If you have a towel you want it to the nice big fluffy type, not the small, scratchy ones from the hotels.

As far as grabbing breakfast to go -- there is the make your own two "egg and sausage biscuits" on a plate and going. Then there is taking half a steam table container each of sausage and bacon and shoving it in plastic bags. I've seen both. I don't mind the former, but the latter just irritates me to no end.

"Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, anyone? (Yes, I do have the recipe!)"

Thanks, but Obamacare doesn't cover the rehab.

Momof4 is correct. Seal broken = toss (or at least is supposed to).

I don't know about you guys, but the hotels I stay in (cheap for personnel, nice when the company is paying) all had very soft towels.

I have made breakfast to go...some bacon between toast with Jam. Seems quite reasonable to me. To pack enough for lunch too doesn't seem right. Nor does it seem right to waste a lot. I am thinking of a couple of summers ago where a family of six each made 2 waffles, stacked there plates high with bacon & sausage and then ended up throwing 2/3 of it away - It didn't appear bad and then next hot plate was fine.

Also, don't think the hotels don't keep track. My mother called to book our annual family gathering and the hotel wouldn't do it because some one with the last name had stole a bunch of stuff. We do have a kinda of unusual last name, but not that unusual. My parents are friends with the owner so just called a different time and no problems.

My wife volunteers with an organization that aids migrant farm workers. The little bars of soap and bottles of shampoo are really appreciated by these folks so we always take a few extra home with us. Others we know donate to women's shelters. Is this stealing? Maybe, but it's for a good cause.

Towels, clock radios(!), etc. are another matter entirely. That's just wrong.

The little soaps and shampoos are there in the room as a little gift for you. A tiny complimentary thing to be used at your convenience. If it is convenient to use while showering there, then do so. If it is convenient to take them with you to give away, use in the guest bathroom, or put in your gym bag then that is fine. Because they're your little prezzie.

What is not okay is depleting the staff's cart of them. You have not been given those shampoos and soaps. That's the difference.

I am astounded that people actually steal light bulbs from hotel rooms. There is something so unbelievably trashy about that.