Philip contributes this one, asking “Huh? Is this something people worry about?” –
Related
22 Comments
Yes. Before phones, iPads, etc. when traveling and I had to rely upon wake up calls I would be anxious that they would forget to make the call and I would be late for my flight/meeting. Less of an issue today though.
Strangely on target for me this morning. We have a ride scheduled to pick us up at 9am to take us to my wife’s therapy session, and my last dream this morning was a vivid one of me looking at the bedside clock, realizing that it was already 9am, running downstairs (a neat trick, since in reality our bedroom is on the ground floor) and out the door in my pajamas to plead with the mobility guy to wait (and it turned out in the dream he was the wrong one, there to drop off someone else), then running back upstairs and trying to wake my wife, who then wanted to argue about what time I’d told her last night, and so on.
At which point (about twenty minutes ago) I actually woke up, saw it was quarter to 7, got a cup of coffee out of the thermos, turned on my desktop and — encountered this cartoon. As I said, too on-target for me right now.
I used to travel a lot for business, and only had a couple of times when a hotel messed up my wake up call. I never missed a meeting / flight, but had some rather rushed mornings. So much better with smart phones.
First of all, I don’t get the joke. What is supposed to be humorous about this?
Second, why is reception so angry? It’s a perfectly normal thing to ask for a wake up call, and give a reminder.
Third, as for people worrying about this, I have had the unfortunate experience of staying in a hotel that somehow managed to mess up my wake up call every single day. Each day they would find a fresh way to screw up. So, yeah, if I really need a call I would certainly remind reception and make sure they note it down properly.
We don’t know how often this guy has called to remind them. If he’s called a bunch of times, I can see that reception would get angry.
I can see why a person would worry about reception getting the call right, but not why this constitutes a joke.
Is part of the joke that he’s not sleeping, and as a result of his anxiety, he won’t need a wake-up call as he’ll likely be awake by the time it comes?
That’s all I got.
First of all, I don’t get the joke. What is supposed to be humorous about this?
That’s why the site, and category, are “Comics I Don’t Understand”.
I must admit, I understood even less of the premise than what several of you have posted as your experiences. Apart from relying on your own system (smart phone, as several have said, or even from way back a “traveller’s alarm clock”), wouldn’t a hotel / motel’s wake-up system be automated? Just as one of the preprogrammed buttons on the room phone is Room Service, another is Wake Up Service, and they take you thru a voice menu to set up your request via the phone buttons. Isn’t it like that?
Is part of the joke that he’s not sleeping, and as a result of his anxiety, he won’t need a wake-up call as he’ll likely be awake by the time it comes?
Very good point, Stan. But it needs a bit of adjustment to fit the Insomniac’s Panic case. His anxiety (about tomorrow’s important activities, not just the frustration with the hotel desk) will keep him up, until very near morning, when exhaustion will take over and knock him out, leaving him to oversleep all alarms and ruin everything. This is why relying on his own alarm clock or an automated system from the hotel will not suffice, and he will need a persistent and aggressive human-based call, that will insist on hearing him make coherent conversation.
Mitch4: I have stayed in places where it wasn’t automated, but probably not any time in the last two decades.
I thought it was funny (actually even funnier than most) until I read Pete’s “What’s supposed to be humorous about this” and thought how can anyone miss this and then…. I completely forgot why I found it not only funny but obvious…. completely forgot. It’s totally gone now but it was there.
I think the joke is that he is, by calling in so frequently, in essence is givis the reception desk a constant wake up call. And the reception desk is reacting the way a sound sleeper often does to a wake up call; with irritation and annoyance.
Odd that there’s no clock visible, since it would help a lot to know what time of night this takes place. It doesn’t seem so interesting if he’s about to go to sleep and he’s just calling one more time to make sure the wakeup call is set. But there might sort of be a joke if he’s been calling allll night and now it’s almost time for his wakeup call anyway. Something like “he’s been hassling everyone about his wakeup call and doesn’t even need it, ha ha!”
In the 40 years I’ve been traveling, rooms have always had an alarm clock – but not all of them are easy to set. So I seldom used wakeup calls even before smartphones.
Perhaps the joke is that this is the kind of guy who sets two clocks and checks them every hour at night – and he’s doing the same for the wakeup call. That’s all I got.
Somehow a wake-up phone call is more “wake-uppy” than an alarm clock for me. Perhaps because hitting off on an alarm clock is routine, but answering the phone is not. I may be thinking of the days when a human at the front desk called your room.
I remember at least one place ~20 years ago where a human took the request for a wake-up call, because I remember that they sounded a little incredulous that we were calling at 7 AM for an 11 AM wake-up call.
When I was in college back in the 70s, a friend was the night auditor at a Howard Johnson. The duties included all the desk stuff, like checking in new arrivals (drive-up only) and doing wake up calls, besides totally the day’s receipts and preparing reports. I would sometimes go hang out with him at night. Somehow he was late for a wake-up and had to tell the resident that it was about 20 minutes past the time.
All it takes is one failed wake-up call to make you paranoid about them FOREVER. I speak from bitter experience.
Decades ago I stayed in a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, on one of those bargain travel arrangements where the plane back takes off early in the morning, and you have to leave the hotel at 4 a.m. to get to the airport on time. This hotel had a great colonial past, apparently, but had gone to wrack and ruin by the time of our stay. There was no running water, for instance, and to wash, you could order cold water in something like a garbage can from a man loitering in the corridor. For the last night we requested a wake up call to get ready for the minibus but had a mechanical alarm clock as backup.
When we came into the lobby there was the night manager/ security guard snoring on his chair next to the open entrance door.
I agree with D.vanDom.
I thought for a moment his hotel room was flooded, then I realized it was just a blue carpet with a weird design
I found this hilarious because I do this to myself. If I have something important to do or get to, I’ll wake up repeatedly, look at the clock which has moved 20 minutes, go back to non-RIM sleep……and then lather, rinse, repeat.
Old joke:
— “I’d like a wakeup call for 5 AM.”
— “Sorry. We don’t do wakeup calls.”
— “Then have room service bring me twelve glasses of water.”
Just remember that you getting up on time is a lot more important to YOU than it is to whoever is doing the wake-up call. You care, he or she doesn’t.
We have always carried a battery operated alarm clock with us.
Now that we travel in our little RV (well, as of 2018, have not traveled since) we use husband’s cell phone and also a newer battery operated alarm clock to wake us up.
That’s the easy part of getting up and getting out for the day. Due to the small size of RV I have to mostly get dressed in bed and then when Robert is dressed, open the inner set of curtains on the back door and cover the bed mostly while still in it also. We then open the toilet bowl/shower holder compartment door and he stands in the front part of the RV and uses the actual mirror to shave while I stand between the door and the bed (in front of the toilet) and use the back of the mirror which sort reflects also to put on my suntan lotion.
I used to have a wind-up “traveller’s alarm clock” which folded up inside a like 2-inch snap-case, then unfolded to show the clock face for you to put on a table.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Yes. Before phones, iPads, etc. when traveling and I had to rely upon wake up calls I would be anxious that they would forget to make the call and I would be late for my flight/meeting. Less of an issue today though.
Strangely on target for me this morning. We have a ride scheduled to pick us up at 9am to take us to my wife’s therapy session, and my last dream this morning was a vivid one of me looking at the bedside clock, realizing that it was already 9am, running downstairs (a neat trick, since in reality our bedroom is on the ground floor) and out the door in my pajamas to plead with the mobility guy to wait (and it turned out in the dream he was the wrong one, there to drop off someone else), then running back upstairs and trying to wake my wife, who then wanted to argue about what time I’d told her last night, and so on.
At which point (about twenty minutes ago) I actually woke up, saw it was quarter to 7, got a cup of coffee out of the thermos, turned on my desktop and — encountered this cartoon. As I said, too on-target for me right now.
I used to travel a lot for business, and only had a couple of times when a hotel messed up my wake up call. I never missed a meeting / flight, but had some rather rushed mornings. So much better with smart phones.
First of all, I don’t get the joke. What is supposed to be humorous about this?
Second, why is reception so angry? It’s a perfectly normal thing to ask for a wake up call, and give a reminder.
Third, as for people worrying about this, I have had the unfortunate experience of staying in a hotel that somehow managed to mess up my wake up call every single day. Each day they would find a fresh way to screw up. So, yeah, if I really need a call I would certainly remind reception and make sure they note it down properly.
We don’t know how often this guy has called to remind them. If he’s called a bunch of times, I can see that reception would get angry.
I can see why a person would worry about reception getting the call right, but not why this constitutes a joke.
Is part of the joke that he’s not sleeping, and as a result of his anxiety, he won’t need a wake-up call as he’ll likely be awake by the time it comes?
That’s all I got.
First of all, I don’t get the joke. What is supposed to be humorous about this?That’s why the site, and category, are “Comics I Don’t Understand”.
I must admit, I understood even less of the premise than what several of you have posted as your experiences. Apart from relying on your own system (smart phone, as several have said, or even from way back a “traveller’s alarm clock”), wouldn’t a hotel / motel’s wake-up system be automated? Just as one of the preprogrammed buttons on the room phone is Room Service, another is Wake Up Service, and they take you thru a voice menu to set up your request via the phone buttons. Isn’t it like that?
Is part of the joke that he’s not sleeping, and as a result of his anxiety, he won’t need a wake-up call as he’ll likely be awake by the time it comes?Very good point, Stan. But it needs a bit of adjustment to fit the Insomniac’s Panic case. His anxiety (about tomorrow’s important activities, not just the frustration with the hotel desk) will keep him up, until very near morning, when exhaustion will take over and knock him out, leaving him to oversleep all alarms and ruin everything. This is why relying on his own alarm clock or an automated system from the hotel will not suffice, and he will need a persistent and aggressive human-based call, that will insist on hearing him make coherent conversation.
Mitch4: I have stayed in places where it wasn’t automated, but probably not any time in the last two decades.
I thought it was funny (actually even funnier than most) until I read Pete’s “What’s supposed to be humorous about this” and thought how can anyone miss this and then…. I completely forgot why I found it not only funny but obvious…. completely forgot. It’s totally gone now but it was there.
I think the joke is that he is, by calling in so frequently, in essence is givis the reception desk a constant wake up call. And the reception desk is reacting the way a sound sleeper often does to a wake up call; with irritation and annoyance.
Odd that there’s no clock visible, since it would help a lot to know what time of night this takes place. It doesn’t seem so interesting if he’s about to go to sleep and he’s just calling one more time to make sure the wakeup call is set. But there might sort of be a joke if he’s been calling allll night and now it’s almost time for his wakeup call anyway. Something like “he’s been hassling everyone about his wakeup call and doesn’t even need it, ha ha!”
In the 40 years I’ve been traveling, rooms have always had an alarm clock – but not all of them are easy to set. So I seldom used wakeup calls even before smartphones.
Perhaps the joke is that this is the kind of guy who sets two clocks and checks them every hour at night – and he’s doing the same for the wakeup call. That’s all I got.
Somehow a wake-up phone call is more “wake-uppy” than an alarm clock for me. Perhaps because hitting off on an alarm clock is routine, but answering the phone is not. I may be thinking of the days when a human at the front desk called your room.
I remember at least one place ~20 years ago where a human took the request for a wake-up call, because I remember that they sounded a little incredulous that we were calling at 7 AM for an 11 AM wake-up call.
When I was in college back in the 70s, a friend was the night auditor at a Howard Johnson. The duties included all the desk stuff, like checking in new arrivals (drive-up only) and doing wake up calls, besides totally the day’s receipts and preparing reports. I would sometimes go hang out with him at night. Somehow he was late for a wake-up and had to tell the resident that it was about 20 minutes past the time.
All it takes is one failed wake-up call to make you paranoid about them FOREVER. I speak from bitter experience.
Decades ago I stayed in a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, on one of those bargain travel arrangements where the plane back takes off early in the morning, and you have to leave the hotel at 4 a.m. to get to the airport on time. This hotel had a great colonial past, apparently, but had gone to wrack and ruin by the time of our stay. There was no running water, for instance, and to wash, you could order cold water in something like a garbage can from a man loitering in the corridor. For the last night we requested a wake up call to get ready for the minibus but had a mechanical alarm clock as backup.
When we came into the lobby there was the night manager/ security guard snoring on his chair next to the open entrance door.
I agree with D.vanDom.
I thought for a moment his hotel room was flooded, then I realized it was just a blue carpet with a weird design
I found this hilarious because I do this to myself. If I have something important to do or get to, I’ll wake up repeatedly, look at the clock which has moved 20 minutes, go back to non-RIM sleep……and then lather, rinse, repeat.
Old joke:
— “I’d like a wakeup call for 5 AM.”
— “Sorry. We don’t do wakeup calls.”
— “Then have room service bring me twelve glasses of water.”
Just remember that you getting up on time is a lot more important to YOU than it is to whoever is doing the wake-up call. You care, he or she doesn’t.
We have always carried a battery operated alarm clock with us.
Now that we travel in our little RV (well, as of 2018, have not traveled since) we use husband’s cell phone and also a newer battery operated alarm clock to wake us up.
That’s the easy part of getting up and getting out for the day. Due to the small size of RV I have to mostly get dressed in bed and then when Robert is dressed, open the inner set of curtains on the back door and cover the bed mostly while still in it also. We then open the toilet bowl/shower holder compartment door and he stands in the front part of the RV and uses the actual mirror to shave while I stand between the door and the bed (in front of the toilet) and use the back of the mirror which sort reflects also to put on my suntan lotion.
I used to have a wind-up “traveller’s alarm clock” which folded up inside a like 2-inch snap-case, then unfolded to show the clock face for you to put on a table.