The Bed Bug Situation
Frequent travel to customers and satellite corporate offices is a fact of life for the Cranky Product Manager. She has super-elite status with many an airline and hotel chain. Over the course of her 10-20ish year career, she has probably spent around 700 nights in hotels. Being an egotistical individual, the Cranky Product Manager considered herself to be an "expert" business traveler within North America. Nothing, she thought, could shock her anymore.
She was wrong.
Last night, at the Red State Hilton Garden Inn, the Cranky Product Manager encountered that species known as Bed Bugs, insects that she heretofore had likened to and orcs and Klingons. Alas, she discovered that bed bugs are very real, very disgusting, and their bites are profuse and very itchy. That is why she screamed at the top of her lungs at 3am, no doubt waking up dozens of hotel guests in the process.
The hotel has relocated her to another room (as if only one room is infested!), but now the Cranky PM must figure out how to not take these bed bugs home with her. God help her if her own house becomes infested with these vile creatures.
Does this mandate the burning of her suits and travel clothes? The immediate disposal of her trusty Travelpro roll-aboard suitcase and favorite Tumi laptop bag? Must she fly back to her Blue State haven clothed in garments bought at the airport and with her laptop inside a plastic grocery bag?
The Cranky Product Manager requests your advice. In a very serious, urgent way.
Help. Please.
It looks like you're long past needing advice. If anyone else does, we have some extensive FAQs at bedbugger.com (a site run by bed bug sufferers).
Posted by: nobugsonme | March 18, 2007 at 11:32 PM
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Posted by: Richard Cutts | February 16, 2007 at 01:03 AM
Holy Crap! Bedbugs!
You need to do the following:
1. All of your clothes, your bags, your briefcase, literally everything you brought into that room must be cleaned. Most bedbug infestations employ the "suitcase vector" to move from hotel to home.
2. Honestly contemplate buying a new wardrobe and charging the hotel. If they object, you could suggest they pay for a new mattress, bedding, towels and a thorough house cleaning for your home should you happen to find yourself the proud host of a bedbug infestation due to their shabby housekeeping.
3. Contact a doctor to see if you need to take some antibiotics. Read the following for the morbidity of bedbug bites:
a href="http://www.emedicine.com/derm/topic600.htm" rel="nofollow"http://www.emedicine.com/derm/topic600.htm/a
Extract:
"Mortality/Morbidity: Bedbug bites can create considerable anxiety and localized and occasionally systemic reactions. Sometimes, if the bite reactions are intensely pruritic, scratching with excoriations may be complicated by impetigo.
* Bedbugs may be a vector for hepatitis B and, in endemic areas, for American trypanosomiasis (Chagas disease).
* Anaphylactoid reactions are well described. One case of an anaphylactoid reaction occurred in a 41-year-old businessman in a first-class urban hotel in America."
4. Put that hotel on your list of places to never visit again.
5. Try to relax. You can deal with this mess best if you approach it the same way you approach any problem - from the beginning. Get out, get clean, get even.
Posted by: Bob Corrigan | August 08, 2006 at 02:07 PM