Back in the early '90s I worked for a major corporation owned by a French holding company. Although we were expected to pinch pennies (Post-It Notes were not an approved expense!) we were REQUIRED to stay at the $250 per night Sofitel O'Hare when on business in Chicago. That was a total waste of money, as all we did was sleep and shower in the hotel room, and we were gone all day and well into the evening elsewhere. Funny thing, Sofitel is a French hotel company. Hmmmm.
Anyway, I'd been there all week and our business wrapped up early by mid morning on Friday, but my flight didn't depart until like 6:00 PM, so I requested a late checkout to have a luxury hotel lunch, use the fancy health facilities, and in just a few hours generally try to derive some of the benefits of this fancy hotel my company was paying for.
My colleagues were all able to get earlier flights, so I was just there on my own entertaining myself. I drank a bottle of expensive wine with a giant lunch, none of which I could pronounce but all of which was delicious, then headed back to my room to change into trunks. Only then did I fully realize what a fancy room I had: fruit wood furniture, nice oil paintings NOT bolted to the wall, and a small frij full of complimentary snacks, imported beers, and a bottle of French wine.
I stuck the beers in my gym bag and headed to the health club to enjoy a cycle of steam room, Jacuzzi, and sauna over and over as I downed the beers. I was pretty tipsy, but bored as hell, as I was the only person in the whole health club, and still had 3 hours to kill before needing to catch the shuttle bus to O'Hare.
A drunk prune, I finally left the health club and wandered about the huge but nearly devoid-of-all-people hotel. Craving some sort of excitement and noticing that the elevators were particularly fast, I rode them up and down like a carnival ride. A grown man has to be pretty bored to do that.
I'm the kind of guy who never met a stranger, so I was trying to socialize with some of the hotel staff, but they were all French and seemed to be just bothered by me, so I gave up on that.
I figured the airport would be a more interesting place than here--at least there are people there to watch--so I went back to my room to shower, dress, and pack.