I Would Like To Complain About My Staycation

Dear Wendy,

When I first heard about taking a “staycation” on The Today Show, I was very excited about the idea. Since I couldn’t afford to go to Europe, the Grand Canyon, or the grocery store this summer, booking a week in my own home for some relaxation sounded like just the ticket. And so it was with a great sense of anticipation that I asked for time off at work and phoned myself to book a week with me in my home. However, though I am not the type of person to normally complain, I found that the accommodations and service on my staycation were so abominable that I simply had to write this letter to me to let me know how much I failed to satisfy me during my stay.

First of all, when I arrived at my residence for my staycation, the place was a total mess. Clearly, I had failed to even make an attempt to clean up before I arrived to stay at my house. There were dishes in the sink, the bed had not been made, and one of the so-called “guest-rooms” was filled with boxes that had never been unpacked since I moved in almost four years ago. Also, why were there Christmas decorations still hanging up? It was almost as if the management had been suffering from years of a low-grade ennui that has caused her to neglect her environment in favor of talking to her cat, drinking whiskey, and shouting at the TV.

When mealtime arrived each day, I found that the management had not even bothered to go grocery shopping, but would instead try to talk me into eating weird food from unidentifiable sources. I can’t be positive, but I think that one morning I had part of a mitten dipped in tomato sauce. It’s a little hazy because the management kept me up until four o’clock the night before, insisting that I drink a bottle and a half of wine, call my ex-boyfriends and ask them, “what the fuck?”

The lack of preparation in terms of cuisine and accommodations might have been more easily overlooked if the management had delivered on some of the “fun leisure activities” I promised me. Instead of spending the days engaged in a variety of workout classes, craft activities, and productive but fun organizational tasks as promised, I found that the only activity actually scheduled was “lolling about in pajamas, mentally cataloguing regrets.”

In short, this staycation met none of my expectations, and if it weren’t for the downturn in the economy coupled with the perky insistence of overpaid newscasters that a staycation is a super awesome fun way for regular people to console themselves about the fact that they can no longer afford to even leave their house for a week, I bet I’d feel pretty ripped off.

Sincerely,
Wendy