A wrenching experience

The new consulting job I have taken on has caused me to spend a few nights in hotels lately, and Monday of this week was one of those nights.


I got to the hotel just about dark, which gave me time to go find dinner and get some work done on the computer before bedtime. I took a novel with me to dinner, so I lingered longer than I planned, but I still had plenty of time to spare before bedtime. I got back to the hotel, changed into jammies, and settled in.

I got out the laptop and located a wall socket, but the cord to the computer was definitely not going to go into that socket: I don't know how I did it, but I had managed to bend one prong of the plug to almost a 45° angle, and it wasn't going to go into any socket, not just the one in the "economy" hotel I'd picked for this trip.

Not a huge problem; I keep a "multipurpose tool"—one of those foldable wrenches that has an assortment of other tools tucked into its handles—out in my car, and it would be fine to fix my plug.

Except, of course, I was already in my jammies, and I didn't want to get dressed to go out to the car in about 30° weather.

I own a couple of housecoats, but I rarely wear them at home and I never pack them, so even running around in the hotel was a little iffy.

But my daughter has gotten a kick out of my pink trench coat for years, and since it's the warmest coat I own, I had it with me. Over my star-spangled pajama bottoms and tennis shoes, it would do.

I grabbed the car keys in case I had to go out to the car—which at least was parked really close to the hotel—and the power cord and headed to the lobby. I didn't see any signs of life around the front desk, but when I approached it, a voice from the room off to one side said, "Can I help you?"

"Do you have a wrench I could borrow?"

The little Asian man who had checked me in emerged from his room nodding. "Yes, yes," he said, "How can I help you?"

After I showed him the deformo plug, he reached into a drawer across from the desk and pulled out the Big Mac of Channel Lock pliers. Not exactly what I had had in mind, but certainly enough tool to fix a plug.

Without offering me the tool, he hooked it onto the prong and started to bend it back toward the center of the plug. But since he had gripped the prong near the plug, he completely missed the bend in it and started to bend the base off in the wrong direction. He figured out that he wasn't really fixing my problem, so he slid the pliers away from the plug a little and tried to squeeze enough to straighten the prong, but with no leverage, he really wasn't making much progress.

I watched about as long as I could stand it, then reached for the pliers. I moved them up on the prong enough to get the right leverage and straightened the prong with an easy bend. "Oh, I didn't want to break it!" he assured me as I handed back the pliers.

"And you did a good job!" I assured him. Didn't seem to know how to handle pliers, but hey—I got the plug fixed without having to go outside. Good enough for me.