We were at a hotel in St. Augustine--to protect the not-so-innocent, let's just refer to it as "Hotel X". Now generally when my husband and I are in a hotel, we'll put up the do not disturb sign at night, and leave it up the next morning until we leave the hotel for the day, just because we don't want to be interrupted by housekeeping trying to get into our room in the morning as we are trying to get dressed and out for the day.
So, we decide to watch the morning news and order room service. We took the do not disturb sign down until room service showed, then put it back up after they arrived so we could leisurely enjoy our breakfast. Around 10 am, I decide to hop into the shower, and as I am heading into the shower, the door to our room opens--without any knocking first-- and its a guy from housekeeping. Thank God I still had my pajamas on. I was like, "WTF, there's a do not disturb sign on the door and yet he comes in and doesn't even knock!" He asks, with a heavy accent, if we needed service. I told him we were not ready for the day yet, we were still finishing breakfast, but to come back a little later on and it would be fine. I was really upset about it, especially the part about him coming in w/o a knock. My husband was like, maybe you had the sign in the wrong way, and the sign asking for service was facing out. So I check and guess what--both sides of the sign were "do not disturb". I ask hubby if he thinks I should call the front desk about it, because I was freaked out about the coming in w/o knocking, and he says to let it go.
So we go out for the day around 11 and do our sightseeing and shopping. Come back around 6 exhausted and all we want is to lie down on the bed and relax. We open the door to the room and guess what--housekeeping never came back. Totally livid at this point, I call the front desk, tell the manager exactly what happened (including the sign, no knock and me telling the guy to come back later) and he says that the guy probably couldn't speak English and didn't understand me, but would have housekeeping right up. I asked him if we were expected to sit in our room watching housekeeping clean while we were trying to relax and he said it wasn't a problem if we were in the room with housekeeping there. When I hung up, this didn't sit well with my husband, so he called the manager back, said we had a long day and all we wanted to do was relax, and it was kind of hard to relax in an unmade room--the last thing he felt like doing was watching housekeeping clean. He tells the manager that he thought the least they owed us was a drink at the bar so we didn't have to sit there and watch them clean and make beds. Manager says he'll see what he can do, and he'll call us back. Well 20 minutes later housekeeping shows up but no call so we decide to hit the bar anyway. As we are passing the front desk, we hear the manager give the receptionist and envelope saying, if 212 comes by, make sure they get this. Sure enough, coupons for 2 free drinks and free breakfast the next day.
So while they did fix it in the end, it was still annoying...the bartender however, got a laugh out of it, and gave us some extra drinks on the house. (I still can't figure out, however, even if housekeeper didn't understand English, someone should have at least explained to him not to go in a room when he saw that card sticking out of the door lock or the concept of knocking first).