• Fubarberry
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    15115 days ago

    Hotel’s need good ice dispensers so that you can fill a bathtub with ice after removing your tinder date’s kidneys.

  • @dreadbucket@lemmy.world
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    11615 days ago

    I’ve been working for years to get my fire dispensers into hotels but the useless ice dispenser lobby keeps blocking me.

  • Optional
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    9415 days ago

    Some of us are from the warmer climes and appreciate the healing power of ice. And soon, all of us will be from the warmer climes.

    • @Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2615 days ago

      I was going to say liquor, but yeah. You can use it for soda too if you buy a 12 pack and bring it back to the hotel with you instead of letting the drink machine nickel and dime you.

    • AFK BRB Chocolate
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      1714 days ago

      Yep, champagne is our main use case. If the wife and I are staying someplace nice, we love to get a bottle of champagne and some nice cheese at a local store and hang out in the room at least one night.

      • @Duranie@literature.cafe
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        1915 days ago

        The last hotel I stayed at (fancy expensive hotel for a company gathering) had a mini fridge stocked with ridiculously expensive items, in such a way that the fridge was unusable for outside items. There was also a note that any items removed from the fridge would automatically be charged to the room. There was one bottle of complimentary water on the counter though.

        • Dr. Bob
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          1114 days ago

          God there was one where I bumped against the fridge and shifted a bunch of items that all showed up on my bill. I think a lot of the Disney hotels work on that system as well.

  • @Septimaeus@infosec.pub
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    9 days ago

    As a kid I thought this was just a weird hotel thing. Got the backstory eventually.

    TL;DR: ice became commonplace around the time motel chains spread across the US.

    Ice was once an exotic import only nice hotels could offer. Its perceived luxury remained decades after refrigeration allowed manufacture. Hotels could still charge for it, so they did, but in the ‘50s and ‘60s ice went from cheap to essentially free.

    Concurrently, roadside motor-hotel (motel) chains spread across the US. Among these, “Holiday Inn” was the first to offer ice as a complementary amenity. Competitors followed suit. National roll-out at every motel franchise happened quickly. Soon nearly every hotel offered self-serve ice as a standard amenity.

    Hence our icy embarrassment of riches.

  • @Monument@lemmy.sdf.org
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    5014 days ago

    In my childhood, we drove everywhere - vacations, moving cross country to escape death threats, traveling to visit distant relatives, moving back cross country after my father died.
    And the one constant was the road trip cooler. Stuffed with soda, snacks, bread, and lunch meat, that thing got toppedd up with ice at every hotel.

    And as an adult, I don’t really do that sort of travel anymore, but as others have said - for chilling drinks and what-not. (But never for putting into drinks.)

  • @fsxylo@sh.itjust.works
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    4914 days ago

    Lots of joke replies but the real answer is because people travel with yeti coolers and sometimes it won’t all fit in the fridge.

  • spicy pancake
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    4414 days ago

    PSA don’t use that ice directly in beverages. I have no published evidence to back this up but I’ve never heard of any kind of rules regarding their cleaning schedule…

    • @Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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      3114 days ago

      Don’t think about restaurant ice then…

      (Hint: same ice machines, and the same lack of oversight)

      Source: 10 years working commercial HVAC/R…

      • @idiomaddict@feddit.de
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        2514 days ago

        If it helps, I worked in restaurants for eight years and at least every other year, someone would forget how thermal shock works and put a hot glass directly into the ice maker, so we’d clean it thoroughly then.

        So you know, not oversight or intention, but stupidity leads to sporadic cleaning.

        I don’t take ice in restaurants either

          • @idiomaddict@feddit.de
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            1214 days ago

            I’ve worked for some garbo places, but all of them shut the ice machine down immediately for super thorough and annoying cleaning. Ice and glass are too hard to tell apart and the dangers of ice in a drink are too high for even the greediest managers I’ve had to want to chance it.

            Someone out there might risk it, but it’s a pretty obvious thing to avoid

    • @TheFriar@lemm.ee
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      14 days ago

      Eh. That’s no way to live life. Can’t be worrying about that kinda stuff. Who ever heard about anything bad happening? With the ice? Sure, if you think too hard about it it might seem gross, but…just don’t think. My happiness grew 100% the year I gave up thinking. I don’t even know how percentages work. That’s how much I don’t think. Ice is fine. Eat the ice, put it in your drinks, whatever. There are very few things left in this late stage capitalist hellacape that we even get as “perks” anymore because we aren’t fucking appreciated, we are just figures now. You used to be able to check your bags on a plane for free, but then 9/11 “hit the industry hard” and to “get back on their feet” (after their billions and billions in bailout money)—-shit…I started thinking again. I vow to never do that again.

  • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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    3515 days ago

    Every time my ex and I would check into a hotel she’d immediately fill the ice bucket. And it would sit there, unused, until we checked out or it melted, at which time she’d have me empty it and fill it with ice again, which would then just sit there and melt.

    I didn’t understand it at all.

    • @ChocoboRocket@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      Your wife will do well when the water wars start and you’d be wise to start following her lead.

      As as aside, next time you know you’re going to a hotel bring a secret, second ice bucket to fill shortly after she fills the hotel one. Bonus points if you can acquire it from the hotel so they’re identical.

      Don’t mention it or anything, just let her work out the logistics of what happened when she notices. If she’s as serious about hotel ice as she sounds, you’ll probably get laid right then and there.

  • @thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
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    3014 days ago

    I used the ice machine at the hotel to chill the drink I bought at the store. I have used the a bunch of times actually. On my wedding night, we stayed at a super fancy hotel and I used the ice machine to fill the bucket for chilling the last bottle of champagne we had

      • @homesnatch@lemm.ee
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        614 days ago

        I don’t think I’ve ever been to a hotel that didn’t have an ice dispenser/bucket, but have been to plenty that don’t have a fridge. Heck, Motel 6 has ice machines and a stupid plastic bucket.

          • @homesnatch@lemm.ee
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            214 days ago

            Very likely… A lot of road trip travel by car, sometimes toting coolers. And Americans like their beverages cold.

            • Yup. I was super surprised when I heard that in Europe, they don’t give you ice by default, and they give you seltzer unless you ask specifically for something else.

      • @hobovision@lemm.ee
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        314 days ago

        Fridge takes hours to cool a drink, but put it in an ice bucket and it’ll be cold after you’re done pooping.

    • dream_weasel
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      113 days ago

      I feel like I’m the only person who goes to a hotel to sleep, not chill a 24 pack of diet Coke and a bottle of champagne to drink (without this hotel ice) after eating a ham sandwich out of my rolling cooler which needs a top off.

      Where are you all traveling with your champagne and ham sandwiches?!

  • @PrinceWith999Enemies@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    Americans tend to like ice in their water and in their drinks. When I was a kid, my family would typically grab a bucket full of ice to cool down the tap water we would drink in the evenings.

    Hotel ice can be really funky, though, and I think the practice may be falling out of fashion in any case.

    • Neato
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      1415 days ago

      This is it. And it’s because tap water can be really different from locale to locale. If you’re not used to it, it can taste quite bad. And room temperature water from the tap can enhance the flavor. So people put ice in it to cover it up.

      • Seraph
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        1115 days ago

        He’s also correct in that those ice machines never really get cleaned.

        • Transporter Room 3
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          815 days ago

          I once left a 5 star review for a hotel purely because the hotel was what I expect from a hotel, but there was someone actively cleaning out the ice machine while we were bringing stuff into the room.

          Nothing seemed eslecially clean or cared for while we were there, but I had never seen someone clean one before. Or cleaned the drink dispensers after breakfast is over.

          I actually have a UV light I take with me on trips for both rock hunting and for hotels. Some hotels you just learn to avoid.

    • @Ledivin@lemmy.world
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      615 days ago

      Hard pass on putting the ice in drinks. This is true of hotels and any fast food or restaurant: their ice dispensers are absolutely crawling with bacteria. Some probably even have live rats in them. Don’t fuck with ice, they’re all disgusting.

      • Optional
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        1315 days ago

        Man why you gotta hassle the ice rats man. They just trying to get by, y’know.