or woman, as the case may well be. i realize you have to get up at an ungodly hour to take your flight. or make your meeting. i understand it must be difficult for you. you’re tired and sleeping in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room doesn’t help matters. business trips can be stressful. exhausting. i’ve been there.

i can imagine how utterly fed up with restaurant food you must be. it all tastes the same and the endless stream of faceless, nameless, apathetic wait staff must haunt your dreams. airport terminals make you queasy. the thought of another night in another hotel with stiff sheets and flat, foreign pillows just makes your skin crawl. i bet by now you’re praying for the creature comforts of home and an end to this nightmare of life on the road. i am too. i understand, i do. i feel your pain.

but i must request, most humbly, that you take into consideration your fellow travelers. you are not alone. not figuratively. not literally. when you leave out of your room at an hour no man was ever meant to see, is it really necessary to slam the three ton door of your room so hard? you know, i don’t know this with any certainty, but i’m fairly sure they make those doors so heavy for your protection. so baddies don’t break it down in the middle of the night and make off with your body and all your worldly possessions. it’s thoughtful, right? their heart is in the right place. i mean, you know, if that’s why they make them that heavy. for all i know it could be to cut down on door replacements after having them open and close fifteen million times more often than a “regular” door. i don’t know. nonetheless, we agree the door is heavy, yes? and because the door is heavy it makes a very loud, very distinct crash when you slam it at a specific time in the morning when the devil in hell is his most happiest, because the humans walking the earth, the ones awake, are the most miserable.

now normally this wouldn’t be a problem. not if you were in your own home, surrounded by your lovely wife who sings like an angel and cooks like a dream; all your creature comforts spread before you. but you’re not in your own home, as we’ve established. you’re in a shared purgatory with me and the other 400 or so traveling dead. and we’re tired. so tired. when that door comes crashing closed it wakes us from our slumber, the one and only time during a business trip we’re actually enjoying ourselves. that door, that heavy, heavy door crashes closed, reverberates off the long halls, echoes through the hotel and comes back again, shattering our minds, you dirty door slammers. have you no shame? you’re denying us all that little slice of heaven that might mean the difference between making it home okay and taking out a terminal full of passengers with a post it note folded into very sharp corners. don’t do this. don’t allow that blood on your hands. you, too, may have a trip with blessedly little to do on a particular day. a late meeting. perhaps even, though it hurts to dream it, a day off. if you should luck into this during one of your business trips, you most certainly don’t want to awaken at the asscrack of dawn because 25 other sad schmucks didn’t get the same break and decided to wake up, get dressed, drag ass out the door, slam it as hard as they could and then proceed to talk very loudly in the hall for five minutes, outside your door, before heading to the plane. the meeting. hell.

in conclusion, i hope your flights all arrive and depart on time. i pray for your safe arrival at your destination. i wish you cheerful wait staff and decent food. i hope the meetings don’t run long and you don’t get stuck with a broken projector during an important presentation. i hope the cab driver doesn’t get lost. may your room be syringe and cockroach free upon check-in. i wish for you a smooth, easy business trip with as little torture as is possible when traveling on company time. just please, please close the damn door quietly as you go.

thank you.