Get Fitted?

A California legislator has revealed the Scylla or Charybdis choice we face with our modern lawmakers. On the one hand, when they are in session, they are Doing Things, and that can turn out badly. On the other hand, when they are not in session, they have more time to think about what they will do when they are, and that can also turn out badly. Finding the happy medium (or at least the Least Crazy Medium) of keeping them too busy to think up weird laws but not so busy they enact the weird laws someone else already thought up is quite simply the political conundrum of our time.

State Senator Kevin DeLeon (D-Los Angeles) has proposed California Senate Bill 432, which would mandate that hotels within the state of California use fitted sheets on all of their beds. Apparently some do not.

Senator DeLeon said he proposed the bill with his mother, a longtime hotel maid whose job often left her with back pains, in mind. I salute the senator's mother for working hard and raising her son to do well enough that he could be elected to a state legislature, and the fact that I am going to mock his bill without let or hindrance should in no way be seen as as any disrespect to her.

Apparently, when hotel personnel use non-fitted sheets on beds, they have to lift the mattress more than when they use fitted sheets. I am not sure of this, because I do use fitted sheets on my bed, and I am picking that blasted mattress up at least once on each corner, not to mention crawling across the thing when the elastic corner opposite me comes loose even though I tucked it firmly underneath said corner. However, as my mother frequently pointed out during my childhood, my maid skills were quite lacking -- and she was not put on this earth to make up the deficit between where they were and where they should have been, by the way. So there may be a fitted sheet trick of which I am unaware.

A hotel worker's union has come out in favor of the bill, saying it could help reduce injuries to hotel workers. No word on what kind of increase in workplace rage incidents it might bring when hotel workers try to fold the fitted sheets. Yes, I have heard people claim there is a way to fold fitted sheets. I have also heard people claim to have developed cold fusion. I believe neither.

Meanwhile, a hotel owners' association opposes the bill, saying the purchase of the new sheets would cost their members a lot of money and could lead to layoffs. My guess is that without using fitted sheets, hotels can simply buy more of the plain old sheets and that doesn't cost as much -- but fifteen million dollars? That's the minimum the association claims hotels would have to spend to outfit California hotel beds with fitted sheets, a claim which smells bad enough someone's going to need an extra can of Febreze or two. Their top end claim is thirty million.

And since I have resisted it throughout this entire entry up until now, I will give in and allow myself to say that I think that Sen. DeLeon, the hotel workers union and the owners' association are all full of sheet.