Some serious five-finger discounts

I will, of course, confirm nothing, but there may have been a time in my life — long-enough ago that any statute of limitations would have surely run out by now — when I would liberate the occasional towel from a hotel room as a souvenir.

And perhaps, again confirming nothing, my travel companions and I might have relieved a hotel in northern New York of such items as the earpiece to the telephone, the emergency evacuation card or the Bible whilst not chasing people down the hall with ice cubes or determining the effects of shampoo on a hot tub.

However, if we actually did do those things at a time for which I’m sure none of us could be prosecuted today, we would have been pikers.

A friend tipped me off to a survey by Wellness Heaven about what people steal from  hotels, and as the graphic shows, your towels and bathrobes are most popular, and then it filters down through pens and pillows and so on.

But there were some bizarre ones.

Like bathroom fittings.

Like television sets.

Like a freaking grand piano.

I have questions, starting with why people would be stealing stuff from four- and five-star hotels. I get that the stuff is nice — the stars in my hotels don’t go nearly that high, and there have been bathrobes, TVs and water slides I wanted to make my own — but if you can afford to stay in a five-star hotel, you can probably spring for a coffee maker or a decent flatscreen.

Of course, maybe a secret to affording fancy hotels is filching everything you can while you’re there.

But also … how do they get it out of the hotel? Beyond the physical challenge of getting a mattress out the door of the room and on the elevator — I have enough trouble with my suitcase — does no one at the front desk notice someone toting it through the lobby?

Then again, when a hotelier in Italy can report “Once I walked through the lobby, I noticed that something was missing, and soon after I learned that three unknown men in overalls had taken away the grand piano, and it never reappeared, of course,” maybe not.

Yet even if you manage to get something large and expensive out of the hotel without staff noticing — perhaps by means of pulling a moving van around to a side door, for example — housekeeping is going to be cleaning the room someday. There will be other guests.

I’m assuming they might report to the front desk that … oh, I don’t know … the bathroom toilet is missing?!?!?!?!

All the hotels I’ve stayed in lately have computers, and I’m assuming those computers might store information about the last guy to stay in Room 325 overlooking the HVAC system.

Of course, if they’re looking for the guy whose room was above the HVAC, they could just come to my house. Honestly, though, the bathrobes were fluffy and comfy, but I promise one of them didn’t grow feet and walk into my suitcase.

And my TV’s from Target, not Holiday Inn.

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