Coach Inn

It’s outrageous that people abuse the service animal law, but the fine they could face isn’t worth the trouble of refusing an animal someone identifies as a service animal. By law, a business can’t refuse them or demand to see documentation.

We were visiting from out of town and had asked for a ground-floor room. The front desk woman said there weren’t any, so I went outside to check with my husband about whether he could manage the stairs. He said he could, but when I went back in, she refused to rent us a room for the night at all, saying it would be a liability for them.

For $60 and one night, I guess I shouldn’t have expected much. The mattress was really uncomfortable, there were only two pillows per bed, and the walls had a lot of marks. The shower curtain and stopper had mold, and there was an office chair in the corner with no desk. When my husband asked for another pillow in the lobby, they said there weren’t any and handed him a towel instead. The check-in area was filthy too. No one was at the window for a minute, and there were candy wrappers and a rubber glove on the floor.

Three nights at the Coach Inn in Summerville, GA., and I came away with a whole new outlook. There weren’t any noticeable insect problems, which was good, but the real revelation was discovering that washers and dryers for doing laundry could be operated outside enclosed spaces. I’d spent most of my life assuming otherwise. Thanks to the wise proprietorship of CI, I can greet every new day with fresh purpose. RWCII