Turning towels into works of art

A remarkably quirky article from Gadling on how Hospitality Employees Waste 1.7 Million Hours Annually Creating Towel Origami

From the story – Employees at hotels, aboard cruise ships and at spas spend entire shifts at their places of business folding, rolling and tucking towels to resemble local and exotic wildlife. The study suggests that employee time would be better spent servicing customer needs.

[image courtesy: Gadling.com]

Why all this angst? It is not as if these hospitality industry guys forget to, um, be hospitable or cater to customer needs in the process of folding terry towels. And if it makes you smile as you enter your room after a hard day’s work or a hot day of sightseeing, then why not?

Actually, I have never paid these towel origami items much notice before. And then, one night on my recent Nile cruise, I walked into my room to find the living daylights startled out of me by this (don’t miss the sun glasses):

Needless to say, I will never look at towel origami in the same way again!