A closer look
Hotel key cards are universally terrible because they operate on ancient magnetic stripe technology that can be completely erased if you happen to put the card in the same pocket as your smartphone for more than five seconds. Despite charging hundreds of dollars a night for a room, luxury resorts refuse to upgrade their locking mechanisms, leaving you stranded in a hallway wearing a swimsuit while trying to aggressively jam a piece of plastic into a blinking red light. When you finally march back down to the lobby in defeat, the front desk clerk will inevitably treat you like a total idiot who doesn't understand how doors work, completely ignoring the fact that their technology hasn't been updated since nineteen ninety-eight. The entire hospitality industry is built on the hilarious premise that high thread-count sheets and tiny bottles of expensive shampoo will make up for the sheer panic of being temporarily locked out of your own room at midnight!
