Value Place

If I could I would give this place 0 stars mainly based on the unfriendly staff. No, I didn’t stay at this hotel. I wouldn’t lower myself to do so. However I know someone who fell on hard times and is staying there.
Yesterday morning, I’m being a good friend and was picking him up to go job hunting. I pulled up right in front. I no more did, and here came a woman in a van, just giving me the stink eye. She parked, got outta her van all mad, walked in front of my car and was angrily pointing at my car and pointing at a parking spot. She did this numerous times. Then she walked up to my drivers side window and started yelling at me. It was at this moment I realized shes an employee there. She was irate. Yelling at me that where I was parked was not a drop off, pick up point. Little did she know, I had JUST pulled up there and was there less then two mins before she came round that building.
I don’t even want to come back to that place because of her. She was completely rude with me and could of went about the situation in a better way. Obviously shes never heard of, treat people how u wanna be treated.
As soon as I can find the number, I’m reporting her to corporate.

Let me preface my negative review of Value Place by noting some of the good, first: the staff were incredibly polite and helpful, as well as being graciously apologetic for any/​every problem that was encountered during my stay. A little hospitality goes a long way, and the staff doled that out in abundance. They were as great as the circumstances of their job and environment allowed them to be, and I don’t have a single negative thing to say about them.
However, while I realize that Value Place isn’t by any stretch a quality hotel, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the «value» I received for what I paid.
First off, the internet. There wasn’t any wireless to speak of, and then after having to ask about the internet connection (which I paid extra for), I was given an ethernet cable to connect to a wall plug in my room. The attendant neglected to give me a long/​password for it at that time, but quickly resolved that problem when I asked for it. Sadly though, the internet connection was anything but «high-​speed». Browsing at such low speeds brought back memories of 56k modems and the 1990’s. Watching even the lowest quality of video on Youtube was impossible, as was surfing most websites consisting of more complexity than craigslist.
Twice, upon returning to our room, my girlfriend and I found ourselves locked out, as the batteries that control the card-​swipe lock on our door had died. So, one of the attendants had to replace them twice during our visit. Clearly not his fault at all, but being made to wait 10 minutes in the hallway after a long day was rather aggravating.
Not that I wanted to spend all that much time in my room listening to arguing couples (who presumably live at Value Place for extended lengths of time), and their fighting children through the paper-​thin walls of the place.
Nor was I terribly impressed with ever-​present smokers loitering about the entrance, no matter what the hour. Without fail, literally every single time I entered or left the building there were people standing near the door smoking. This is to say nothing of the people who were also obviously smoking in their rooms. My girlfriend commented to me at one point that the place smelled of hairspray and cigarrettes, and I’m truly hard pressed to find words more descriptive of both the immediate environment, as well as of the general nature of Value Place.
Now, living in Portland has brought into contact with many people who are down and out. I regularly stop to converse with and give money to the homeless I meet here, and I have compassion for people suffering through difficult circumstances (being forced by unemployment to live in your car for some time will help to cultivate that), but more than a few of denizens of the Value Place I stayed at were a little rough on the eyes — the slovenly, shoeless man who reeked of urine and alcohol on the elevator, schlepping his McDonald’s delivery (they deliver?) up to his room, or the defeated-​looking woman with the raspy voice and oxygen tanks whose weight was apparently insufficient to keep her from carrying them outside for a smoke. Believe me when I say that this is just a small sample of the colorful characters that populate the melodrama known as Value Place.
Anyhow. I suppose you could stay at a Value Place and experience some of this yourself… or, you could simply thumb through a book of photography by Diane Arbus and achieve the same effect without smelling the hairspray and cigarrettes.
I strongly suggest the latter.