Awesome well-researched and funny article. Not like those Quora reprints :)

“So if we can’t blame the missing toothpaste on the stinginess of hotel executives, the dereliction of the ratings firms, or the finicky tastes of travelers, then what’s left? Only the gloomy notion that we might all be equally to blame. Hotels could give us toothpaste but they don’t. No one knows why, and no one cares. It’s how things have always been, and how they’ll always be.

If the missing toothpaste were a matter of tradition—the result of some odd and arbitrary choice made in the early days of hotel bathrooms—then we might expect to see the sad, self-sustaining loop of inconvenience that’s now in place. The hotel managers claim to choose amenities based on market research, and that this research fails to find demand for dental hygiene. The message is very clear: We don’t get toothpaste in our rooms because we don’t ask for toothpaste in our rooms; we don’t ask for toothpaste in our rooms because we never knew we could.”

Actually, I'd prefer floss in my room. Flossing is better for us than brushing, my dentist says.