The Memorial Day weekend saw me and many others staying in a hotel. And staying in a hotel reminded me just how many aspects of a hotel stay are negotiable—how many aspects of a hotel stay often require negotiation to make life negotiable.

Luckily, many hotel negotiations rely heavily on just one principle: the notion that you may not get it if you ask, but you definitely won’t get it if you don’t. A few basic topics we must all at least occasionally raise with our hotels:

• Additional amenities: A two-year-old with afternoon naptimes is not conducive to housekeeping. Accordingly, on our recent trip, we found ourselves running out of towels daily. In situations like these, many people are inexplicably afraid to request more. What will they think if I ask? Will they snicker behind the counter that I must shower all day long? But then you have to think: who cares? Do I dislike snickering more than I dislike drying myself with a sopping wet towel?
• Erroneous bills: It didn’t happen this time, but it did happen the last. Mysteriously, a fancy steak dinner from the fabulous Embassy Suites restaurant showed up on my bill. As much as I love steak dinners from the Embassy Suites, I was reasonably sure that this one wasn’t mine. In such situations, many people are afraid to confront the hotel, lest they get offended or combative. But unless you like to pay for someone else’s steak, you pretty much have to. And it’s not likely to result in offense or combat since the hotel desires your satisfaction almost as much as you do. In my case, they simply looked up the receipt in question, which revealed that someone had creatively remembered their room number, creatively footing me with their filet.
• Extremely random items: Since a hotel is your home away from home, you may well have to borrow some extremely random items that you could easily access in your own home. On the recent trip, for example, my two-year-old inexplicably glued a rubber band in her hair: A problem only scissors can solve. But since the TSA pretty much guarantees that I don’t travel with scissors, the situation called for an extremely random request—one that many don’t make on account of its randomness. And while the lady at the front desk scrunched her brow slightly, she was very happy to lend her scissors nonetheless. And everyone was happy to have the gluey rubber band removed.
• Idiosyncratic preferences: Everyone has an idiosyncratic preference about their hotel rooms. Some need an outside-facing window, lest they feel incarcerated. Others need separation from the sunlight, lest they stay permanently awake. Many care heartily about distancing themselves from the elevator or ice machine. Such preferences, while idiosyncratic, are completely fair game to mention while checking in or later. Indeed, you have to mention them if you want the preference honored—how else would they know? And the hotel hopes you do so they can immediately and rather easily boost your satisfaction (and their hotels.com rating).
• Maintenance requests: Stay in enough hotel rooms, and you’re bound to encounter a rickety old air conditioner, constantly running toilet, or completely spent bulb. “I’ll just deal with it,” many of us think, not wanting to raise a ruckus or trouble the maintenance department. But why? I’m quite sure the hotel wants to know about the maintenance problem just as much as you want to tell them, so they can then head off a long line of dissatisfied occupants. There’s every reason to mention it and virtually no reason to stay mum.

These are just examples. Other opportunities to negotiate with hotels abound—from extra services, to late checkouts, to compensation for a generally crummy experience. The bottom line is that many hotel problems are quite easily solved by simply raising the issue. And raising the issue is exactly what a halfway decent hotel wants you to do.