Or there's those hotels where you have to leave the keys at the front desk. Each time you come back you say your room number and they give you the key.
Yeah, that was our hostel in NYC. I asked about that, and they kind of looked at me funny, as if I was paranoid or something. If figured the best way would be to semi-jokingly show her my ID regardless and be friendly and chatty in the hopes she'd remember my face with the room number.
In hindsight I might have tried asking for a different room number's key to see if she was paying attention and then quickly correct myself "No, just kidding, my room's 208 not 210. I just wanted to see if you'd give people any room key they ask for". Maybe that would've made them see the issue.
Instead, I took the easy route and made sure to never leave my netbook, passport, tickets, etc in the room (all the rest was replaceable and we were travelling light).
I would have probably done differently if I wasn't in a foreign country on a different continent and still getting used to the cultural uncanny valley of NYC being "almost, but not quite like Europe", so I opted for the safe choice of not being a bother to these obviously hard-working people.
