�It�s a sensitive subject both for our guests and our employees, especially our engineering staff,� explains Hill. �Clayton on the Park was built four years ago while the Clayton, MO building code still required low-flow toilets so we�re stuck with them, just as I was in the hotels I managed in California.�

Hill won�t say the low-flow toilet problem had become epidemic in his hotel but they were having so many guest calls that they nicknamed them �Code 10s.�

�We had no choice but to educate our hotel guests to flush often,� he said. �It was either that or put plungers in all the bathrooms and that was not a realistic option in a luxury all-suite hotel.�

So Hill worked with his marketing communications agency to create two different instructional cards with humorous four-color graphics, which were placed on the toilets. The cards, one featuring a cartoon plumber in a wet suite with a plunger and one with a devil with a plunger, read:
 

The message worked. Clayton on the Park cut �Code 10s� by 78 percent in the first 30 days of implementing the card program in January of 2004 and reduced them by 76 percent for the whole first quarter of 2004.

�Our instructional program is a win/win situation,� notes Hill.  �Our guests are spared the embarrassment of calling for help for clogged toilets and our staff the awkwardness of answering the call. Plus we have eliminated the distractions that take our people away from their assigned duties, allowing them to more fully concentrate on their jobs.�
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